Let the "Revolution" begin!

[jinwons]

I just checked Revolution spec on verizon site and to my pleasant surprise it has 768Mb of RAM. It also says 8Gb of internal memory to the contrary of some reports saying 16Gb. Can someone clarify the size of RAM, internal memory in Rev?

 

[mothy]

I just checked Revolution spec on verizon site and to my pleasant surprise it has 768Mb of RAM. It also says 8Gb of internal memory to the contrary of some reports saying 16Gb. Can someone clarify the size of RAM, internal memory in Rev?

The one I saw in store said something like 13.4 internal (avail) and 14.4 left on SD card.

 

[jinwons]

The one I saw in store said something like 13.4 internal (avail) and 14.4 left on SD card.

Thanks. So it looks like both internal and microSD size is 16Gb. What about the RAM size?

 

[mothy]

Thanks. So it looks like both internal and microSD size is 16Gb. What about the RAM size?

sorry I forgot to look at that. It was a very nice phone in my opinion. If I can get an early upgrade I will be getting one.

 

[Raptor007]

Will this phone be able to do voice and data at the same time like the TB.

The ThunderBolt does SVDO, simultaneous Voice and Data over EVDO, the LG Revolution does VoLTE which will allow you to do simultaneous Voice and Data over LTE (when Verizon supports it).

I have confirmed via email (I will add it when I get home) from HTC that the ThunderBolt does not support VoLTE at this time, and there are no plans to do so. So IF its a software thing then its up to Verizon, but it sounds like it isn't.

 

[Haxcid]

Thanks. So it looks like both internal and microSD size is 16Gb. What about the RAM size?

16g SD
16g Internal, 2 gig dedicated to apps, 13+ to media.
768 RAM

 

[jinwons]

16g SD
16g Internal, 2 gig dedicated to apps, 13+ to media.
768 RAM

Thanks. That's pretty strong spec in the memory, storage department. There were some confliting reports before and some of them were saying 512Mb RAM, 8Gb internal storages.

Another question. Is Revolution able to switch to CDMA only mode from LTE automatic? Tbolt didn't come with that but Charge has it.

 

[rushmore]

BGR must need glasses, since the display to me looked as good as the TB, which IMO is a good display. DX2 seems better than both for sharpness, contrast, brightess and color.

The one issue I noticed was the touch response was significantly less than the DX2 and seemed less than the TB. The Charge also has less touch response and was pointed out in some reviews. If you play game emulators with a Vpad, that makes it even more rough.

The response of the display surprised me and it seemed slightly less than the Charge. I only tested the one unit, so not a good sample.

 

[jinwons]

Sites like BGR don't deserve any subscriptions when they put out such extremely biased opinion as review. I'm going to get Revolution in June.

Regarding screen response, I'm not too worried on it. All the review videos so far don't show any sign of it to me. Demo units often get bogged down or somethings goes wrong.

 

[SirKronan]

Sites like BGR don't deserve any subscriptions when they put out such extremely biased opinion as review. I'm going to get Revolution in June.

Regarding screen response, I'm not too worried on it. All the review videos so far don't show any sign of it to me. Demo units often get bogged down or somethings goes wrong.

I was only able to test a Revolution out for a moment, and I didn't get to compare any of my own test photos/videos on it yet, but my initial impressions of the screen are not as good as I was hoping. I compared it to the Thunderbolt and DX2, and the blacks overall aren't as black, and the whites just don't seem quite as white on the Revolution. Obviously I'm going to get more detailed in my hands on testing than that, but so far it's not looking good. It's not a horrible screen, but even the colors initially seem a bit less punchy on the Revolution than they do on the Thunderbolt. I'm not going to the extreme like BGR, because he exaggerated a bit, but it's not what I would expect from LG who really really REALLY needs to release a successful powerhouse phone, especially on what is still currently the nation's largest national provider, pre-merger of course.

LG needed to hit a total homerun, and the Revolution, in my opinion, is just not quite there. It does a lot well - it's fast and has HDMI mirroring, as well as netflix support right out of the box - but I still set the phone down when I ran out of time feeling like it just needed more.

I plan to test it some more. It's not a bad device by any means. It's just not as good as it needs to be.

Edit: Forgot to mention. When I went in to test it at Best Buy, they had a stack of them unopened in the shelf. This was on the official release day. They had a proper dummy up with an official price tag. I asked how many they had sold, just minutes before the store closed.

The answer? Zero. Not a good sign.

 

[rushmore]

I was only able to test a Revolution out for a moment, and I didn't get to compare any of my own test photos/videos on it yet, but my initial impressions of the screen are not as good as I was hoping. I compared it to the Thunderbolt and DX2, and the blacks overall aren't as black, and the whites just don't seem quite as white on the Revolution. Obviously I'm going to get more detailed in my hands on testing than that, but so far it's not looking good. It's not a horrible screen, but even the colors initially seem a bit less punchy on the Revolution than they do on the Thunderbolt. I'm not going to the extreme like BGR, because he exaggerated a bit, but it's not what I would expect from LG who really really REALLY needs to release a successful powerhouse phone, especially on what is still currently the nation's largest national provider, pre-merger of course.

LG needed to hit a total homerun, and the Revolution, in my opinion, is just not quite there. It does a lot well - it's fast and has HDMI mirroring, as well as netflix support right out of the box - but I still set the phone down when I ran out of time feeling like it just needed more.

I plan to test it some more. It's not a bad device by any means. It's just not as good as it needs to be.

Edit: Forgot to mention. When I went in to test it at Best Buy, they had a stack of them unopened in the shelf. This was on the official release day. They had a proper dummy up with an official price tag. I asked how many they had sold, just minutes before the store closed.

The answer? Zero. Not a good sign.

The Rev and the TB seems "about" the same IMO, but I mainly compared to the DX2, which by most accounts in reviews (and my own amateur effort) the DX2 is much better than both, so the comparison kind of distances them and makes them seem the same.

Everything is relative, so I would agree that the TB seems a little more defined than the Rev. You can tell by looking at text in browser and especially with white backgrounds. Neither appears to have very good contrast, or white levels- hence my perception compared to the DX2 that they are both similar in look.

I am curious on the tech used for the Rev display, since it does seem to have a slight pixel-like background, so less definition than the TB. IMO from a binary perspective, the Rev has a good display and not a bad one.

Now the Sony X Play- THAT from a binary perspective is a bad display.

 

[jinwons]

If your reference point of comparison is DX2 on screen contrast, then I can agree somewhat that Tbolt and Revolution is similar. But Revolution is definitely brighter and color is richer. I also wish Revolution has a little deeper black/white contrast, but it's not bat at all. It's still a little early to tell, but I think what sets Revolution apart from Tbolt is battery performance, 3G only mode, rooting and nearly stock UI. UI on Rev is very lightly skinned. It only got TW style dock icons, categorized app drawer view and that's pretty much all that's added.

The low initial sale is mostly due to Verizon launching it quietly and the fact it's not HTC. I think it will pick up soon over time if they push its marketing more. This phone deserves it in my opinion.

 

[rushmore]

If your reference point of comparison is DX2 on screen contrast, then I can agree somewhat that Tbolt and Revolution is similar. But Revolution is definitely brighter and color is richer. I also wish Revolution has a little deeper black/white contrast, but it's not bat at all. It's still a little early to tell, but I think what sets Revolution apart from Tbolt is battery performance, 3G only mode, rooting and nearly stock UI. UI on Rev is very lightly skinned. It only got TW style dock icons, categorized app drawer view and that's pretty much all that's added.

The low initial sale is mostly due to Verizon launching it quietly and the fact it's not HTC. I think it will pick up soon over time if they push its marketing more. This phone deserves it in my opinion.

Seems a good device, so hope folks are happy. We can go on all day about displays, but too subjective.

 

[GunnerJim]

Overall I am impressed with the LG Revo, in my comparison with the HTC TB it came down to:

The only real areas the HTC TB loses to the LG Revo is VoLTE (Which is not working yet), open bootloader, better battery life, better screen responsiveness, more capacity, 16GB Internal Memory, 16GB external Memory-expandable to 32GB, and a lighter phone. The quadrant scores were consistently better for the Revo,So it is a little more advanced in capability with exception of 5 compared to 8 megapixel camera, which is debatable.

I like Sense UI for an overlay-better than LG Optimus (I use Launcher Pro), the camera I think is better on the TB, and generally I like HTC as a brand (IMO-Dinc 1 best 3G phone ever). I am happy to see the company announce the future bootloaders will be unlocked. So far the LG is winning in the open stat war against the other two 4G LTE phones. Bigger, better, faster, more capable VoLTE chipset.

 

[GunnerJim]

I said in a couple of other posts, I believe stat for stat comparison the LG out of the box offers more than Charge and HTC TB. I have owned the Charge for two weeks, LG Revo 2 days, and played with the HTC TB a lot in making this opinion.

Screen Displays are debatable (IMO-Charge is Best)
Screen Responsiveness (IMO- LG Revo)
UI Overlay (IMO- HTC TB)
Expandability (IMO- LG Revo- Revo tops out at 48GB)
Quadrant (LG Revo, unrooted smoked both of them)
File System (Tie TB/Revo)
Unlocked Bootloader (IMO LG is more friendly, HTC changing stance)
Battery Life (Charge, Revo close second)
Advanced Feature/Future proofing (IMO LG Revo due to VoLTE)
RAM (Tie TB/Revo each have 768MB)
4G Speeds (Tie across the board)
3G Speeds (IMO LG Revo)
Less Connectivity Problems (LG Revo, so far)
Weight (Charge/Revo tie, the Charge is lighter, but bulkier)

These are opinions of course. I don't know why everyone seems to dislike LG. I understand back in the day when they were Gold Star, but they have become a very powerful company. Samsung and HTC are great companies too.

 

[jinwons]

Thanks gunnerjim for your nice and detailed comparison review. Glad that Revolution is working out fairly well for you. I like that it can be put in 3G mode and save battery. Revolution seems to have very strong spec in memory/storage and UI moves really smooth. The only con seems to be 5MP in camera that HTC fanatics like to point out. But they fail to realize that quality of camera optics, image processor, firmware is far more important for quality pictures as seen in iPhone4 camera. I think most people trash talking on LG revolution are HTC or Moto fanatics without even looking into it objectively. Even if MP number in camera sensor is something, what else Tbolt has over Revolution? Almost nothing.

 

[moondrius]

I played with the Revolution a bit today and I was surprised how nice it was. The ui was by far the smoothest I have used in awhile. I hate the look of the app drawer, its one of the worst additions to any android ui I have seen. The real killer is bing. Sure it can be removed with root but you have to use a different browser to have it default to google search. Had this been a google experience device it would have been a real winner. You can always install a different launcher over top of the crap lg has on there but bing will always be the default.

This is in now way a bad phone I just never want to have bing bloatware on my device. If people buy into this Verizon will make even more devices with bing just because people will buy it anyway. If Microsoft is willing to pay Verizon to put this trash on devices and people buy them anyway I can see the future of Verizon being all binged out.

I hope Verizon will let lg put out devices like the g2x in the future. If lg can put out stuff of this quality or better in the future I can see them making some of the best android devices.

 

[GunnerJim]

jinwons/stetson, thanks for the info you are putting out as well. I want to make sure everyone knows, I have no loyalty to a brand, I like HTC (Obviously love my Dinc1), originally got the Incredible 2-saw little improvement over Dinc1, have good things to say about BB (Battery life, you can't touch it), Motorola (Would have bought the Xoom, way over priced), Samsung rocks displays in AMOLED department as well as sipping battery power slower than other devices (could be the 1600 MAH battery too). I hacked Iphone 3G for world GSM usage, own LINUX boxes (Mepis is my distro of choice), Windows Boxes, Chromium Boxes, and Apple Boxes (Love my Hackintosh Dell Mini 9). So I try it all to be unbiased. With the LG Revo, I am hoping that the old analog TV frequency band 700 MHZ (LTE) will penetrate and carry better signals everywhere. If it does, you will want the VoLTE working well. I would think it costs less to package Voice Over LTE and data than CDMA voice... VZW will find a way to bleed more money out of us.

 

[stetsonaw]

jinwons/stetson, thanks for the info you are putting out as well. I want to make sure everyone knows, I have no loyalty to a brand, I like HTC (Obviously love my Dinc1), originally got the Incredible 2-saw little improvement over Dinc1, have good things to say about BB (Battery life, you can't touch it), Motorola (Would have bought the Xoom, way over priced), Samsung rocks displays in AMOLED department as well as sipping battery power slower than other devices (could be the 1600 MAH battery too). I hacked Iphone 3G for world GSM usage, own LINUX boxes (Mepis is my distro of choice), Windows Boxes, Chromium Boxes, and Apple Boxes (Love my Hackintosh Dell Mini 9). So I try it all to be unbiased. With the LG Revo, I am hoping that the old analog TV frequency band 700 MHZ (LTE) will penetrate and carry better signals everywhere. If it does, you will want the VoLTE working well. I would think it costs less to package Voice Over LTE and data than CDMA voice... VZW will find a way to bleed more money out of us.

IMpressive! Didn't know that the 700MHz band was the old analog tv band... should have quite the range on it then. I try to be unbiased as well, but i get more and more surprised by this phone every other time i pick it up. the fact that it's got Bluetooth 3.0 is a big plus, as it sends the actual track/artist/album/time info to my BT receiver in my car. about crapped myself when i saw that, D1/D2/DX didn't have the protocol for it.

 

[GunnerJim]

I did not realize it had Bluetooth 3.0, SWEET!!! Charge had it too. This is just getting better and better. Also, I realized this has EVDO Rev 0 and A, which equates to better 3G signal, explains 4/5 bars I never got on other phones where I live.

 

[stetsonaw]

Proof of BT ID3 tag sync.

AND in phone image editing/cropping! Click edit after taking a pic!