This is probably going to be a bit redundant but here I go.
- A few of your complaints are more aesthetic ones, such as the Power button placement and the charger placement, though to be fair I don't like the charger placement either, despite never having to charge while in a call, due to the battery life as a previous poster mentioned.
- The connecting to a mac issue seems to be circumvented by you since you say you use bluetooth as a workaround, so that's good.
- As mentioned before, EV = 3G. Your area might not have 4G is all.
- Again, as mentioned before, perhaps your mic is busted, since calls on my phone and others' seem to be fine.
As for the later mentioned points;
We have different experiences on calls. The Admire sounded better on most calls, has the same or greater bars, and was consistent and more pleasing in audio quality. I've had substantially fewer dropped calls with the Admire than the this Motion. Perhaps I'll try a second Motion. Anyone here second that Motion ? j/k
I'd suggest trying a second one, since it sounds like yours might just have a busted mic is all. Dropped calls I wouldn't know much about, I never experience them but I'm also in a decent 4G area with great 3G as a fallback. Might be a location thing though that wouldn't explain why your admire had less drops.
Where I reside, the Motion is usually on EV, and the Admire stays on 3G.
EV is the same as 3G, so your Motion is on the same as your Admire, just the phones display it by different names.
My initial impressions of negative and positive on any product rarely change with extensive use. First impressions are often correct. Many times I've disagreed with CNet and Epinions, and sometimes even PhoneScoop. So I trust my own appraisals.
That's good, its a very good thing to make your own opinions on something after trying it out yourself, as someone from CNET might have different opinions from you, among other things. Though honestly most of your complaints about the phone have very little to do with the quality of the phone itself and more with personal preferences of button placement or being stuck in an area without good 4g.
The Galaxy looked nice, but I must have the side buttons for controlling stills and videos. Period. If the Galaxy had that, I'd buy it immediately. The Admire and Motion both have side buttons for the camera.
The Motion doesn't have a camera button from what I've used, it's an on-screen button sadly. I'd personally also love it to have a camera button ;_;
All in all you were obviously just stating your own quips about the phone, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just makes me a tad upset you'd judge the quality of the phone as a whole based on placement and a different label for the same connection (the EV vs 3G thing).
I hope you choose to try out another Motion for the call quality as to at least get a better idea of it, and perhaps spend time with the phone to maybe lighten up to it, but if you don't that's fine too, thanks for giving the phone a chance before judging it at least.