24 hours with my new M8: first thoughts

dty06

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Well, I've had my One M8 for about 24 hours now, and here's my initial thoughts thus far:

1. Camera: this is actually a great camera. It's adapted very well to both low-light situations and high-light situations. A person sitting next to a bright window, for instance, came out very well. A flower at dusk also came out very well. I have no complaints so far with the camera.

2. OS/UI: I like the stock launcher, but I almost immediately replaced it with Nova. I love Nova so far. Very easy to use but has a kind of minimalist feel to it that I appreciate. Sense is closer to stock Android, but I like to try something new, and for me Nova is working very well.

3. Performance: No issues at all with performance. I had a software update as soon as I got the phone, which was downloaded (125MB) in about 2 minutes. It also installed in about 3 minutes. It shuts down almost instantly and turns back on so fast you could have it restart and not even notice. No lag, no performance problems whatsoever.

4. Battery life: This is the one area that I had expected a lot more than what I'm getting. It's not bad by any means, and I've currently had the screen on for 3+ straight hours and it's down to 36% battery (playing a fairly basic game called Game Dev Story) on top of some browsing and other things. A few phone calls, some texts, etc. Today is a lot more use than I would normally have, so it's not so terrible, but I had hoped for better battery life. I have no doubt it will get me through the day and then some with normal usage, though. So far, I'm either blind or my phone does not have the extreme battery saver mode. I'm on Verizon, which is probably why.

5. Build quality: This is flawless. No loose buttons at all. No glue coming undone under the screen. Nothing worth complaining about at all. It feels nice in the hand. It's not as slippery as I had thought it would be, and I'm going without a case for now because I want to enjoy this phone's natural beauty some more before I cover it.

6. Screen: This. Is. Amazing. That is all.

Overall: I absolutely love this phone. No regrets in my purchase whatsoever. Hopefully the battery life will improve as I play with it and when I eventually put a new ROM on there (thinking Clean ROM from a suggestion I got on here from buckifvr), so I'm not terribly worried about it right now. If anyone is on the fence about getting this phone, just do it! I felt the Galaxy S5 in my hand when I went to buy the phone and it just was not nearly as comfortable to hold. This phone is surprisingly light compared to my previous phone, and it's actually slimmer than I had thought it would be. Hardly feel it at all in my pocket, but coming from my previous phone, I could almost have an actual brick in my pocket and not notice it.

Could not be happier with this phone!
 

petvas72

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Enjoy your phone! About the battery life, it will get better. Just think that on the first day you use the device a lot, download stuff, things are happening on the background, etc.
I would suggest you give it some time.

What color did you get?
 

dty06

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Enjoy your phone! About the battery life, it will get better. Just think that on the first day you use the device a lot, download stuff, things are happening on the background, etc.
I would suggest you give it some time.

What color did you get?

I have the gunmetal grey.

I'm not too worried about the battery life. There's plenty of room for improvement, and I figure it will improve, especially after I put Clean ROM on it. I'm still downloading apps and getting it set up the way I want, so that obviously uses more battery life than I normally would. Normally I would mostly use it to play music at work and also through my car's bluetooth ability. That would be about 80% of its use every day.
 

dty06

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What's clean Rom like and what does it do?

Posted via Android Central App

Clean ROM is a ROM to put on your phone, which replaces the operating system. It's a cleaner version of android with more features and less bloatware (like carrier apps that you never use). I'm waiting for a couple of weeks before putting it on my phone because I want to make sure that everything works properly before I do something that will void my warranty.
 

darryjr

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When I first got my m8 the battery scared me a bit. It's been 2 weeks now and this past weekend I went 32 hrs with 7 hrs screen time. Moderate use with no battery saver and 2 email accounts pushing. That's better than I got with my g2 and that phone is known for stellar battery life.
Well, I've had my One M8 for about 24 hours now, and here's my initial thoughts thus far:

1. Camera: this is actually a great camera. It's adapted very well to both low-light situations and high-light situations. A person sitting next to a bright window, for instance, came out very well. A flower at dusk also came out very well. I have no complaints so far with the camera.

2. OS/UI: I like the stock launcher, but I almost immediately replaced it with Nova. I love Nova so far. Very easy to use but has a kind of minimalist feel to it that I appreciate. Sense is closer to stock Android, but I like to try something new, and for me Nova is working very well.

3. Performance: No issues at all with performance. I had a software update as soon as I got the phone, which was downloaded (125MB) in about 2 minutes. It also installed in about 3 minutes. It shuts down almost instantly and turns back on so fast you could have it restart and not even notice. No lag, no performance problems whatsoever.

4. Battery life: This is the one area that I had expected a lot more than what I'm getting. It's not bad by any means, and I've currently had the screen on for 3+ straight hours and it's down to 36% battery (playing a fairly basic game called Game Dev Story) on top of some browsing and other things. A few phone calls, some texts, etc. Today is a lot more use than I would normally have, so it's not so terrible, but I had hoped for better battery life. I have no doubt it will get me through the day and then some with normal usage, though. So far, I'm either blind or my phone does not have the extreme battery saver mode. I'm on Verizon, which is probably why.

5. Build quality: This is flawless. No loose buttons at all. No glue coming undone under the screen. Nothing worth complaining about at all. It feels nice in the hand. It's not as slippery as I had thought it would be, and I'm going without a case for now because I want to enjoy this phone's natural beauty some more before I cover it.

6. Screen: This. Is. Amazing. That is all.

Overall: I absolutely love this phone. No regrets in my purchase whatsoever. Hopefully the battery life will improve as I play with it and when I eventually put a new ROM on there (thinking Clean ROM from a suggestion I got on here from buckifvr), so I'm not terribly worried about it right now. If anyone is on the fence about getting this phone, just do it! I felt the Galaxy S5 in my hand when I went to buy the phone and it just was not nearly as comfortable to hold. This phone is surprisingly light compared to my previous phone, and it's actually slimmer than I had thought it would be. Hardly feel it at all in my pocket, but coming from my previous phone, I could almost have an actual brick in my pocket and not notice it.

Could not be happier with this phone!
 

dty06

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So that's rooting yeah?

Posted via Android Central App

It's more involved than that. There's a whole method to follow which I'm not totally familiar with. Definitely not even thinking of it until I am familiar with the process and until I'm confident there's no problems with the phone.
 

RobGG

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Well, I've had my One M8 for about 24 hours now, and here's my initial thoughts thus far:

1. Camera: this is actually a great camera. It's adapted very well to both low-light situations and high-light situations. A person sitting next to a bright window, for instance, came out very well. A flower at dusk also came out very well. I have no complaints so far with the camera.

2. OS/UI: I like the stock launcher, but I almost immediately replaced it with Nova. I love Nova so far. Very easy to use but has a kind of minimalist feel to it that I appreciate. Sense is closer to stock Android, but I like to try something new, and for me Nova is working very well.

3. Performance: No issues at all with performance. I had a software update as soon as I got the phone, which was downloaded (125MB) in about 2 minutes. It also installed in about 3 minutes. It shuts down almost instantly and turns back on so fast you could have it restart and not even notice. No lag, no performance problems whatsoever.

4. Battery life: This is the one area that I had expected a lot more than what I'm getting. It's not bad by any means, and I've currently had the screen on for 3+ straight hours and it's down to 36% battery (playing a fairly basic game called Game Dev Story) on top of some browsing and other things. A few phone calls, some texts, etc. Today is a lot more use than I would normally have, so it's not so terrible, but I had hoped for better battery life. I have no doubt it will get me through the day and then some with normal usage, though. So far, I'm either blind or my phone does not have the extreme battery saver mode. I'm on Verizon, which is probably why.

5. Build quality: This is flawless. No loose buttons at all. No glue coming undone under the screen. Nothing worth complaining about at all. It feels nice in the hand. It's not as slippery as I had thought it would be, and I'm going without a case for now because I want to enjoy this phone's natural beauty some more before I cover it.

6. Screen: This. Is. Amazing. That is all.

Overall: I absolutely love this phone. No regrets in my purchase whatsoever. Hopefully the battery life will improve as I play with it and when I eventually put a new ROM on there (thinking Clean ROM from a suggestion I got on here from buckifvr), so I'm not terribly worried about it right now. If anyone is on the fence about getting this phone, just do it! I felt the Galaxy S5 in my hand when I went to buy the phone and it just was not nearly as comfortable to hold. This phone is surprisingly light compared to my previous phone, and it's actually slimmer than I had thought it would be. Hardly feel it at all in my pocket, but coming from my previous phone, I could almost have an actual brick in my pocket and not notice it.

Could not be happier with this phone!

I agree with you, i'm a power user and expected much more from the battery. But im hoping to see improvements in a week or two like some people have experienced. Dont get me wrong, the battery seems ok i just had higher expectations.

Today was my third day with the phone, disconnected the phone at 8am and still had 20 percent of battery by 8pm, its not bad but just not impressive yet.

Another thing im having a hard time adjusting is using the keyboard, people have complained that now i take long to write back text messages, im coming from an iphone 5 and hardly had any issues regarding bad typing, but so far i find this android keyboard terrible, tomorrow im gonna buy another keyboard app from the google play store to see if i find a better one.

Let us know any more thoughts about your M8 in these days, will be fun to read since I kind of got it the same time, so we are on the same boat.
 

dty06

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I like the keyboard but I'm coming from another Android device, which is probably why. Swiftkey is a good one if you want a replacement.

Posted from my M8
 

lyriciss

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May 23, 2014
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I like the keyboard but I'm coming from another Android device, which is probably why. Swiftkey is a good one if you want a replacement.

Posted from my M8

I was coming from another Android phone and STILL hated that keyboard. SwiftKey is a win, though.
 

Relgoshan

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When I first got my m8 the battery scared me a bit. It's been 2 weeks now and this past weekend I went 32 hrs with 7 hrs screen time. Moderate use with no battery saver and 2 email accounts pushing. That's better than I got with my g2 and that phone is known for stellar battery life.

That's almost as good as my G Flex! Nice!

I was coming from another Android phone and STILL hated that keyboard. SwiftKey is a win, though.

I hope the M8 does not have the problem with Kit Kat and Swiftkey/Google Keyboard. Some people had to remove Swiftkey on other-brand devices after KK rolled on to them...
 

lyriciss

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I hope the M8 does not have the problem with Kit Kat and Swiftkey/Google Keyboard. Some people had to remove Swiftkey on other-brand devices after KK rolled on to them...

Nope, I have the One M8 and I'm currently using SwiftKey. Works like a charm, AND it transferred all of the remembered language and preferences from my past device to the M8 through the SwiftKey Cloud, so it immediately worked the way I wanted it to.
 

Kwesi Yasay

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When I first got my m8 the battery scared me a bit. It's been 2 weeks now and this past weekend I went 32 hrs with 7 hrs screen time. Moderate use with no battery saver and 2 email accounts pushing. That's better than I got with my g2 and that phone is known for stellar battery life.

It's been 3 weeks now and only half of your experience that i can get. I only get like 1-3 bars of signal

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using AC Forums mobile app
 

Relgoshan

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I use Swiftkey and have no issues with it.

Nope, I have the One M8 and I'm currently using SwiftKey. Works like a charm, AND it transferred all of the remembered language and preferences from my past device to the M8 through the SwiftKey Cloud, so it immediately worked the way I wanted it to.

That's great to hear, some people cannot live without Swiftkey.
 

RobGG

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Today (4th) day with the M8 i was very delighted to find the battery lasted longer than ever, been using it all day and i still have 30% left... so maybe it does get better huh ;)
 

mlee19841

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When I first got my m8 the battery scared me a bit. It's been 2 weeks now and this past weekend I went 32 hrs with 7 hrs screen time. Moderate use with no battery saver and 2 email accounts pushing. That's better than I got with my g2 and that phone is known for stellar battery life.

Damn that's good

Posted via Android Central App
 

mlee19841

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I agree with you, i'm a power user and expected much more from the battery. But im hoping to see improvements in a week or two like some people have experienced. Dont get me wrong, the battery seems ok i just had higher expectations.

Today was my third day with the phone, disconnected the phone at 8am and still had 20 percent of battery by 8pm, its not bad but just not impressive yet.

Another thing im having a hard time adjusting is using the keyboard, people have complained that now i take long to write back text messages, im coming from an iphone 5 and hardly had any issues regarding bad typing, but so far i find this android keyboard terrible, tomorrow im gonna buy another keyboard app from the google play store to see if i find a better one.

Let us know any more thoughts about your M8 in these days, will be fun to read since I kind of got it the same time, so we are on the same boat.

I came from a iPhone 5s. I switched to the Swype keyboard. Works wonderful.

Posted via Android Central App
 

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