Impulse purchased a DNA. Mixed feelings.

osubeavs728

Well-known member
Jan 27, 2010
1,119
27
0
Visit site
I have to have expanded memory. That's ridiculous on HTC to short change a highend device. I am looking forward to March 28th when I get the Note2. I love HTC but I think the Note2 will meet my expectations.
Everyone has their needs in a device. There are no wrong choices. We pick what is best for us. Same with everything we buy. Respect everyone. Encourage
Help to learn without attitude. Be a team

sent from either my HTC Rezound or my Samsung Galaxy 10.1 tablet

If you have to wait until the end of March, I doubt you'll be getting a Note 2 haha As fast as technology moves I'm sure in another 4 months both the DNA and Note 2 will be long forgotten and replaced by the next big things. But we will see.
 

JHBThree

Well-known member
Feb 15, 2012
4,096
147
0
Visit site
I don't see how does having 1.1 gig of ram free on touchwiz is barely having free ram. That is more than what the Maxx HD has at its maximum. How much free ram do you have? 500? Guess what? We still double your ram.

Which means nothing. Actually, it's more detrimental to performance if you have a bunch of free ram.
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
Which means nothing. Actually, it's more detrimental to performance if you have a bunch of free ram.

Why would that be the case? Opportunity cost of doing something better with it, or is memory allocation really wonky in Android?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 

Wingznut

Well-known member
Feb 10, 2011
187
0
0
Visit site
Too much RAM is never a bad thing. The benchmarks which show it as a detriment are synthetic, and the difference is insignificant. Once we have software that utilizes the extra RAM (and we definitely will), then it'll be a huge difference in real performance.

What may be overkill today, is necessary tomorrow.
 

jamdmyers

Well-known member
Jan 26, 2011
359
1
0
Visit site
The just of this thread outside the baiting of a few is
DNA Battery - Seems this has been settled by the facts, good for most,
Storage (expanded) - People have not understood the options of OTG while not officially supported it works, just like a flash drive in your laptop/tablet
Speed/Screen - are excellent
But this phone isn't for everyone and it wasn't designed so but I think it has provoked some thought in the layman about preconceived concepts of Power consumption and processor memory efficiency to keep IO caching to a minimum, hence speed (ie if u use up RAM u must cache to IO)
 

Premium1

Trusted Member
Nov 7, 2011
3,532
266
0
Visit site
That is what I do when I get new phones. I do not keep them that long and usually sell them for about half of full retail and then it is like paying upgrade price without having to sign a contract
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
Further update: buyer's remorse is growing. Last night (in the middle of dinner out) the phone suddenly gave me a "PUK code locked" indication. Power-off reboot fixed the problem for a few minutes, then it reoccured several times. I visited the Verizon store, where the SIM was swapped out, which has seemingly cleared the problem.

However, I asked if it was possible that the contact between the phone and the sim (not at the contact point, but the solder of the connector to the board) was at fault and was given a not-very reassuring "we'll see". Which I think is code for "yeah. But maybe a new sim will fix it long enough for me to not have to deal with you tonight".

I'm leaning heavily to the DNA having been a mistake now. I'll give myself until friday (7 days in) to make the decision, but I think it's going to be a return (and at the same time I'll take the opportunity to jump ship from Verizon).

I'm also not sure if this is DNA specific but speedtests on LTE have been substantially below the T-Mobile HSPA+42 speedtest thread for the most part and moreover the downlink has been slower than the uplink, indicating capacity constraint and this being a single band device and Verizon being a single band (LTE) company has me really questioning the wisdom of staying with Verizon. Also the fact that I, being a complete idiot and perhaps not even sentient, gave up unlimited data to go with the shared data plan. It's a side note, but it's sort of important in that the decision to stay with the device and Verizon would be easier if I had unlimited data on it.

On the flip side, the underlying reason that I bought the phone (that being the display) is panning out well. The display is awesome.
 

bespinct

Well-known member
Apr 24, 2010
832
18
0
Visit site
I like your interpretation of "we'll see" but I don't give in store VZW reps that much credit. The folks in the stores around me probably wouldn't have understood what you said without a drawing.

I really like my decision to get the DNA, but it goes to show how there are "different strokes for different folks" and why choice is so important.

Enjoy playing through the end of the week and if you decide to return it, I hope the next device works out better for you.

Steve

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
I like your interpretation of "we'll see" but I don't give in store VZW reps that much credit. The folks in the stores around me probably wouldn't have understood what you said without a drawing.

I really like my decision to get the DNA, but it goes to show how there are "different strokes for different folks" and why choice is so important.

Enjoy playing through the end of the week and if you decide to return it, I hope the next device works out better for you.

Steve

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

The other factor is Verizon LTE has been dragging significantly lately, and a in-store spot check of an AT&T Galaxy Note II resulted in 42 mbps. Compare:
2012-11-20%2010.12.45.png
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
42 mbps??? That doesn't seem right. My wired FiOS only does 35 mbps.

The better tests early on in New York were better than 60 mbps.

You must have a low tier of fios, 100 mbps and higher are available. I've had better than 95 mbps on cablemodem when I was on the 105 mbps plan.

Sent from my Droid DNA
 

Wingznut

Well-known member
Feb 10, 2011
187
0
0
Visit site
The better tests early on in New York were better than 60 mbps.

You must have a low tier of fios, 100 mbps and higher are available. I've had better than 95 mbps on cablemodem when I was on the 105 mbps plan.

Sent from my Droid DNA
Oh, I definitely have a lower tier... But I too live in Portland, and I've never seen anything close to those kinds of speeds on 4G, on any carrier, even at their corporate store.

Sent from my Droid DNA using Tapatalk
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
Oh, I definitely have a lower tier... But I too live in Portland, and I've never seen anything close to those kinds of speeds on 4G, on any carrier, even at their corporate store.

Sent from my Droid DNA using Tapatalk

It was the display note 2 at Clackamas promenade's AT&T store. I'm sure it's still in the speedtest history. The speedtest app is on the one swipe to the left homescreen. There had been one test run before the one I ran, also about 40 mbps.

There are a number of examples of this in various YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bW2rlWmq7M&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Sent from my Droid DNA
 

jamdmyers

Well-known member
Jan 26, 2011
359
1
0
Visit site
Further update: buyer's remorse is growing. Last night (in the middle of dinner out) the phone suddenly gave me a "PUK code locked" indication. Power-off reboot fixed the problem for a few minutes, then it reoccured several times. I visited the Verizon store, where the SIM was swapped out, which has seemingly cleared the problem.
However, I asked if it was possible that the contact between the phone and the sim (not at the contact point, but the solder of the connector to the board) was at fault and was given a not-very reassuring "we'll see". Which I think is code for "yeah. But maybe a new sim will fix it long enough for me to not have to deal with you tonight".
I'm leaning heavily to the DNA having been a mistake now. I'll give myself until friday (7 days in) to make the decision, but I think it's going to be a return (and at the same time I'll take the opportunity to jump ship from Verizon).


On the flip side, the underlying reason that I bought the phone (that being the display) is panning out well. The display is awesome.

I think statements like these are somewhat unfounded, you speak of a potential assembly / quality issue and voice it which is all well and fine, my question is did you take the phone apart and examine said connections or is this just a SWAG? There is the potential you got a 'bad' phone, I'd gotten a bad car once. You might have had a defective SIM. I've read most threads on this phone here on AC and others and see no trend.. Have you done anything else to the phone besides load apps? (ie did you unlock your bootloader?) I too am looking for the 'dirt' on this phone, so far I haven't seen any one thing popup being in common in regards to quality / build / design (outside apps need mod for resolution, which is a pain)

I do agree of your speed test being disappointed, looks more like ATT (haha) than vZ but I'll try to post mine sometime soon. And I do agree with your last statement.
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
I think statements like these are somewhat unfounded, you speak of a potential assembly / quality issue and voice it which is all well and fine, my question is did you take the phone apart and examine said connections or is this just a SWAG? There is the potential you got a 'bad' phone, I'd gotten a bad car once. You might have had a defective SIM. I've read most threads on this phone here on AC and others and see no trend.. Have you done anything else to the phone besides load apps? (ie did you unlock your bootloader?) I too am looking for the 'dirt' on this phone, so far I haven't seen any one thing popup being in common in regards to quality / build / design (outside apps need mod for resolution, which is a pain)

I do agree of your speed test being disappointed, looks more like ATT (haha) than vZ but I'll try to post mine sometime soon. And I do agree with your last statement.

I posted on another thread here on AC which was specific to the no SIM issue. I think there were five or six posts which I haven't seen before for other phone launches this soon after the launch. Some of the other posts indicate that cleaning the SIM and reseating it fixes or makes the problem go away for a time. I had this thing happen before with a different phone in a different country for which I did take apart the phone trying to fix the problem. It was in that case a bad SIM sleeve and the leads connecting to the surface of the board. Just like in the other DNA thread, in that case reseating the SIM did temporarily fix the problem simply by providing just enough mechanical force to get the lead back into proper position relative to the sleeve, but any moderating jarring would again disconnect it (it would always happen when I ran with the phone). In was in the unfortunate position of having had the problem first happen in the US, going through a SIM replacement at the carrier store, and then a week later having it happen again and being talked into another SIM replacement rather than a device replacement, then thinking it was fixed deploying to Iraq for 10 months , during which the problem happened again within a couple weeks of arrival and device swaps are difficult to do in Iraq. So for several months I had to live with the annoying NO SIM indication until I got fed up and decided to try and fix it myself (we did have a servicable soldering station there).

I didn't take apart the DNA, but the behavior is remarkably similar to my past experience and my question to the Verizon person was half hoping that he would offer to swap the device as well as the SIM , which would have just about zeroed the chance that it would happen again. I also was saying that in hopes of him commenting on the problem having occurred on other DNA phones or having him come down firmly on it being the SIM.

Sent from my Droid DNA
 

jamdmyers

Well-known member
Jan 26, 2011
359
1
0
Visit site
Thanks for Standing on the Front lines.. gotcha perhaps a simple tap test would be sufficient, if it's bad connection just sit there tapping the top right corner on the table/desk and it'll show up.. something you could even do in the vZ store to convince them for a replacement .. good luck
 

anon62607

Well-known member
Sep 23, 2010
436
27
0
Visit site
Thanks for Standing on the Front lines.. gotcha perhaps a simple tap test would be sufficient, if it's bad connection just sit there tapping the top right corner on the table/desk and it'll show up.. something you could even do in the vZ store to convince them for a replacement .. good luck

I was there as a civilian. Aside from the occasional mortar attack it wasnt a front line thing.

I did try the tap test, which made it go from puk locked to no sim once. No effect after that.
 

Markster1

Well-known member
Aug 17, 2011
524
0
0
Visit site
I did lose the SIM twice but I looked at it and it was up a fudge and since I've seated it all the way down no more problems.

The Nottinator