Very unsatisfied with my new Marquee.

[jibby]

Has anyone picked up their new Spring LG Marquee yet?

So far I have been left very unhappy with the device. I understand this is not a "high-end" device.

My current rants (I suppose):

-It feels REALLY cheap. Almost as if Huawei had made the Samsung Focus.

-Network access speeds have been an absolute joke. I know sprint is not known for it's speedy 3G, but I still have yet to break .55mbps. I usually get around .80 - .90 down. - I AM however reaching speeds of .70 up?

-The screen is nice, but it's not worth buying the phone for. I guess I fell for the hype.

-The screen is very unresponsive. It does not register a large ammount of my inputs.

-Finally, battery life has been absurd. It's discharging faster than it is charging when I use it. I have never had that happen... I can't even begin to remember all of the android powered devices I have used, but so far.. not so good for the Marquee.


-On the plus side it was only 49.99 at Radio Shack. (29.99 online)

 

[niraj2000]

How does the Marquee compare to the Optimus Black. Does Optimus Black have the same issues which the poster just identified?

 

[dishe]

Has anyone picked up their new Spring LG Marquee yet?

So far I have been left very unhappy with the device. I understand this is not a "high-end" device.

My current rants (I suppose):

-It feels REALLY cheap. Almost as if Huawei had made the Samsung Focus.

-Network access speeds have been an absolute joke. I know sprint is not known for it's speedy 3G, but I still have yet to break .55mbps. I usually get around .80 - .90 down. - I AM however reaching speeds of .70 up?

-The screen is nice, but it's not worth buying the phone for. I guess I fell for the hype.

-The screen is very unresponsive. It does not register a large ammount of my inputs.

-Finally, battery life has been absurd. It's discharging faster than it is charging when I use it. I have never had that happen... I can't even begin to remember all of the android powered devices I have used, but so far.. not so good for the Marquee.


-On the plus side it was only 49.99 at Radio Shack. (29.99 online)

What phone are you comparing it to? Because the Optimus S was a cheap feeling phone at first (I totally expected the battery cover to break off by now) that was a total winner in performance in disguise as a low end phone.
Are you comparing it to the Incercept/Optimus/Zio class devices or the Evo/Epic/XPRT ones?

Also, those other issues seem bizarre and completely disappointing if true. Are you sure this isn't just during the provision/initial setup period? The devices tend to be sluggish and unresponsive the first time they are turned on as they build databases and caches, and the provisioning might even explain the lower data speeds- do you see the bandwidth indicator showing an usual amount of activity in the notification bar? You might be downloading system updates in the background, which would explain why your upload speed is higher than your download- the download bandwidth would be busy while the upload is not. Also every phone I've never owned needed to have their battery trained (charged 2-3 cycles) before any kind of normal battery life could be found.

Unfortunately, its too soon to know if you got a lemon or if others are like this- the phone is very difficult to get a hold of in many locations (and even preorder) due to availability problems and shipping delays. None of the 4 stores I checked in my area had one in stock (although one had a dummy unit on display), and said they wouldn't until next week.

Hopefully more people will get the phone and chime in soon. I hope they aren't all as bad as you make it sound, that would be terribly disappointing indeed!

 

[jibby]

I'm suprised to hear it is difficult to grab one! I just walked in and asked for one. They were not displayed yet, so that may have played a factor in it. I didn't even know what this was until right before I went to the store to get one. (All I knew was that I had read nice things about the Optimus Black, and that I liked my old Optimus S.)

I am comparing the phone in general to any previous android device I have owned, I've oned phones as "low-end" as the G1, and Zio and as "high-end" as the Motorola Atrix. I've also owned the Optimus S, which was actually one of my absolue favorites. "It just worked." -No frills, problems, and it seemed really well built.

I'm on day three of having horrid download speed right now, I've called sprint to see if there were any problems with the network and they didn't. They've "refreshed" my phone on the network, and still nothing.. in fact this morning I am doing worse averaging at .02mbps down. and .04 up.

The responsiveness of the screen is REALLY becoming a burden. Luckily the keyboard corrects simple mistakes, if it hadn't I'd be missing letters all over the place.

Another problem I have noticed is how "choppy" all movements seem to be. Transitions are not smooth at all.. and these should easily be smoothed out with a 1ghz processor.

I hate to get you all down on your new shipping devices, but I just thought I'd share.


-Some good points are the Camera, the resolution, the configurable button on the left hand side, and the really nice front facing camera.

EDIT:
I forgot to fill you in on the battery. -It too is still foolish, it has been off the charger, sitting on my desk for about an hour and 15 minutes and it's already down to 74%

-Maybe it is a lemon?

-Either way, I'm returning it today.. It's be dumb for me to keep this.

 

[dishe]

-Either way, I'm returning it today.. It's be dumb for me to keep this.

I wouldn't argue with you there.

I hope others have a more positive impression, I was really looking forward to this phone! The video hands-on reviews online don't seem to have the problems you are reporting.

 

[triggerhappy007]

I've had mine since Oct. 2, bought from Radio Shack also.

It does feel cheap and plasticy, but it's also very light.

Download speeds are 2090 Kb/s and upload 541 Kb/s using dslreports. It depends where you are so try at a different location.

I've not had any problems with any unresponsiveness. I mostly use Swype.

Battery life is average. Lost about 15% overnight (8 hrs) with GPS and data on. There must be something wrong with your phone or battery if it drains that fast.

These are the cons I've found with the phone:

1. No status LED at all. You can't tell if you've missed anything when the screen is off.

2. When making a call and typing in a name, it doesn't show any results. For instance, I want to call Matt, I would push 628, but the phone just enters the number.

 

[jibby]

It's be dumb... haha.


It would*


Calling something dumb while making myself look...well... dumb.


I'll keep you posted on how the exchange goes.

 

[dishe]

I've had mine since Oct. 2, bought from Radio Shack also.

It does feel cheap and plasticy, but it's also very light.

Download speeds are 2090 Kb/s and upload 541 Kb/s using dslreports. It depends where you are so try at a different location.

I've not had any problems with any unresponsiveness. I mostly use Swype.

Battery life is average. Lost about 15% overnight (8 hrs) with GPS and data on. There must be something wrong with your phone or battery if it drains that fast.

Whew! So glad to hear someone else is having a better experience!

These are the cons I've found with the phone:

1. No status LED at all. You can't tell if you've missed anything when the screen is off.

2. When making a call and typing in a name, it doesn't show any results. For instance, I want to call Matt, I would push 628, but the phone just enters the number.

1. Yes, the Optimus S did not have one either. An odd choice, but seems to be how they roll. I'd like to have them, but then again I once owned a phone that blinked so bright it could wake someone up in a dark room. After spending a bit of time figuring out a hack to disable notification lights on that phone, I think I can deal without it here.

2. That's the stock Android dialer. I would recommend installing and using TouchPal dialer. It dials as you are describing, and I love it on my S.

 

[jojocat#AC]

Anyone else notice that the cell reception for the marquee is not great?

I'm having battery issues that seem to point to weak cell signal. At home, it will often show zero bars, sometimes bouncing up to 2 or three, and somewhat rarely roaming to another network. My old Palm Pre would never really drop to zero bars, and didn't consume much power at all just sitting around.

"Cell Standby" ends up being about 50% in the battery usage listing.

I might be swapping out the phone before my 14 days is over. I went through some troubleshooting with support, network refresh, prl update etc, but not hopeful it will help.

Otherwise, really like this phone and people I've shown it to have been pretty impressed. I think the lightness is a good trade-off for the plastic feel, and overall the feel for me is very tight.

 

[bread22]

I've had mine since Oct. 2, bought from Radio Shack also.


These are the cons I've found with the phone:

1. No status LED at all. You can't tell if you've missed anything when the screen is off.

.

I am really surprised they do this again, the very con on Optimus S. What are LG thinking....

 

[sndplace]

Don't know if it will work for you but this use to happen to the Epic4G. Try switching to air plain mode once... then again after 15 secs see if this corrects your 50% standby.... If this works it will stay this way untill you reboot... goodluck

 

[jibby]

I returned mine to a different store than the one I bought mine from. They told me they had already had another come back with the same problems. That person just exchanged it for another. There was one left in the store, but I chose to go with something else. I went with the Evo 3D.. I am very happy with that decision.


The data speeds were killing me. I must have had a dud. My 3VO on 3G, is at 1.8mbps down. instead of .02mbps..

 

[jojocat#AC]

Don't know if it will work for you but this use to happen to the Epic4G. Try switching to air plain mode once... then again after 15 secs see if this corrects your 50% standby.... If this works it will stay this way untill you reboot... goodluck

Yeah, thanks but saw some mention of that fix for some battery issues but don't think it does anything for me. I'm trying it against a topped-off battery today again so we'll see. This phone does also get the "TWoS" or "time without signal" bug where it show super high percentage for time without signal in the cell standby statistics, although that bug is probably not affecting battery life.

I don't expect much - would just want to be able to get through a day on this phone with the minimal (like 0-15 minutes or so) of actual talk with some light smartphone usage. Don't seem right...

 

[dishe]

Yeah, thanks but saw some mention of that fix for some battery issues but don't think it does anything for me. I'm trying it against a topped-off battery today again so we'll see. This phone does also get the "TWoS" or "time without signal" bug where it show super high percentage for time without signal in the cell standby statistics, although that bug is probably not affecting battery life.

I don't expect much - would just want to be able to get through a day on this phone with the minimal (like 0-15 minutes or so) of actual talk with some light smartphone usage. Don't seem right...

Especially after the Optimus S's legendary battery life. LG had built up a solid rep for no frills solid smartphones with their Optimus line, and the Optimus Black has rave reviews in other parts of the world. This should be the same phone, so there must be something wrong with the CDMA radio that is messing things up here.
When the radio has trouble with signal, negotiating network towers eats up your battery fast. So there is likely a connection between the signal issues and battery. Some folks on the Sprint Users forum have reported similar behavior- that the phone seems to be searching for signal in places where other phones keep at least one bar. Or suddenly lose all bars and reconnect.

I'm hoping its a software bug and can be fixed with an update?

 

[jibby]

This sounds like it could be the problem, but mine frequently showed full bars.

-One think I did notice was that while running speed tests it would sometime connect to servers that were very very far from me... once one in Grand Rapids, Michigan (I'm in Chicago).. I'm not really sure how speed test works, but I would just force it to the closest server.

There is no way this phone was conneting to towers for signal that far, I know that.. But maybe the phone is having issues figuring out which towers to connect to. Could it be a location/gps problem? Like it knows it has signal, but geographically it didn't know where it was?

 

[jojocat#AC]

One think I did notice was that while running speed tests it would sometime connect to servers that were very very far from me... once one in Grand Rapids, Michigan (I'm in Chicago).. I'm not really sure how speed test works, but I would just force it to the closest server.

I think that's a red herring. The speed test is probably just choosing a server near where Sprints internal data network is connected to Internet backbone, and that could be very far away from your physical location. Doesn't really have anything to do with the towers.

Glad to hear you had full signal bars on yours frequently and hopeful my replacement is better. I've only seen full signal when I was outside and literally a stone's throw away from the tower. Although if it's a radio bug of some sort, it might not matter. Just polling to frequently or something could do it I imagine. Dang, early adopter syndrome...

 

[Clymber]

I bought the first one from my local Best Buy on Monday - they weren't even on the shelf yet. Coming from a Palm Pre, I'm impressed with both Android and this phone.

Data speeds are better than the Palm, with downloads at 974 kbps this morning ( I agree this is location dependent).

It does feel light, but solidly built. I don't think it has to be "heavy" to be a serious phone. Call quality is much better than on the Pre.

Battery life is questionable. I've been downloading so many apps that it's hard to tell how it would hold up through a day of regular use. I'll give it a couple of weeks then re-evaluate.

Overall, I like this phone. I'm definitely glad I made the upgrade. The Marquee looks sharp, is lightweight, and packed with features. Now if someone would just come out with a case...

Hope you find a phone that works for you.

 

[jibby]

I bought the first one from my local Best Buy on Monday - they weren't even on the shelf yet. Coming from a Palm Pre, I'm impressed with both Android and this phone.

Data speeds are better than the Palm, with downloads at 974 kbps this morning ( I agree this is location dependent).

It does feel light, but solidly built. I don't think it has to be "heavy" to be a serious phone. Call quality is much better than on the Pre.

Battery life is questionable. I've been downloading so many apps that it's hard to tell how it would hold up through a day of regular use. I'll give it a couple of weeks then re-evaluate.

Overall, I like this phone. I'm definitely glad I made the upgrade. The Marquee looks sharp, is lightweight, and packed with features. Now if someone would just come out with a case...

Hope you find a phone that works for you.

Won't cases for the optimus black fit?

 

[forsignup]

Totally agree " It's discharging faster than it is charging when I use it"

 

[forsignup]

I agree. The manual shows LED status at the front, but I've never seen them blinking.
"1. No status LED at all. You can't tell if you've missed anything when the screen is off."