Bionic First Impressions/Reviews

[EnergyPlus]

I spent many hours comparing the screens of the Bionic and the Charge. I WANTED to like the Charge more..SAMOLED after all! Bug, in the end, I couldn't. I am a professional photographer and after decades of critical evaluation of images, the artificial saturation of the Charge, coupled with a horrible greenish tint (I looked at about six different Charges, they were all.similar), I opted for the Bionic. It's not the best screen, but better than the over-saturated, gree.-tinged screen of the Charge. Rhat, and the processor and a few other features, cemented the xeal.

Battery life isn't great and today I bought the Extended battery, so now I am pretty happy!

I just got mine today and have to say it is a nice phone. Can't say I have really loved a phone since my Star-Tac, I know, but I loved that phone for some reason to the point Verizon wouldn't fix it anymore and made me upgrade LOL, anyway I digress.

I'm coming off the Droid X by necessity not choice, dropped it once too many times. My X was a good solid phone and the first phone I had that I could really do all I wanted to on the internet, because of the large screen and it's performance.

The Bionic is a good upgrade and like some of the reviews call it a Droid X3. It's more refined, faster, better battery life (so far) and despite the debate I think it has a very nice screen. Yes I compared it to the Charge in the store and yes the Charge's screen is more vivid but I found the Charge's screen almost too bright. It's crisper than my X and I find it very nice.

Speed is noticeably faster, I did side by side in the store with my X and had about a 15/20 second difference.

The build quality of the Bionic is equal to my X, I can't find anything to say it is better/worse.

Functionality is nice can't say it is all that much different than the X. I do like not having actual buttons on the bottom, they annoyed me.

The power button is awkward for some reason but not ruining my life.

So in conclusion I can still make calls, do wireless hot spot, send text messages, and surf the net but it's a little quicker now and looks a little different. If my X was still working I would be hard to justify the 300.00 price tag beside the fact it's the newer phone.

If you have a little extra coin laying around and want a new toy go for it.

 

[KillerG]

And as a follow up to my first impressions from thursday...I still love this thing. But there are some things I don't love. And I may have a defective model too...so first off my battery life is less than stellar. Actually it's a lot less than most people are reporting, I got like 5 hours out of it the first day; it died at lunch. That wasn't fun, so when I got it home I only had time to charge it up to 40%, then went to dinner and dropped it back to 5% in a few hours. Might be a battery conditioning problem, as it is a new phone and I should have conditioned the battery charges better the first couple times, but I'll give it a few more days to see what happens. I'm going to at night now get it to 10% and turn it off and charge it to 100%.
Now comes something that makes me think this phone is defective. So I've stated it in my actual thread, but my screen freaks out randomly at times. So what it does is it thinks I'm touching it in different places. An example is on my keyboard...I'll go to type a word like "the" and I'll touch "t" and it'll type out a bunch of other stuff and it will end up saying "tdpspsyy" and since I have Swype on, it'll convert that to something very strange. And then I hit the backspace and it starts typing "vvvvvvv" over and over. It's not just the keyboard either, I'll be trying to scroll on the browser and as I'm scrolling down, it'll freak out and start scrolling all over the place. If anyone has any ideas to why that's happening, head over to my "Strange Bionic Happenings" thread and tell me if I should just take this thing back and get a replacement. I truly do think at this point that I should have better battery life, and my screen should not freak out like this. And yes, that screen problem was happening before I rooted it too, so that's not the issue.

 

[Droid800]

And as a follow up to my first impressions from thursday...I still love this thing. But there are some things I don't love. And I may have a defective model too...so first off my battery life is less than stellar. Actually it's a lot less than most people are reporting, I got like 5 hours out of it the first day; it died at lunch. That wasn't fun, so when I got it home I only had time to charge it up to 40%, then went to dinner and dropped it back to 5% in a few hours. Might be a battery conditioning problem, as it is a new phone and I should have conditioned the battery charges better the first couple times, but I'll give it a few more days to see what happens. I'm going to at night now get it to 10% and turn it off and charge it to 100%.
Now comes something that makes me think this phone is defective. So I've stated it in my actual thread, but my screen freaks out randomly at times. So what it does is it thinks I'm touching it in different places. An example is on my keyboard...I'll go to type a word like "the" and I'll touch "t" and it'll type out a bunch of other stuff and it will end up saying "tdpspsyy" and since I have Swype on, it'll convert that to something very strange. And then I hit the backspace and it starts typing "vvvvvvv" over and over. It's not just the keyboard either, I'll be trying to scroll on the browser and as I'm scrolling down, it'll freak out and start scrolling all over the place. If anyone has any ideas to why that's happening, head over to my "Strange Bionic Happenings" thread and tell me if I should just take this thing back and get a replacement. I truly do think at this point that I should have better battery life, and my screen should not freak out like this. And yes, that screen problem was happening before I rooted it too, so that's not the issue.

Do you have any apps that are running constantly in the background, like task killers etc?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[KillerG]

Do you have any apps that are running constantly in the background, like task killers etc?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I have Advanced task killer, but it doesn't seem to make my battery life any better or worse. I'm usually running Onavo though, it tracks my data usage, but is very light on the battery. Also I said I was running Juice Defender, which is always running as well. I think I'll go through my apps that are usually running (I think there are some that just turn on for no reason) and uninstall them for a day and see how my battery life reacts.

 

[bplewis24]

I don't have a task killer nor juice defender and I get the same battery results that killer does.

Brandon

 

[KillerG]

I don't have a task killer nor juice defender and I get the same battery results that killer does.

Brandon

I got about 7 hours or so today...and I left the 4G radio on when the screen is on.

 

[lloydsboy]

Menu>Wireless & Networks>Mobile Networks>Data Roami....

Wait a second. What the hell? The Data Roaming options aren't there!

This is what it should look like (and does look like on my Droid 1): How to Toggle Data Roaming on Your Android Mobile Device (Mobile))

D1:

But on the Bionic, Verizon must have removed this option:

Man that's annoying. Can't wait til some ROMs start popping up for this thing.

Brandon

I had ALL THE OPTIONS CHECKED, however once on the EXTENDED NETWORK the Bionic gave the message-NO DATA CONNECTIVITY. All was good however once I got to either a 3 or 4 G area. Called Verizon, they said they would fill out a report. They seemed concerned, which is reassuring since the Bionic is a great phone when you are in 3 or 4G areas.

 

[SoCalFlasher]

First impressions - Feels like a nice phone. Good build quality, feels like solid construction. Looks pretty nice too. It is thinner than I thought it would be from pictures people have posted online. Seems to be about the same size as the droid charge, but a little bit thinner. It's definitely quick. Scrolling through screens, opening apps, etc all happen immediately with no noticeable lag.

Can't speak to battery life yet, but I have the worst experience with batteries in my office building. I have very intermittent service so my phones are constantly trying to establish a connection as the service wafts in and out. So far I've gotten an hour and a half on 20% battery life with pretty minimal use. So I would say that is actually pretty good by comparison given my circumstances. As a comparison, the droid charge which I was using previously yesterday went from fully charged at 8AM, to 8% remaining by 12PM. So only roughly 4 hours maybe 4.5 hours for a full charge, so the bionic would give me 7.5 hours at the rate it is currently going so nearly double.

The vibration seems strong. I don't think I will have any issues with feeling a notification vibrate in my pocket with this thing.

Notification light is pretty small, but I find it to be much more visible and easier to see from different angles than the notification light on the HTC Thunderbolt.

The screen - I know it's a big sticking point for many and there are many strongly opinioned people regarding pentile displays. Much to my disappointment...I do notice the pentile nature of the display and I'm not a huge fan. Everything does sort of have a pixely nature to it and like there's a very fine crosshatch mark over everything. Things that are supposed to be white are kind of white and maybe a little grey looking. It's worse when I move the device around a bit. I find that if I look at it without moving it then some of what I'm seeing as crosshatching fades away, but as soon as I start to move it I notice it again. Things that are colored look worse - so like the phone icon is green, but to my eye it looks like green pixel alternated with a black/grey pixel repeated over and over so that I can see almost a checkerboard pattern. Yes it reads "Green" to me, but it's definitely not just flat green. I am also not an eagle-eye or anything like that, just my observation.

With all that said- It's not a killer for me. I value performance first and so far this device performs! I'm also coming from a droid charge which I think has a great screen. I definitely miss the deep, true black rendering of the charge which made it difficult for me to see where the bezel ended and the screen began.

All in all I think it is a worthwhile device with a lot of power. I'm sure as I break it in a bit it will continue to get better and I can only imagine how speedy it will be once the developer community tinkers with it some more.

I agree with this entire break down. I do notice the pentile display that most have been complaining about, bu the performance of the phone overshadows that. I upgraded from a Dx1 and the OS speed is like night and day.....and 4G is freaking awesome!

I am definitely a power user so an extended battery is a must. If you're on the fence definitley go in and play with one (That's what she said.....lol)

 

[jimdibb]

About the roaming settings. The roaming settings are enabled when CDMA only is selected under "Network Mode". I'm not sure why they're not valid when CMDA/LTE is selected.

 

[wpwoodjr]

I spent many hours comparing the screens of the Bionic and the Charge. I WANTED to like the Charge more..SAMOLED after all! Bug, in the end, I couldn't. I am a professional photographer and after decades of critical evaluation of images, the artificial saturation of the Charge, coupled with a horrible greenish tint (I looked at about six different Charges, they were all.similar), I opted for the Bionic. It's not the best screen, but better than the over-saturated, gree.-tinged screen of the Charge. Rhat, and the processor and a few other features, cemented the xeal.

Battery life isn't great and today I bought the Extended battery, so now I am pretty happy!

I agree about the SAMOLED screens. I haven't seen one I liked. The white point is way off and changes when you change the screen brightness. The highly saturated colors are initially appealing but also way too intense.

 

[wpwoodjr]

Now comes something that makes me think this phone is defective. So I've stated it in my actual thread, but my screen freaks out randomly at times. So what it does is it thinks I'm touching it in different places. An example is on my keyboard...I'll go to type a word like "the" and I'll touch "t" and it'll type out a bunch of other stuff and it will end up saying "tdpspsyy" and since I have Swype on, it'll convert that to something very strange. And then I hit the backspace and it starts typing "vvvvvvv" over and over. It's not just the keyboard either, I'll be trying to scroll on the browser and as I'm scrolling down, it'll freak out and start scrolling all over the place. If anyone has any ideas to why that's happening, head over to my "Strange Bionic Happenings" thread and tell me if I should just take this thing back and get a replacement. I truly do think at this point that I should have better battery life, and my screen should not freak out like this. And yes, that screen problem was happening before I rooted it too, so that's not the issue.

I'd exchange it. Mine has never done that.

 

[Andy847]

I'm not able to get a Bionic, since my upgrade is not due til 8/2012. I just went to the store to check out the Bionic and I have to say after reading so many people's comments on here, wasn't expecting much. I have a droid X and I've been waiting for the Bionic for a long time to see what it had to offer.
I don't see what all the people are saying about the pixellation on the screen, but do notice a yellowish color or hue to the screen when compared next to my X. I like the X's screen better for sure. Still Bionics screen was nice. I tried the camera and thought it took good pics, just took a few seconds for the shutter to go. It was fast! I didn't get a chance to see how fast compared to my X.
Played with it for about 10 minutes just checking out the apps and stuff. Man SOOOO Many Apps, Too Many if you ask me. All in all I liked the phone, but I think $299 is way too much for it. I don't think the phone justifies the price. Hopefully verizon will not start charging that price for all the new 4g phones. I'm hoping when my upgrade is due, that there are some nice phones available.

 

[SnydersWeb]

Now comes something that makes me think this phone is defective. So I've stated it in my actual thread, but my screen freaks out randomly at times. So what it does is it thinks I'm touching it in different places. An example is on my keyboard...I'll go to type a word like "the" and I'll touch "t" and it'll type out a bunch of other stuff and it will end up saying "tdpspsyy" and since I have Swype on, it'll convert that to something very strange. And then I hit the backspace and it starts typing "vvvvvvv" over and over. It's not just the keyboard either, I'll be trying to scroll on the browser and as I'm scrolling down, it'll freak out and start scrolling all over the place. If anyone has any ideas to why that's happening, head over to my "Strange Bionic Happenings" thread and tell me if I should just take this thing back and get a replacement. I truly do think at this point that I should have better battery life, and my screen should not freak out like this. And yes, that screen problem was happening before I rooted it too, so that's not the issue.

Hmm, I've had similar occurrences but only when I'm plugged into the Charging/Standard dock. As soon as it's not plugged in, it works just fine. Overall I've attributed it to a periodic quirk.. yeah, it's a pretty darn annoying one but not a "show stopper".

 

[bplewis24]

One of the only things I don't like about how the phone performs is when using voice input for texts and voice actions. I think this has to do with the keyboard Moto uses vs the stock GB keyboard on the D1. But when I input a voice action for texts/emails/chatting, the auto-correct with the Bionic keyboard isn't nearly as intuitive as the auto-correct for the stock GB keyboard on my D1. For example, I say "I love it" and let's say the Bionic hears "Eye dove sit". The Bionic's auto-correct will only suggest words that start with "e" for eye and "d" for dove. But the D1 would suggest "I" for "Eye" and "love" for "dove" since they sound the same.

The keyboard is much better for typing, but the auto-correct isn't as intuitive.

Brandon

 

[Syounger64]

I wish ppl would quit harping about the $299 price when amazon wireless offers much lower prices and I bought mine directly from Verizon for 249. Its worth every penny at that price or less. I def think its one of the best phones on the market. I don't get that "too late too little" trolling which doesnt even make much sense when you're babbling about unreleased phones with rumored specs. Enough already.

 

[corymcnutt]

I'm surprised this topic has only made it to 18 pages...Either they didn't sell that many Bionics, we are all still playing with them, or we aren't having too many issues to report? I am loving mine...I wonder what the sales figures will be like?

 

[joelmic24]

I love mine so far. Only problem is the battery life.

 

[pauldroidr2d2]

I like my Bionic.

 

[Johnly]

This phone makes me happy. It is just so darn good! Pricey though.

 

[dsan79]

I wish ppl would quit harping about the $299 price when amazon wireless offers much lower prices and I bought mine directly from Verizon for 249. Its worth every penny at that price or less. I def think its one of the best phones on the market. I don't get that "too late too little" trolling which doesnt even make much sense when you're babbling about unreleased phones with rumored specs. Enough already.

Amazon Wireless for sure. Got mine for $149 + $50 gift card.