Probable Nexus Defector Questions

[esmort]

Nexus owner thinking about making the switch to Rezound due to signal issues. Have a couple questions that seem to be being debated

Have any nexus converts tested the rezound in areas where nexus was getting poor signal to see how big of difference there is? I dont care about bars, or dbms, or even speed test I am more concerned about real world use ... fringe area signal, 3g/4g hand off, faster downloads, better streaming media, etc ...

How is the standard & extended batteries? Is there any truth to some of the posts I have seen floating around about the extended battery causing loss of signal strength?

What do you think is the biggest downside/shortcoming of the rezound?

Any other info you think may aid in my decision would also be welcome.

Thanks in advance for your help, I am having a hard time pulling the trigger on a the return and will give it a bit longer to see if the updates do anything significant (but I fear they will not). I can not deal with a phone that under performs in the most important areas no matter how much I like the secondary features, so I will most likely end up trading for the rezound.

 

[BlueBiker]

Nexus owner thinking about making the switch to Rezound due to signal issues. Have a couple questions that seem to be being debated

If you otherwise love the Nexus, you might consider exchanging for another one. It's unclear how widespread the problem actually is (esp. since VZW/Samsung deny any at all, grrrrr), but at least some owners have reported dramatically better connections after a swap.

How is the standard & extended batteries? Is there any truth to some of the posts I have seen floating around about the extended battery causing loss of signal strength?

Yeah, that's what I want to know also. I believe we now have three people confirming worse connections w/the extended, and I was going to do some extensive tests last night but didn't want to deal w/Verizon's persistent 4G outage.

What do you think is the biggest downside/shortcoming of the rezound?

The obvious one was the locked bootloader and consequent inability to ROM it, but HTC's kindly remedied that for us. We don't have ICS yet, but it'll most likely achieve production quality via CyanogenMod long before the official HTC edition.

Biggest remaining downside? There don't seem to be any major hardware or software problems, but personal preference plays a role. Some people like SAMOLED screens better than Rezound's LCD, and some consider the Rezound to be too thick. Some don't like Sense, but you can always load your favorite launcher.

Rezound is now enjoying some furious developer attention w/the newfound ROMability, but I can't imagine it'll ever have the huge dev community that Nexus already has. So maybe we'll end up w/five ROMs instead of twelve, IDK. I can live w/that.

 

[mangopositive]

I haven't done a comparison, but my signal has been fine with the extended battery. The antenna is painted black on the extended back, but other than that it should be identical to the standard back. 3G to 4G to wifi hand-offs have been fine, save for the Verizon-wide outages that have been going on.

 

[Nolesfan]

I haven't done a comparison, but my signal has been fine with the extended battery. The antenna is painted black on the extended back, but other than that it should be identical to the standard back. 3G to 4G to wifi hand-offs have been fine, save for the Verizon-wide outages that have been going on.

I've had the same experiences. No issues with signal at all and I go thru fringe areas on my way to/from work.

 

[schimm]

I've had the same experiences. No issues with signal at all and I go thru fringe areas on my way to/from work.

Similarly for me. Extended battery has been solid....but outtages recently have made a definitive observation on this problematic.

Compared to the Nexus, the Rezound gave me two things I didn't have with the other phone.....no uber signal drops to the negative 120dBm levels and fast battery drain. I know you don't want to see stats but in the real world your signal is lost the battery drain is on and your phone is useless. I live in a bad signal area so I need a very capable radio/antenna. Rezound has it the Nexus does not. I've been a bit spoiled owning only Moto devices which are known for their signal grabbing abilities.

Other notes. Wifi signal and DL speed is outstanding and better than my Moto devices. 4GLTE..... I live in the fringe 4gLTE area so I don't use it much but when I have I've been pleased with performance.

Screen is the best I've seen. Well, it should be given that it's resolution exceeds retina. Better than Nexus by a wide margin. No weird color anomolies when looking at white, especially with a dimmed screen. Small text resolution is incredible.

Sense is fast. I thought about how they managed to do this with seven screens. Well, many of their main widgets like Twitter/Facebook, Calendar and Stocks take up a full page and the font size is big. Bigger font size means less information to process. If you go to an aftermarket launcher and start loading up the android widgets you typically use in place of the Sense stock, you may run into studder. That's my surmise, no data to back that up.

The bad. The power button is too far recessed. It barely comes out of the case and you really need to develop a technique to turn it on to avoid knashing of teeth. That meant for me holding it with both hands and using my left index finger from behind to toggle the button. You'll want to demo this at the local Verizon store.

Beats Audio. I don't like ear buds. But otherwise they seem to function well. I don't like signal processing based on someone else's idea of what they like to do with the EQ curve. Pure marketing nonsense. Spinach IMO. But in the end, something minor as you can turn this off or if you use something like Power Amp, it is not available.

Sometimes it's easy to linger on Sense widgets too long to put you into widget edit mode. A bother sometimes.

After using hard buttons on my DX for so long I sometimes accidently find myself punching capacitive buttons I don't mean to touch. I suspect this is just a readjustment period I'm going through.

ICS vs. Gingerbread. Actually I miss only one thing in ICS. The ability to delete apps from the app drawer. One thing I don't miss with ICS....taking up valuable screen real estate with buttons and bars. That might be irrelevant to you.

Summary....Rezound is a beautiful phone with an excellent screen and mature hardware technology (read: antenna and radio) and software technology behind it. You won't feel like a guinea pig with another phone that we talk alot about here.

Disclosure. I've just had this thing since Monday so it's always possible something might pop up that will make me less complementary.

 

[TxGoat]

The biggest downside for me is that it doesn't look as elegant as say the Thunderbolt. I'd rather have the grey Thunderbolt plastic as opposed to the 1980s GM interior plastic. And the red accents look somewhat like dated 1990s Pontiacs. Other than that, the phone should serve everyone well.

 

[zbod]

Im coming from a Dinc. I wanted the nexus so bad but the lack of any good reviews on the nexus led me to get the rezound yesterday. I needed a new phone and forced myself to get the rezound because i was still loving the idea of the nexus. As I was checking out the verizon employees were all discussing how much they hate their nexus and all of the issues it has. I over hear them talking about how some of them were going to switch back to the rezound. This made me feel alot better about my decision. After the 4g network came back I was able to activate and use my rezound today. I now have no regrets. I love everything about it and so far the battery is new and im still getting more life then I ever had on my dinc.

 

[walkeru]

I had the nexus for a little over a week before I traded in for the rezound and I don't regret the swap one bit. With the rezound I've seen 36 hours from my standard battery. I wasnt using it much during that period but the point is that my nexus battery drained constantly whether being used or at idle but that's not so with my rezound. Ive compared download speed in several locations and the rezound consistently reached higher speeds. In fact when I was testing side by side I was at a store in a 3G only area and my nexus dropped to 1X while the rezound held 3G with no problem.

 

[backdoc77]

What do you think is the biggest downside/shortcoming of the rezound?

TBH I can't really think of any downsides except maybe what schimm mentioned above about the recessed power button being somewhat tricky to access with one hand. The battery life on the Rezound is outstanding. I'm getting more battery time than my old Eris. Almost 2 full days. I did prefer the SAMOLED display when I compared the Razr and Rezound side by side, but I don't even notice it now.
Great phone.

 

[jski711]

Rezound has been awesome. I have the extended battery and have noticed no difference in signal at all. Plus once we get ics I believe the phone will be even quicker and its already blazing fast. I have a hard time doing anything on my incredible and that's rooted and romed!

 

[trophynuts]

Have any nexus converts tested the rezound in areas where nexus was getting poor signal to see how big of difference there is? I dont care about bars, or dbms, or even speed test I am more concerned about real world use ... fringe area signal, 3g/4g hand off, faster downloads, better streaming media, etc ...



What do you think is the biggest downside/shortcoming of the rezound?

Any other info you think may aid in my decision would also be welcome.

i had the ReZound for 3 weeks prior to getting the G Nex. I have no regrets doing the swap to the Nexus. However i have some good input for you.

Yes the ReZound got better signal than my G Nex does. Hands down. Everywhere i go with my G Nex the RZ got a little better.

Battery life to me is much better on the RZ, but that is kind of misleading to me because your comparing two diff OS's which have different optimizations built into it. That would be like comparing gas mileage on a 2010 Ford F150 against a 2011 Ford F150 if the 2011 had a newer designed engine. However bottom line is the RZ is better right now in the battery dept.

As my first sense device the RZ met my needs really well. I really have no complaints of the UI at all.

I guess the only downfall would be the support community which isn't the RZ's fault. Also possibly the potential of growth for the two phones. The G Nex has the 1.2 Omap which is actually rated at 1.5 on TI's site. So when it gets OC'ed to 1.5 or probably even 1.7 its going to be blazing fast. The processor speed is heavily debatable for these two phones but IMO OMAP is faster than the Snapdragon....however the SnapDragon may be more efficient...hence the better battery life...



sorry for the book. lol

 

[Laramie8x8]

Really loving the battery life I'm getting with the extended battery.

 

[schimm]

I'm at 12 hours today at 50%..... That's good for me and my weak signal areas.

 

[BlueBiker]

Really loving the battery life I'm getting with the extended battery.

Me too, I love the freedom of not having to worry about when was the last time I charged it or whether I need to shut down apps or services to extract more time. I'll still carry the original battery & cover on trips, but don't expect to need them very often. Probably swap back and forth every month or so to keep them both charged/exercised.

I didn't expect to be bothered by the thicker back, and I'm not at all -- just wish the back were flat so it didn't rock slightly when placed on a hard surface.

 

[olbriar]

I didn't expect to be bothered by the thicker back, and I'm not at all -- just wish the back were flat so it didn't rock slightly when placed on a hard surface.

You might want to rethink your wish. I have the inductive back on my Rez and it too is thicker.. not so much as the extended battery cover but close. The inductive cover is flat and would fulfill your wish in design...
but, being flat it almost mutes the notifications when sitting on the desk or table. I think the original cover as well as the extended have a slight roundness to eliminate that problem. Just a thought.

 

[BlueBiker]

You might want to rethink your wish. I have the inductive back on my Rez and it too is thicker.. not so much as the extended battery cover but close. The inductive cover is flat and would fulfill your wish in design...
but, being flat it almost mutes the notifications when sitting on the desk or table. I think the original cover as well as the extended have a slight roundness to eliminate that problem. Just a thought.

You get a +5 Insightful for that one. You're right, the speaker hole is slightly lifted by the curve and I wouldn't want it muffled!

 

[olbriar]

It's my lone bitch about the inductive back. I find myself laying the phone across a pencil on my desk just so I can hear incoming when I'm not right at the desk. Sort of a bummer IMO.

 

[reimerj]

Nexus owner thinking about making the switch to Rezound due to signal issues. Have a couple questions that seem to be being debated

Have any nexus converts tested the rezound in areas where nexus was getting poor signal to see how big of difference there is? I dont care about bars, or dbms, or even speed test I am more concerned about real world use ... fringe area signal, 3g/4g hand off, faster downloads, better streaming media, etc ...

How is the standard & extended batteries? Is there any truth to some of the posts I have seen floating around about the extended battery causing loss of signal strength?

What do you think is the biggest downside/shortcoming of the rezound?

Any other info you think may aid in my decision would also be welcome.

Thanks in advance for your help, I am having a hard time pulling the trigger on a the return and will give it a bit longer to see if the updates do anything significant (but I fear they will not). I can not deal with a phone that under performs in the most important areas no matter how much I like the secondary features, so I will most likely end up trading for the rezound.

I feel the same way that you do. I had the Rezound before I switched to the Nexus and was able to make calls from our server room which is deep in the heart of our building. With the Nexus I could not connect yesterday and had to resort to running to the next room to use a landline. Extended my issue by about 40 minutes before it was done. I do think that the Nexus that I have is one free of most of the issues that I read about on the forums it is still nut the phone that the Rezound is!

reimerj