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Phone Makers Compared

S

spb21

Well-Known Member
[I have never seen this information/opinion consolidated anywhere]

What do the various high-end phone makers (for android) do best and worst?

My experience:

Motorola -

Overall Build - Great
Screen - good
reception - great
speakers - just ok
camera - lacking
battery - good

I'd like to know what others have to say about Samsung, HTC, and even comparing to Apple. And what other hardware should be judged?

ETA: My experience is with Droid X and wife's iphone
 
HTC

Overall build- Awesome
Screen- Awesome
Speakers- pretty good
Camera- Awesome
Battery- Good be a lot better

Moto
Overall build- Ok
Screen- Ok
Speakers- Meh
Camera- Could be lot better
Battery- Decent

LG

Overall Build- Great
Screen- Pretty good
Speakers- Decent
Camera- Pretty good
Battery- Fairly good


That's my experiences... Although a lot has to do with a specific phone... So that would be my experiences with a HTC Mytouch 4G Slide, a Moto Triumph, and an LG Optimus V.
Overall I think that from what I have used though HTC is the best.
 
of course our answers will always be different but i will shed my experiences as well

Moto:
Screen: its ok
Hardware: Outstanding
Camera: Could be better, but still great
Speakers: Not what you would expect :(
Battery: Great, somehow motoblur does help the battery issues
Radios: (Possibly) the best
Overall: Great

HTC
Screen: not a fan(maybe they have new sceens now?)
Hardware: Pretty solid
Camera: i had an eris, so the camera wasnt great (im sure it has been improved)
Speakers: pretty darn loud stock, im sure they are even better now
Battery: Horrid(unless they have found the issue, its still a battery hog)
Radio: From what i remember very very good
Overall: Still a great manufacturer

Samsung
Screen: The best screens on Android
Hardware: Kinda tough, they make good devices, but not in competition with moto, but not far behind HTC
Camera:Great cameras from what i have seen
Battery: Depends on the device, and what service you have 3G(good) or 4G(horrible)
Radios: Just bad, until they are updated
Overall: Not a bad phone manufacturer, but not in the league of HTC or moto

LG:
Screen: Step behind Samsung, but still very crisp and bright screens
Hardware: Havent owned one, but from what i have seen, very great devices
Camera: Very good camera
Battery: No information on this
Radios: No information on this
Overall: Even though they came to the Android game late, they are still making nice devices, though they arent getting the attention they need to survive


That is what i think anyway
 
Since build quality can very quite a bit depending on price point, I'm including the specific models.

LG (Optimus One/Thrive P506, $130)

  • Overall Build: Good (dropped several times on concrete without a case and still working fine, just a few scratches here and there)
  • Screen: OK
  • Speakers: OK
  • Camera: OK
  • Battery: OK

Samsung (Nexus S, $350; Galaxy S 4G, $250)

  • Overall Build: OK (for phones that used to be top of the line, they feel very cheaply made)
  • Screen: Good (high resolution but I dislike the PenTile screen)
  • Speakers: Good
  • Camera: Good
  • Battery: Nexus S, Very Good; Galaxy S, Bad

Sony Ericsson (Xperia ray, $280; Live with Walkman, $200)

  • Overall Build: ray, Excellent; LWW, Very Good
  • Screen: ray, Excellent; LWW, Good
  • Speakers: ray, Good; LWW, Very Good
  • Camera: ray, Good; LWW, OK
  • Battery: ray, Very Good; LWW, OK

Apple (iPhone 4 16GB, $650)

  • Overall Build: Excellent
  • Screen: Excellent
  • Speakers: Good
  • Camera: Very Good
  • Battery: Very Good
 
I'd be more interested know how each phone company is rated for their 1. user interface (ie how they tweak or skin the OS) and most importantly 2. their support.
 
These are from my experiences with my phones, my wife's, and my Dad's
Phone list: Motorola Droid, HTC Droid Eris, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, HTC Rezound, Samsung Galaxy SII

I prefer no skin Vanilla Android, but:
Best UI Skin: HTC Sense
Worst UI Skin: Touchwiz

Best Display: Samsung
Worst Display: Motorola

Best Audio: HTC with Beats
Worst Audio: Motorola

Best Radios: HTC (depeding on phone...the latest designs with the antenna in battery cover pick up very well)
Worst Radios: Motorola (I had poor reception and dropped calls all the time with OG Droid)

Best Camera: HTC/Samsung
Worst Camera: Motorola

Best Battery: Motorola (with the design of the new Razr Maxx, they are heading in the right direction:
Worst Battery: HTC

Overall build quality: I've had no problems with any of them.

Had this discussion the other day in another thread, but the perfect phone right now would be a phone with the following: HTC anteanna, Samsung radio, Razr Maxx Battery, Galaxy Nexus screen, Beats Audio, and a TI OMAP 1.5GHz 4460 processor. All that running vanilla android. You would easily get 4 hours of gaming time on a beautiful screen with great call reception due to the antenna design of HTC, great call clarity due to the Samsung radio, and great sound with a nice set of headphones.
 
funpig said:
I'd be more interested know how each phone company is rated for their 1. user interface (ie how they tweak or skin the OS) and most importantly 2. their support.
Click to expand...

Pure opinion, but I think a lot of people would agree.

User Interface:
1.) Vanilla Android (Nexus phones)
2.) HTC Sense
3.) LG
4.) Sony
5.) Motorola Motoblur
6.) Samsung Touchwiz

Thankfully, I've had no experience with customer support but if you go by Android rollout of new versions of the OS. They all suck pretty hard other than Nexus phones.
 
svt_gEEk said:
Had this discussion the other day in another thread, but the perfect phone right now would be a phone with the following: HTC anteanna, Samsung radio, Razr Maxx Battery, Galaxy Nexus screen, Beats Audio, and a TI OMAP 1.5GHz 4460 processor. All that running vanilla android. You would easily get 4 hours of gaming time on a beautiful screen with great call reception due to the antenna design of HTC, great call clarity due to the Samsung radio, and great sound with a nice set of headphones.
Click to expand...

That'd come close to the "one" phone omnius was referring to..

http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/538373-still-looking-one-android-phone.html
 
svt_gEEk said:
Pure opinion, but I think a lot of people would agree.

User Interface:
1.) Vanilla Android (Nexus phones)
2.) HTC Sense
3.) LG
4.) Sony
5.) Motorola Motoblur
6.) Samsung Touchwiz
Click to expand...
I haven't used all of them but for the ones I've tried, I agree with the rankings.

1.) Vanilla Android (runs smoothest)
2.) LG (feels a lot like vanilla but adds some useful features/widgets)
3.) Sony Timescape (distinctive but lightweight skin, runs almost as smooth as vanilla)
4.) Samsung TouchWiz (manages to be both ugly and slow)
 
funpig said:
I'd be more interested know how each phone company is rated for their 1. user interface (ie how they tweak or skin the OS) and most importantly 2. their support.
Click to expand...

well I have only used 1 skin... all my other phones were vanilla. But the one skin i have used, which would be sense is pretty good. I personally like it more than vanilla. Motorola support sucks, but HTC is pretty good... LG is ok, but not that great

Anyways try to keep the thread on topic... I tend to go off topic at times too... But you can always make a new thread ;)
 
spb21 said:
That would be a good thread to start.
Click to expand...

I was thinking that they should be added criteria as opposed to a separate thread. My experience:

LG (Shine Plus, still on 2.1)

Overall Build - Great - stainless steel battery cover, nice slider keyboard
Screen - Great - older higher resolution screen that stacks up to newer
reception - good - funny thing is I text more than using voice
speakers - good - does the job
camera - okay - I have a low opinion of all phone cams, prefer real thing
battery - good - this is a low cpu phone, but this is so user dependent
UI- unremarkable - I have no real complaint except for small fonts.
Support - poor - long delay, upgrade to 2.3 was failure; had to revert
Customer Service- add this too. LG Canada has a rude customer service person.
 
My opinions are based on both Android and Winmo devices.


Moto-
Build Quality- The Best!
Radios- The Best!
Screen- Good
Speakers- Good-Great!
Camera- Good
Battery- The Best!

Biggest knock on Moto- Bootloader locked.


LG-

Build Quality- Ok
Radios- Ok
Screen- GREAT!
Speakers- Good
Camera- Good-Great!
Battery- Poor

Biggest knock on LG- No high end devices. (Verizon at least)

HTC-

Build Quality- GREAT!
Radios- Good-Great!
Screen- Great!
Speakers- The Best!
Camera- The best!
Battery- Poor-Good

Biggest knock- Battery life

Samsung-

Build Quality- Good-Great
Radios- Ok
Screen- The Best!
Speakers- Good
Camera- Great!
Battery- Good

Biggest knock- Reception and Radio.

Edit: These are based on my experience with both Android and Winmo phones. D1,D3, Bionic, Moto Q, HTC Incredible 1 and 2, Touch Pro, TP2, Revolution, Ally, Fascinate, Omnia I and II. Also, I've spent some time with the Rezound, Lucid and Gnex.
 
More support to backup my claim that Moto radios aren't all they're cracked up to be and report false signal strength. A co-worker sitting 10 feet from me hasn't been able to do anything on his phone that requires internet while in the office for the past several days. I finally told him to tether to my phone wirelessly to see if it was his phone acting up or if he wasn't receivng a good data signal. He instantly was able to download apps, surf the web, etc tethering to my phone. I experienced the same with my Moto Droid before I bought my Nexus. It would report full 5 bars of 3g but I would try to make a call and it would either drop within seconds or not make a call at all. Data would be very slow if it would go anywhere at all.
 
xmr405o said:
My opinions are based on both Android and Winmo devices.




Edit: These are based on my experience with both Android and Winmo phones. D1,D3, Bionic, Moto Q, HTC Incredible 1 and 2, Touch Pro, TP2, Revolution, Ally, Fascinate, Omnia I and II. Also, I've spent some time with the Rezound, Lucid and Gnex.
Click to expand...


to me this is probably the best informative answer, considering you have nearly had all of them. but location also has a big determination among everything

if Moto, HTC, and Sammy, got together and made a phone together, it would be the ultimate phone
 
VoidedSaint said:
to me this is probably the best informative answer, considering you have nearly had all of them. but location also has a big determination among everything

if Moto, HTC, and Sammy, got together and made a phone together, it would be the ultimate phone
Click to expand...

Not sure if it's that informative. :p I've had my share of smartphones. One thing, I'd suggest to everyone is not to write off certain phones due to someone else's experience. Also, don't close your doors to other manufacturers because of bad past experiences. Technically, I've had the worse experience with LG phones and I should have never suggested that my mom buy the Lucid....but the Lucid is actually a pretty good phone. (Standard Battery still sucks though)

Also, I totally agree that if HTC, Moto and Samsung got together to build a Nexus phone that it would definitely be the phone of all phones. It's actually possible that Google (since acquiring Moto), can let Samsung or HTC use Moto's radios. That in itself would be AWESOME! :D
 
Hmm
Based on two phones ,Samsung Galaxy 551 ,Sony Ericsson Xperia mini pro

Samsung
Build Quality- Ok
Radios- Pathetic
Screen- Nice
Speakers- Ok
Camera- Ok
Battery- Ok
Keyboard -meh
Customer Service :Somewhat below Pathetic and above sadistic .
Stock UI: Dreadful

Sony Ericsson:
Build Quality- Ok
Radios- Nice
Screen- Good
Speakers- ok
Camera- ok
Battery- ok
Keyboard :Nice !!
Customer service : Good !
Stock UI : Snappy
 
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