Bionic - GB or ICS?

[xcShane]

Hello all. I've been reading various posts here but haven't decided on what I should do. I currently have GB on my phone and have yet to update to ICS. Mainly because my phone will not "find" it. When I go to system updates, I just get the spinning wheel saying "Checking for available update, Please wait...". It'll stay like that until I quit it. I did call Verizon and they told me I needed to call Motorola. I have turned to here before doing that because I would like to get your opinions before I do a factory reset or anything like that.

What is the consensus on ICS vs. GB on the Bionic? Is it better the leave the Bionic on GB? One thing I don't want to sacrifice is too much battery life but I would like to have the new OS. And while I like the idea of rooting the phone, I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

System Version - 5.9.905.XT875
Android Version - 2.3.4

 

[Jon_Doh]

To me, there are too many negatives about the ICS upgrade, one of which is battery drain. A good solution for you would be to install the Holo Launcher. It will give you the ICS look along with most of its features and more. It's fast and doesn't impact the battery.

 

[xcShane]

Thank you for your input! Maybe not being able to receive ICS was a good thing then. I have no problem sticking with GB. I did install Halo Launcher and will have to play with it more. I was surprised I lost all my app shortcuts but I guess it's like a brand new system right?

Thanks again!

 

[Jon_Doh]

You didn't lose your shortcuts, they are still there if you disable the launcher. When you install any launcher you get a blank slate to set up your phone the way you like it. And with any launcher you can always disable it and go back to how things were.

 

[Ry]

Hello all. I've been reading various posts here but haven't decided on what I should do. I currently have GB on my phone and have yet to update to ICS. Mainly because my phone will not "find" it. When I go to system updates, I just get the spinning wheel saying "Checking for available update, Please wait...". It'll stay like that until I quit it. I did call Verizon and they told me I needed to call Motorola. I have turned to here before doing that because I would like to get your opinions before I do a factory reset or anything like that.

What is the consensus on ICS vs. GB on the Bionic? Is it better the leave the Bionic on GB? One thing I don't want to sacrifice is too much battery life but I would like to have the new OS. And while I like the idea of rooting the phone, I'm not sure I want to go down that road.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

System Version - 5.9.905.XT875
Android Version - 2.3.4

I'm glad I made upgraded from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich.

One big reason is Webtop 3.0. I own and use the Motorola Lapdock a lot. With Webtop essentially switching from being an app where you can run a Firefox browser next to your phone apps to a full blown non-touchscreen Android tablet, it's made me more productive when I use it.

Aesthetically, I love the lock of the MotoBlur ICS launcher and lockscreen over the MotoBlur Gingerbread launcher and lockscreen. I also find the Roboto font more pleasing than the previous Droid font Android used to use.

While some people have experienced slow-down and battery drain, I found that a factory reset worked well. I'm not afraid to start from scratch.

 

[xcShane]

Just to give an update, over the past couple of monts I tried a few launchers as suggested instead of doing a factory reset. I found the two I liked best were Go Launcher and Halo. It was going good for a while but the phone was slowing down and was unresponsive at times. This was driving me nuts. I don't believe it was because the launchers. But the data drops seemed to be getting more and more prevalent and this was driving me completely nuts. So I decided to do a factory reset so I could hopefully get ICS since I believe ICS was supposed to improve data connection. I figured I would just suck up the battery drain that I was mainly trying to avoid in the first place.

Well I've had ICS for a little over a week and all I can say is wow. Everything is much better. Including battery life. It's like a brand new phone. Even the touch responsiveness seems better. Now I'm sure a factory reset with any OS would help but I'm really enjoying ICS. But this brings me to a question. Should I upgrade to JB? The phone had already downloaded it but I keep ignoring the message. Has anyone experienced any negatives with JB on the Bionic?

So now my question would be ICS or JB?

Currently:
System Version - 6.7.246.XT875
Android Version - 4.0.4