They (verizon) assured potential purchasers that AC was going to be delivered to correct the simultaneous voice & data.
About battery life, the decision was made to put in the IMO overkill resolution display which is no big gain from 1080. and isn't that why they tout the massive battery with 48hr usage life?
To answer you, I want the flagship phone I purchased to be supported, not put aside as verizon concentrates on finding ways to get $'s pushing their next version of sliced bread.
Also some regulatory agency should be looking into all carriers claims of coverage. Right now every carrier claims to be the fastest with the most coverage
Yes, they did assure people of that, because that was the plan all along. Does it feel like a step back? Sure. Many times when switching technologies, there are temporary drawbacks to moving forward. Case in point, when they made the switch from analog to digital, there was an issue with cutting out. Analog may not have been as clear as digital, but in low signal areas, you simply heard static on the line. You could still hear what the person was saying in most cases, it just wasn't as clear. When digital came into being, instead of a bit of static, the person on the other end cut out completely, so you ended up with unintelligible conversation until the signal got better. We still have that issue to this day, and many people have said they preferred how it worked in analog.
Another issue is signal range. Analog CDMA could travel in some situations up to 50-60 miles. When they switched to digital that range became shorter, with 3G even shorter, and now with LTE it's shorter still. A level 2 tech I talked to put LTE's range at less that 20 miles. Now considering where we were, maybe we should've stayed with analog. But we also wouldn't have high speed data then either.
Yes, they could be put in a lower resolution screen, but I doubt that'd would be enough to overcome a 50% drop in battery life. When these tests were conducted, 1080p was just appearing in handsets. So while a screen with less resolution would've helped, the only thing that would've saved the Turbo was it's huge battery. But most smartphones don't have near the battery capacity of the Turbo or Maxx, so they would've ended up with battery life about the same or less than the 1st gen LTE smartphones. So they came upon this solution. The reason it affects Verizon so bad is that,as I said earlier LTE is a form of GSM. When you drop an LTE call on a GSM carrier, a handoff can be made. But since Verizon and Sprint use CDMA primarily, you're trying to switch between two different types of technology, and that means a dropped call. If you were to switch to a GSM carrier like AT&T or T-Mobile, you wouldn't have that issue, because one radio can handle both voice and data since they're more similar technologies than LTE and CDMA are.
So because others have updated their devices to a 5.0 version of Lollipop, they're more actively supporting their device than just skipping the issues in the earlier builds and going straight to 5.1 like the Turbo is doing? I have been through all the builds sent out to the Nexus series on my N7, and honestly I'm glad they waited to go to a far less buggy build than what they've previously put out. And as far as 5.1 goes, it's just now rolling out to the Nexus series, my N7 still hasn't received it. This rollout has been plagued with more issues than any previous version, but even still, phones are getting updated much faster than they were a few years ago. People always say that if you want quick updates, go with a Nexus device, but even those have been slow to rollout. The first update to my N7 was stopped because it was bricking devices. Fast updates are nice, but having a functioning phone after the update is more important IMHO. I'd rather get a stable build than be a guinea pig and have to go to a backup phone.
I agree, carrier's coverage maps aren't the most accurate. And if you are in an area that isn't covered like they show on the map, they will let you out of your contract at no cost. The problem is with the constant changes made to towers and technology, it'd be pretty hard to keep an accurate signal map, and I'm sure it'd also be expensive as well. And that money has to come from somewhere, guess where that is.