Bionic First Impressions/Reviews

Cyber Warrior

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I really wanted to love this phone but its going back tomorrow. :(

What I like:
-Motorola always does a great job putting large batteries in their phones... battery life was pretty good as expected with a 1735mah battery... but nothing that my rooted/custom Bolt can't keep up with.
-Call quality was excellent... another + that Motorola is great with... speaker volume was decent for the small speaker they used for the phone.
-The phone is nice and light and feels good in the hand... probably the only thing that I did like about the phone.
-I like the Gorilla Glass and overall design of the phone. The screen is great in the sunlight.

What I didn't like:
-Although Blur wasn't so bad... I could not stand the blue gradient and blue color tones that they used throughout the phone. From the notification bar to the dialer to the menu options to all of the framework... it was plain ugly... nothing a custom ROM couldn't fix though. I really tried hard to try and like the dark blue colors but it was driving me crazy.
-The colors on the phone were not accurate. It seems any color that has a mix of yellow in it looked darker or brownish. Most noticible were the lime green, light orange and of course plain yellow.
-The pentile screen... its not even that its pixelated or jagged looking but the whole screen has this cross hatch to it which I can't stand looking at. It visually looks like there's some kind of bad connection. It does wonders for the battery life on a positive side. My screen percentage was only reaching about 27% of battery usage where on my Thunderbolt it would be in the 70s.
-The camera is a disappointment. Pictures were coming out grainy and it was having trouble auto focusing.

My first phone was a DroidX which i loved.. it was a great phone. The only thing i didnt like about it was that it didnt have capacitive buttons. I really thought the Bionic would be the overall package but it was pretty disappointing. This is just my opinion and im sure most people will love this phone so dont go deciding based on what i say. Go to the store and try one for yourself and make sure you like the phone. Overall the phone is quick... nothing too special but I'll be sticking with my Thunderbolt for now until something better comes along.
 

masterxchief

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I really wanted to love this phone but its going back tomorrow. :(

What I like:
-Motorola always does a great job putting large batteries in their phones... battery life was pretty good as expected with a 1735mah battery... but nothing that my rooted/custom Bolt can't keep up with.
-Call quality was excellent... another + that Motorola is great with... speaker volume was decent for the small speaker they used for the phone.
-The phone is nice and light and feels good in the hand... probably the only thing that I did like about the phone.
-I like the Gorilla Glass and overall design of the phone. The screen is great in the sunlight.

What I didn't like:
-Although Blur wasn't so bad... I could not stand the blue gradient and blue color tones that they used throughout the phone. From the notification bar to the dialer to the menu options to all of the framework... it was plain ugly... nothing a custom ROM couldn't fix though. I really tried hard to try and like the dark blue colors but it was driving me crazy.
-The colors on the phone were not accurate. It seems any color that has a mix of yellow in it looked darker or brownish. Most noticible were the lime green, light orange and of course plain yellow.
-The pentile screen... its not even that its pixelated or jagged looking but the whole screen has this cross hatch to it which I can't stand looking at. It visually looks like there's some kind of bad connection. It does wonders for the battery life on a positive side. My screen percentage was only reaching about 27% of battery usage where on my Thunderbolt it would be in the 70s.
-The camera is a disappointment. Pictures were coming out grainy and it was having trouble auto focusing.

My first phone was a DroidX which i loved.. it was a great phone. The only thing i didnt like about it was that it didnt have capacitive buttons. I really thought the Bionic would be the overall package but it was pretty disappointing. This is just my opinion and im sure most people will love this phone so dont go deciding based on what i say. Go to the store and try one for yourself and make sure you like the phone. Overall the phone is quick... nothing too special but I'll be sticking with my Thunderbolt for now until something better comes along.

Not interested in selling it? I want the phone but retail price is kinda nuts in CA with tax.
 

Will M.

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Liked it but Didn't love it..

Okay, so I just got back from my local Verizon Store and I was there playing with the Bionic for about 30minutes and overall I was a bit disappointed with the phone.

1) First the biggest letdown has to be the screen. There is absolutely no comparison between the Charge and the Bionic. The Charge screen is 10x better. Those who are saying that the Bionic screen is better or the same, must be trying to feel themselves feel better. Just put the Charge and the Bionic side by side at your local verizon store and you will clearly see the difference.

2) Everyone keeps saying how "fast" this phone is. I didn't find the phone to be THAT fast. Obviously if you are comparing this phone to the OG Droid than yes the Bionic is much faster! But I found the Bionic to be just as fast as the Charge and Revolution. I also found it a little "laggy" when opening up some apps. In Sum, the speed didn't blow me away.

3) Lastly, didn't really like the touchscreen. I believe the screen was too sensitive you could barely touch and something would pop up or be moved.

So with that being said, i think it is a solid phone, maybe I just had too high of expectations. I went into the store looking to purchase it but I decided to walk out and wait for next thing

just wanted to throw in my 2cents. have a nice day guys..

I completely agree with your statement! I just got back from the Verizon store with the Bionic and the Charge side by side. The first thing I noticed was the screen...The charge wins hands down. So I thought well I kind of new that going in so let me check the speed. I opened Youtube on both the Bionic and Charge and hit the same video and each time the Charge opened the file first. I thought this was a fluke so I opened app after app and opened different websites at the same time and repeatedly the Charge won. I have been waiting for a upgrade since July and it looks like I will continue to wait for the Nexus. It is a shame because I had money in hand ready to buy. The Verizon rep even told me that Bionic or Charge they are almost the same phone beside a mili second opening apps...The only thing that separates the Bionic and Charge is the Accessories that come with the Bionic.

Thanks,Will
 

wpwoodjr

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Some people are saying the camera software isn't that great. Since I don't have it quite yet..I can't test my theory that it's just the software. Obviously the hardware is there, so I think the camera software is just crap because Motorola doesn't care about the camera (well not complete garbage, but not quite as good as it could be). Can someone try out a new camera app? I've seen some on the marketplace that I saw paired with the Droid 3 that produced amazing pictures and had a lot more features, and even the auto settings produced better results than the stock Motorola app.

Try HDR Camera+ its amazing.
 
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wpwoodjr

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I completely agree with your statement! I just got back from the Verizon store with the Bionic and the Charge side by side. The first thing I noticed was the screen...The charge wins hands down. So I thought well I kind of new that going in so let me check the speed. I opened Youtube on both the Bionic and Charge and hit the same video and each time the Charge opened the file first. I thought this was a fluke so I opened app after app and opened different websites at the same time and repeatedly the Charge won. I have been waiting for a upgrade since July and it looks like I will continue to wait for the Nexus. It is a shame because I had money in hand ready to buy. The Verizon rep even told me that Bionic or Charge they are almost the same phone beside a mili second opening apps...The only thing that separates the Bionic and Charge is the Accessories that come with the Bionic.

Thanks,Will

The Charge gets bogged down very quickly when running multiple apps because it has very little RAM. The Bionic has 1gb RAM and 2 processors and I have yet to see it do a home screen redraw or anything like that, in fact I haven't seen the free memory go under 300mb yet.
 

KillerG

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Try HDR Camera+ its amazing.

I will be trying all these apps I've been hearing when I get Bionicfied, hopefully next week. I'm like $203 short because my mom borrowed $185 from me a few months ago and can't pay me back for like a month or two. I knew I should've kept my mouth shut and kept my money.
So I've seen Vignette and HDR Camera+ now.
 

1812dave

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I was happy to find the screen nicer than I expected, so I bought the Bionic this morning! :) It's plenty bright and sharp. Not sure why people don't like the Pentile screen, as the Bionic looks fine to my VERY PICKY eyes. The screen is very easy to see in direct sunlight. I don't like the screen on the Charge or the TB, or the LG Revolution and was expecting the Bionic to be another dud, screen-wise. glad to be wrong!

Call quality and speaker volume is as good as my Storm2 which surprised me as two family members have Moto Droids which both sound awful.



I'm concerned about reception: 4G and 3G both go in and out a lot, and the phone reception drops to one or no bars but I haven't yet lost a call. other phones in the same spot have 3-5 bars. the Bionic's indicator goes all over the place even without moving the phone. I hope that's more of an issue with erroneous indications that it is actual reception quality. I don't need to have another phone like I had years ago, that could barely receive a call at my home (that was also a Moto--a Star Tac).

I've only spoken to a few people via the phone and they all said my voice sounds clearer than with my BB. Yay. Sound quality on my end is also excellent.

Boot up time is a nice--under a minute, instead of the roughly 4 minutes of the BB.

The camera is ok, but video is a mixed bag, because it "breathes"--you can see the image swell and recede, due to focus hunting and I've found no way to prevent that.
 
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dhp106

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I completely agree with your statement! I just got back from the Verizon store with the Bionic and the Charge side by side. The first thing I noticed was the screen...The charge wins hands down. So I thought well I kind of new that going in so let me check the speed. I opened Youtube on both the Bionic and Charge and hit the same video and each time the Charge opened the file first. I thought this was a fluke so I opened app after app and opened different websites at the same time and repeatedly the Charge won. I have been waiting for a upgrade since July and it looks like I will continue to wait for the Nexus. It is a shame because I had money in hand ready to buy. The Verizon rep even told me that Bionic or Charge they are almost the same phone beside a mili second opening apps...The only thing that separates the Bionic and Charge is the Accessories that come with the Bionic.

Thanks,Will

If you never owned a charge you don't know how slow it is.

For everyone comparing the speed of phones at a store you are kidding yourselves. Use the phone for a few days. Load apps. Get real life value out if it. The bionic is crazy fast vs the charge. And my charge is going on craigslist.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk
 

Mooem

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I am loving the Bionic so far. Great call reception, amazing 4G speeds, little to no lag at all on the phone, and I love the form factor.

A couple of issues...the screen is going to take some time to get used to. It's not a problem so much for me but the pixelation is definitely noticeable. The camera is nothing spectacular. And lastly, I've been getting random reboots. Already did a factory reset but it happened again anyway. I've read about the Droid 3 wifi problem so I tried the solution to that. Hopefully it won't happen again otherwise this phone is going back for a swap out.
 

Yiannis

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The color depth of the screen appears to be 16 bits, not 24 bits (8 bits/color) like the DX. This causes visible banding in images with subtle shade gradations.

That would be really surprising, are you seeing banding in all shades of gray or just the shadows?
 

dbermanmd

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I went to the Big Red store across the street from my office in 4G Manhattan to take a test drive of the new long awaited and greatly anticipated Bionic - especially after reading the rave review of it on CNET the night prior.

The handset was well constructed and felt comfortable. The screen size was real good although i did not thing the quality of the display was anything to write home about. It was ok and was neither a + or a -.

The user interface was nice and not being a droid guy yet (still have my Storm 1) was not off putting to me at all. something i could get used to.

The internet speed was amazing,,, and i did not notice any real difference between it and my daughters TBolt or the other 4g devices there in the store.

I thought it is being priced a tad above what i would want to pay for a new device at this time.

In the end,,, as of now,,, i am going to stay on the side lines. There was nothing that bowled me over,,, that made me trade in my Storm 1 and play my 2 and new card still in my pocket.

My plan is make sure there are no big problems with the phone and that its battery life is acceptable. I am going to wait to see the iPhone 5 (if its not 4G its out of the running) and the next several dual core 4G droids.

Thank you everybody for your input here and personal experiences with the phone.

Best of luck to all.

David
 

Ram7730

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I am very happy with the phone so far. I understand why people complain about the screen but for my use it is good. Since I am coming from an OG Droid I am more than happy with the performance. I have had no lag at all even when loading up the home screens with widgets. I probably would not have gotten it if not for the deal at Costco because $300 for a phone is hard to swallow. I have rooted it and am in the process of transferring all of my data from my old phone which is a pain. I'm sure there is an easier way to do it but I'm not as knowledgeable as most on this site. Battery life seems pretty good although I do not have 4gLTE in my area so I'm sure that is part of the reason why it is good. All in all I would reccomend the phone to others especially if they are upgrading from a phone almost 2 years old as I was
 

2defmouze

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After a full day of playing I'm going to give my First impression review. I'd like to preface it by saying that coming from the BB Tour a) Most things about this phone are just awesome to me, lol.. and b) since I'm an android newbie, I might criticize something not really knowing if its a normal android issue/moto issue/bionic only issue.. know what I mean? So its a pure review. Also because I didn't read any of this thread prior to my post I haven't been influenced much. Here we go:

Aesthetics - Great.. slim, lightweight, very pretty phone to me. I have it in a silicone case so I don't see the body of the phone much anyway, but I do like it very much.
Screen - OMG!! PENTILE LOOKS SO BAD THE BATTERY BAR LOOKS TERRIBLE IF YOU HOLD IT HALF AN INCH FROM YOUR FACE!!! GRRRR!!.... Ok lol, in all seriousness I think the screen is pretty awesome. Colors are bright, sharp and accurate. Haven't tried looking at it in direct sunlight yet so I won't even speculate. When playing a game, I don't notice any shadow or tinting or graininess, at all. However I'm not so sure when watching video.. or maybe I should say streaming. I watched maybe 2 vids from websites, quickly tried netflix out just to see if it worked, and the NFL mobile app. All of those vids were less-than-stellar looking on the screen which disappointed me a little. However I believe I should test it some more to be sure. Haven't tried watching a HD vid yet, maybe I'll try streaming one from my PS3 later, then test something loaded on to the SD card for comparison.
Hardware - Um I guess this means how the hardware performs? Seems fine to me, very zippy swiping across screens, typing, loading games and web pages and all that. Dual core goodness. No hardware complaints.
Phone - including bluetooth & speakerphone usage - It amazes me that this is such an overlooked topic today with PHONES, lol. Anyway I was looking forward to getting a Motorola phone because they have great reception and phone parts and stuff... Bionic does NOT disappoint! Had a few calls yesterday and people sounded very very crisp and clear to me, no interference or tinny-ness at all. Speakerphone was loud and clear, and though I did not ask how I sounded to others whether over the headpiece or speaker, I got the impression they could hear me just fine. I also really like how the screen turns off as soon as you put the phone to your face and quickly lights up if you remove it to switch on the speaker or whatever. Have a bluetooth earpiece in my car that I have not yet tested with the phone so no comment on that.
Overall User Interface (including Motoblur) - Seems just fine so far to me. With my stated noobie-ness I'm not sure exactly whats an android thing and which things I'm seeing are blur-induced. Overall the experience is pretty smooth and intuitive for me.
Widgets - Trying to minimize my use of them because a) I know they can bog stuff down and b) honestly I played with them and there weren't many I felt I needed. I have the calendar and weather widgets on one home screen, google search on one, the Sticky Note on one (I like being able to jot down a quick note whenever I need to, had the left soft-key on my BB dedicated to bringing up the notepad), and Elixir toggles and a Flashlight widget I got from the amazon app store on the last. I personally don't see the need for that much more in widgets but YMMV. That said, I'm open to playing with some on the market and if anything gives me some great functionality I'll def be open to it.
Signal quality (Compared to other devices) Hard to give you a reliable one opinion here because I've been on wifi almost entirely since getting the phone. As I said, the phone antenna looks to be working great, and other reviews have talked about the signal from the 4G and 3G antennas.. so I won't comment on it until I know more. Wifi works like a charm though :)
GPS - Seems very quick and very accurate based on how I've seen it kick in for various apps and websites and for google maps. Have not used it for navigation yet but I'm anticipating good results based on what I've seen so far.
Social Networking - I HATE that I added my facebook and twitter accounts to the main interface at the start, because it just made my contacts list ridiculously bloated. I recommend against that. When I figured out what was going on I deleted those accounts from the My Accounts on the phone, and just downloaded the standalone Facebook and Twitter apps which work fine for me. If anyone knows how to easily remove all the imported stuff thats now stuck in my contact list, I would greatly appreciate a PM or something.
Email/Calendar - Email seems to be pushing to the phone as well as it did on the blackberry, and its definitely a LOT easier to read and sort through on android. Like night and day. Have 2 gmails, a hotmail, and a yahoo account that I use each for a different purpose and they all seem to be working fine.. although android has got me wishing I only used gmail accounts, lol, as I can already tell you definitely get the best options and syncing with gmail accounts. Might seriously look into consolidating my other ones to gmail eventually.
Battery Life - I charged fully when I got home with it yesterday. Over Wifi only, auto-brightness with maybe 20 minutes in phone calls and the rest of the time spent playing with the phone (literally.. didn't put it down) doing lots of tweaking/browsing/app installs and removals/ etc it was approximately 7-7.5 hours before I got the first "Warning" that my batt was down to I think like 15% and it wanted me to charge it, so I did. That's great in my book. Obviously may differ when I'm out in the world today using no wifi. We'll see. If I used my blackberry the way I used my bionic yesterday, it would have died in probably 3-4 hrs or so.. and overall my blackberry gets pretty darn good batt life.
Media (music, movies, DLNA) - I commented above how the jury is still out on Movies until I do more testing but so far results were not great (I don't plan to watch a ton of vid on the phone anyway, FWIW, and would more likely plug it into my 47" HDTV, which I'm looking forward to trying out whenever the cable I ordered gets here). Music plays fine on it. Also not a concern for me, I use my ipod for music. The only time I would need my phone for lots of music playing is if I didn't have my ipod on a drive and wanted to stream via the phone, in which case I would plug it into my car stereo using the headphone jack. I'm sure that would work fine. So you're opinion may vary based on how seriously you are with music on the phone. Using the Zumocast app there was a problem where the phone does not want to play mp3's that are located in my itunes music folder on the computer, however it DID play them if they were on a folder on my desktop, and streamed a movie from my desktop. Not sure why this is, but I'll spend some time trying to resolve it later on. If anyone has an idea about that would love a PM :)
Keyboard's - Been using only the stock multi-touch keyboard, not swype or anything else. Honestly I am still shocked at how quickly and easily I've been able to transition from the awesomeness of the blackberry keyboard... SHOCKED. I was afraid it would be a challenge but it took very little adjusting time to be able to type/text/enter fields' data/ whatever almost as quick as I do on the BB. Landscape mode def is easier for me, but I'm getting better at using it in portrait mode as well... and I'm sure with a bit more practice it will be like 2nd nature at this point. Very impressed.
Camera (both still & video) - Have only really just tested it, took like 2-3 pics and shot a quick 25 second video around the apartment. Seems very snappy and responsive. I thought shutter time would be quicker but its not anything to complain about, its pretty good. I like that theres a built-in panoramic picture option.. very cool. Again I only just tested it briefly, so someone else may be able to review the cam better.
How the Bionic compares to your previous smartphone (if applicable) - Ummm... it doesn't :) Can tell you I will never look back to blackberry.
Disappointments (if any) - Video watching seems grainy, although thats the only time the screen disappoints and I feel it deserves more testing to be sure. Honestly so far that's it. This is my initial review so I'm sure after some time I may find more to complain about, there's always something, right? Lol but honestly so far its been smooth sailing.

So that's my in depth initial review. Hope people find it helpful.. and if anyone can help with those little issues I mentioned I would love a PM on it. Thanks!

Feel free to provide as little or as much detail as possible, while trying to make it as useful as possible. Hopefully this will help others who are considering the Bionic, but would like to hear some user feedback first. Also, please do not review the Bionic prior to having one

And if you read a review that you found helpful, please use the Thanks button to show them your appreciation!
 

dbermanmd

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After a full day of playing I'm going to give my First impression review. I'd like to preface it by saying that coming from the BB Tour a) Most things about this phone are just awesome to me, lol.. and b) since I'm an android newbie, I might criticize something not really knowing if its a normal android issue/moto issue/bionic only issue.. know what I mean? So its a pure review. Also because I didn't read any of this thread prior to my post I haven't been influenced much. Here we go:
where you able to take the widgets off the phone?
 

leopard2lx

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I am very disappointed with the low resolution/quality images that Motorola used as part of the UI. The dialer background, gallery background etc...make everything look cheap. Even the widget glare looks bad until it stops and returns to default. Not sure if it's the screen or the images themselves, but needless to say they look like crap.
Also, the camera is a another bummer.
It looks like the Bionic is going back to Verizon soon.
 

dbermanmd

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How do you mean? If you mean just removing them if I don't like them, yeah its super easy to long press a widget and throw it up to the trash can.

yes,,, so you can remove them all if you so desire.

I was amazed at how much garbage was on the phone right out of the box.... i was hoping you could remove them all and just keep what you want there.
 

Pierpoint

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This is my first experience with this screen type and as it turns out, I'm not too hot on PenTile. I'm seeing what everyone has been complaining about. I'm coming from the AMOLED on the Incredible.
Now, to be fair, I'm pretty sure the AMOLED screen enhances colors a great deal, making a gorgeous display. For example, if I take a picture on the Incredible, it looks HOT on the phone, but when I xfer the file to my PC, the colors are definitely more washed out.
The screen is definitely grainy. You don't have to hold the phone inches from your face to tell. Turn up the brightness and it gets worse. On top of that, I don't believe it can render certain colors correctly. The yellow tiles in the Words with Friends app look faded, and brownish; like an old banana.

The phone performs like a beast though. I'm not sure if the display is worth it though. I have to hang on a week and see how much battery PenTile save before I can make a sound decision. I am, however, prepared to take it back and wait for the Prime.
 

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