I live in Miami and have been getting 2 bars of LTE, and yes, it's fast? I'm coming from a Storm, so anything is going to be fast to me. It loads up webpages with the pictures as fast my home internet. When I got it at 9, the battery was only half. I didn't use it that heavily. I'm sure most people here used it more me. At this point, I'm not that disappointed with the battery life, but we all knew it wasn't going to have great battery life. But then again, it wasn't a full charge to begin with. I'm charging it right now, so I'll have a much more accurate idea of battery life tomorrow or late tonight. So far, I'm very impressed with just about everything with this phone, except for the battery life, but, like I said, it's too early for me to have a good idea of what it's actually like.