so I've been a lurker here for quite a while and i finally decided to ask my questions.
i dont currently have an upgrade but i'm giving my iphone 3gs to my brother for his upgrade which i will use on the atrix (we're on a family plan), [1] will it be possible for me to keep my unlimited data if i do this and would i need to go to an att store to do so as opposed to going to radioshack for the 50$ discount?
[2] are 4-inch touchscreens easier to type on? I don't like typing on my iphone, mostly because of the autocorrect. I've heard good things about third party keyboards like swype and swiftkey, do they actually help a lot?
[3] do i need a 4g sim for this phone?
[4] is it possible to get an atrix in store on the 21st if i preorder now or tomorrow?
[5] does motoblur have a big impact on battery life, and if so how can i fix that?
[6] how easy is it to sync my atrix with the media i have on my 2009 macbook pro and what's the best method?
[7] are their other methods then using a credit card for paid apps in the market?
[8] what's the best tower defense game on android?
[9] is their a way to not use conversation view in sms?
[10] does this phone use the motorola web portal, and if so can I use that to send texts?
[11] thanks in advance for the help guys, sorry for being such a noob lol
Okay oceanman, I'm going to number your questions in order and answer them as best as I can, my recommendation would be to Google them or use the search function on this and other forums to draw your own conclusions (because my opinions on some of these might not line up with your own)...
1.) My understanding is that this depends on how knowledgeable the RS salesperson is, at any rate you CAN keep the unlimited plan at a corporate store if Radio Shack refuses to give it to you...
2.) I think that 4" is perfect. 4.3 is huge when you hold it in your hand and is difficult to type or whatever one-handed if necessary (especially with swype), while 3.5" is so cramped I almost never hit the key I meant to... I have not used swiftkey but swype is awesome. I use the voice-to-text function more than actually typing though- it has made me quite lazy... One complaint I have about swype is after like 4-5 months, it starts proposing crazy words for what you "swyped," one would think it would be modeled based on what you type more, but didn't seem to be on my Craptive (the opposite, actually)- but the craptivate used an old version of swype (yeah, Samsung is great, let me tell you
).
3.) Every AT&T CSR I have talked to (over the phone, through live chat, through twitter, and through facebook) has said NO special sim is required for HSPA+, but will be for LTE. That said, at least one person on here with a contact in a store has said that some special plain-jane-looking sims arrived in stores, and the employees were told to put them in the new "4g" phones... So that could be up in the air. The difference between 3G and HSPA+ is a difference of radios in the phone and expanded backhaul to a widened bandwidth range, neither of which it seems like the sim would affect. By having HSPA+ all 3G phones will see a benefit, limited only by their hardware radio's ability to receive data at whatever speed.
4.) Call and ask, go to the store(s) and ask, AT&T is now saying that new pre-orders will be back-ordered, but there are reports of people recently pre-ordering and getting them shipped already, so you might get lucky.
5.) It uses memory in the background so yes, theoretically it has to. My previous experience with Blur was with the "Jesterblur" custom roms (google it if you want) back in my G1 days- basically it was a direct port from the first Cliq phone- and I noticed lag (my poor little G1), but battery was actually about the same as stock (crappy). That could have been due to optimizations the ROM dev made, but the Atrix has a large enough battery, I am not worried about that. UNTIL YOU RESEARCH AND UNDERSTAND THE INS AND OUTS OF THE SYSTEM PROCESSES DO NOT DOWNLOAD A TASK KILLER APP AND START KILLING PROCESSES/APPS OR ROOT YOUR PHONE AND TRY TO DELETE SOME OF THE MOTOBLUR APPS. I am not saying that in all caps to be mean or anything, but rather to stress my point. Technically you can use task killers to save memory and therefore save battery (by power consumption), but many of the processes are tied to other apps/processes and potentially system apps. My rule of thumb is to only touch what I put on the phone just to play it safe.
6.) I like DoubleTwist, but to be honest I haven't done this since like summer. I have heard good things about MediaMonkey, but have no experience with it. If the music isn't under iTunes lockdown you can drag and drop mp3's and movie files to your SD card, but iTunes blocks that and doesn't make it easy to use anything outside their walled garden. Depending on the size of your library, one long and tedious but definitely successful method is to burn your library to cd's then copy/paste them onto the phone's SD card.
7.) I only use the debit/credit card option. There has been talk of Paypal, but I haven't used it yet or tried to, so I don't know if it is there or not, and you can also have it added onto your carrier's bill for the next month (I think), but I have not used that either...
8.) While sitting around in airports, I used to play both
Crystallight Defense and
Robo Defense and both were good, but non-market versions of Robo Defense (illegal versions) have been found with trojans, so steer clear of that one for a while. Here is a market listing for the search term "tower defense" in games:
https://market.android.com/search?q="Tower+defense"
9.) Not that I know of, but apps like Chomp SMS and Handcent (both free in the market) have tons of features, they might have something not iPhone-esque
10.) Yes it does use the Portal, but I do not know about the texting or not. With Jesterblur we couldn't really sign into the old Motoblur portal, so I never played with it.
11.) [not a question, I know] everyone starts somewhere, don't be afraid to ask! (or search
)
Hope some of it helps though... Welcome to the forums and don't stay a lurker, participation helps everyone!
