Phone decisions

[Wired03]

AC,

Hello everyone, I have a bit of a dilemma. My wife and I have been up for an upgrade for about 6 months now. We are currently STILL rocking the Sprint HTC Hero. I know oldie, but I am ready for an upgrade. I have been waiting for the EVO4GLTE and S3 to drop. Now that they are here I was torn between both of them.

Both phones have their pluses and minuses. I feel that I like the EVO would be a better phone as 2GB of ram probably won’t matter for me and what I do. I am not a super heavy user. I am a geek and I love to tinker, but I have not had a phone that I really cared about tinkering with before. So I don't have a lot of experience, but I am sure I won't have any problems doing it.

I think the biggest thing for me is to have as pure of a google experience as possible. I also love having regular updates, so that bring the Nexus into the picture. I love the JB changes. How good is the modding for the EVO and S3? I have been doing some research on CM and CM10 is going to be JB. I am not sure how long that will take to come out though. I guess my question is, How close is CM to a stock android experience? If I can get the S3 and install CM10 and get a fairly stock experience that would probably be the way I would RATHER go.

Also, how much better is the EVO and S3 over the GNexus?

Sorry for the wall of text. I have been back and forth on which phone to get probably 100 times now.

 

[kbp08tls]

Go EVO! (but I am a little bit biased...)

First off, EVO or S3 are going to blow away the GNEX as far as hardware is concerned. You're going to have a much more future-proof base with either one.

If you're going for the stock android experience, you're probably going to be flashing something like CM9. So that takes any TW vs. Sense out of the discussion. Developer support for the EVO is through the roof over at XDA. There are already numerous ROMs available, and CM9 is extremely close to being fully ported. Rooting and unlocking the EVO are also extremely easy - a one-click method is already available. I suspect the S3 will be getting tons of support as well due to it's popularity and similarity across carriers. CM9 is basically stock ICS. You would be hard-pressed to find any differences between a phone running un-modded CM9 versus a stock GNEX as far as the UI goes. What CM9 brings to the table is a lot of tweaking/customization options, as well as the support of the dev community. You will see updates to CM long before any OEMs/carriers get anything out. I can't comment on JB ROMs yet, and I'm sure we're a few months out from a full-blown CM10.

So, S3 or EVO? That depends on your personal preference. S3 gives you a little more potential total storage and a removable battery. I personally have zero issues with EVO battery life, and I'm a fairly heavy user. Specs are a wash - they run the exact same chip-set. Go to a Sprint store and check them out side-by-side. Pay more attention to which form factor you prefer and which display technology looks better to your eye, and which one feels better in hand if you tend to go caseless. I'd dismiss if one or the other is glitchy or laggy - display units are notorious for being used/abused. If you're rooting/modding, the HTC multi-tasking is a non-issue.

Good Luck!

 

[Wired03]

Awesome. That is a lot of information that I wanted.

I really like JB and the Google Now stuff. I am not going to lie, with S-Voice, I have to worry about what samsung is going to gut out of JB.

Thank you for the information, You definitely killed off the GNexus for me. I pretty much knew no matter evo or s3 I was probably going to be rooting/roming the device, but I was worried that I might lose things like Google Now stuff.

So, I do plan on getting a case, probably a barely there type case as I normally go naked. The build quality is what makes me worry about the S3, but with a case that is a non-issue. I really LIKE the HTC, I like the menu buttons at the bottom and I hate that the S3 has a menu button instead of a multi-task button.

I am worried that with all the bad things that just came out on HTC with sales and how popular and standardized the S3 is, it might be a better choice for modding.

Again, TY for the information. I plan on heading to a Sprint store next week.