[bwhick7492]

Hello all,

I wanted to shed some light on this phone for some people so i will start first with the pros and go to the cons. Just for reference i am coming from a Galaxy s7 that i gave to my wife because she dropped her last phone in out pool.

The pros are many...
The first of which is the speakers. Dang Gina these are good. I say better than my old M8. I have had several friends comment on the sound quality of these bad boys. You will not need a bluetooth speaker with this phone.

The phone has not lagged on me at any point and has played all of the games and streamed video with no stutter.

The battery life has gotten me 5 hours of screen on time each day and has easily lasted me a work day. Great battery life.

The screen is not as good as the S7 but it looks great. Unless you are holding them up to one another (which i of course did) you can't tell a difference.

The fingerprint scanner has worked about 98% of the time with no issues and the location is much better that that of the S7.

The price and all of the extras you get are simply amazing. Good incipio case that i use at all times, tempered glass screen protector that was insanely easy to apply and a VR headset. All for 400 dollars (Or 350 if you preordered). Needless to say it is a phenomenal deal. I don't miss my S7 at all with the exception of wireless charging and night photos.

Now for the SO SO things about his phone.

The camera in the day is great nearly as good as the S7 but at night it is a whole new ball game. My outdoor shots of kids in the day are frame worthy but anything post daylight is going to be at best facebook post acceptable and that is at best. The front facing camera also takes good shots as well but nothing great like my friends note 7 that i played with yesterday.

The bad

As far as i can tell there is two bad things on the phone and it is driving me nuts. The first is the phone gets warm on hot days. As far as i can tell it has not affected the performance but the phone is noticeably warm in your hand. Yesterday was 92 degrees and the phone was warm bordering on hot. Today is a nice 70 degrees and the phone is great. I compared this phones heat to my wifes S7 with similar use and it was definitely much warmer. I then pulled out my backup phone (Honor 5x) out and it was the best of the bunch never feeling warm with Youtube streaming and pandora playing. (BTW what a great phone for 160 bucks people).

The 2nd is good luck on getting a case that is not made by incipio for this phone. So basically you have like 4 choices for this. I even checked Ebay and the had some cases but none of them had the fingerprint cut out.

So there you have it folks. This phone is great and offers a lot of things that would easily merit a purchase. However if night photos is something important to you or you live in Arizona maybe consider something else. If you have any further questions let me know and i will do my best to answer them. I am still in my return window and because of the very good battery life i am going to keep it despite the fact that it gets warm.

[skipatrol]

Agreed with everything above. With regard to the heat. It gets hot but it's nothing compared to my moto X so my perspective may be a bit different here haha. I can actually play games without turning the game off after 15 minutes because of heat.

A few things that I've noticed. Waves audio is awesome but I find myself turning it off when listening to music in the car. Waves with the external speakers put it head and shoulders above everything else. For me, the boom key doesn't always make the sound better when listening to music via a player (poweramp etc). The boom key seems to always enhance the audio when watching you tube videos however. I'd be curious as to what settings others are using. Speaking of the boom key, the weather effects on the home screen are awesome.

Regarding the accessories (cases etc) give it time. I ordered a holster / pouch thing already but hopefully more are on the way. Also hoping Amazon, best buy etc. start selling the 4s and they sell a ton. It's a damn good device.

[Mdbills484]

I found headphone audio quality to be better than average but not as good as my V10, therefore it went back.

I also had issues with the FPS accuracy and ergonomics and camera in low light.

It's an AWESOME budget phone but not a flagship replacement for someone that can afford a true flagship. IMHO

[dov1978]

I quite like the look of this phone but can anyone tell me if the lockscreen notifications/clock can be set to stay on permanently ie like Always On Display on the Galaxy s7 etc? All the videos I've seen only show it activation when you interact with the phone.

[skipatrol]

I quite like the look of this phone but can anyone tell me if the lockscreen notifications/clock can be set to stay on permanently ie like Always On Display on the Galaxy s7 etc? All the videos I've seen only show it activation when you interact with the phone.

I'll play with it to see but I don't believe so. Ambient display does work really well however.