AT&T ICS improvements with Vivid?

anon(631531)

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I just got the Vivid a couple of days ago, from Amazon for a penny. I'm quite impressed with this really cool phone and the first thing I did after the initial setup was download and install the OTA update to ICS, so I spent no time what so ever on Gingerbread.

Just curious about something. Can you get any kind of insurance when you buy a phone on Amazon?:confused:
 

jontalk

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Not sure if Amazon offers insurance, but the HUGE benefit for those of us in CA is that right now (though this may expire in a few months), there is NO sales tax charged nor shipping. This can save as much as $60-100 in the price.

Just because the phone is $.01 doesn't mean it's the best fit. All phones have shortcomings and while I think the Vivid is a nice phone, the new Skyrocket HD is due out very soon and I don't want to waste an upgrade. Hope you understand :)
 

anon(631531)

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Not sure if Amazon offers insurance, but the HUGE benefit for those of us in CA is that right now (though this may expire in a few months), there is NO sales tax charged nor shipping. This can save as much as $60-100 in the price.

Just because the phone is $.01 doesn't mean it's the best fit. All phones have shortcomings and while I think the Vivid is a nice phone, the new Skyrocket HD is due out very soon and I don't want to waste an upgrade. Hope you understand :)

That's cool. Whatever works for you. Good luck.:)
 

Wexal

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You mention the camera; I do a lot of photography with the Vivid. It's the pocket camera that will allow my mom to keep one of my small digital cameras. I take most of my photos while I am out on long rides on my bicycle. With the SaFPWR battery case I have plenty of power remaining after 5+ hours of GPS use along with camera shots and texting those who worry about my wanderings. The display is not over driven as it is on the Samsungs. It is accurate. The HDR feature which is more easily accessible with ICS is a must have for anyone who snaps photos in unbalanced light.
I'm sure you'll pick what is best for you, hope you find the best fit. :D
 

Iamdunne

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I have owned both the vivid and the skyrocket. I actually currently am in possession of both and I am typing this on the vivid. Very long story why I currently have a vivid that I won't go into the long details except that I am borrowing it as a test to see if issues I was having were phone number or phone related.

Pros and cons to both phones. Had the vivid when it first came out and I returned within the 30 days because I was receiving out of order texts and triplicate texts and the front of my phone was pulling away from the screen. I too had read and watched reviews on the skyrocket so switched. With that being said and having used both phones here are some random thoughts. I personally think that the vivid has a crisper more clear display. Although they both are supposed to be the same size screen, the vivid is more narrow. Being a woman although I have larger hands, I prefer the narrow, especially with a case. The vivid is significantly heavier then the skyrocket. The battery life for me has been better though on the skyrocket. I still opted on the skyrocket, to buy a extended verizon nexus battery. This would be part of the reason I too would hesitate to buy a phone without a removable battery. I personally would give the sense ui an edge, but that is simply a choice of preference, but I am currently using launcher 7 anyway. I think the vivid takes slightly better photos. I am using the vivid without a case and it does get warm after about an hour of continuous use but nothing intolerable. I had mentioned my texting issues earlier with the vivid, unfortuately the skyrocket has its own such as random duplicates and sometimes a text says it failed and actually the person usually has received it. I am day 2 into using the vivid again and am hoping the texting issues I had when I first had used it back in November have disappeared since updates to the phone, I will see.

For the current price on Amazon, and the advantage of icecream sandwich, if you don't mind a slightly heavier phone I would buy the vivid. We have used Square Trade for warranties on our phones and have been very happy with them, you can find them online. Hope those 2 cents help.
 
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009MACMOM

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Hi, Ive had used Vivid for 2 wks, coming from BB 9810,9000, older iPhone & am loving it. I am still getting used to Vivid. Trying to find comments from users on ICS as I've had bad response on previous phones when I update. My youngest daughter has Samsung galaxy & outdoor view better but similar. Htc one x I love but no mico sd or option to replace battery -- I'm not sure if I will upgrade feb 2013.
 

ronnie498

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Hi, Ive had used Vivid for 2 wks, coming from BB 9810,9000, older iPhone & am loving it. I am still getting used to Vivid. Trying to find comments from users on ICS as I've had bad response on previous phones when I update. My youngest daughter has Samsung galaxy & outdoor view better but similar. Htc one x I love but no mico sd or option to replace battery -- I'm not sure if I will upgrade feb 2013.

Stay with Vivid

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2
 

iN8ter

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Now that I hear that ATT is pushing the full ICS update to the Vivid, I'm wondering how many of the folks here have updated and what sort of improvements they're experiencing. And if there ARE improvements, especially in smoothness and battery life, I'd love to hear about it!

After reading the review of the One X, it sounds cool, but I'm NOT excited about the lack of microSD slot, non-replaceable battery or how the camera lens will do doubt be scratched to hell over time. I imagine ATT will want at least $200 for the OneX, and meantime, Amazon has the Vivid for ONE CENT!

Am really on the fence between waiting for the Sammy GS2 HD or just getting the standard Skyrocket or Vivid. Many of the comparison reviews between the Skyrocket and Vivid show the Skyrocket ahead by small margins due to the slower clock speed of the processor and poor outdoor viewing of the LCD screen.

Your thoughts?

Outdoors has been fine for me. Display I think goes to the Vivid for a couple of reasons:

1. While the LCD does have grayer blacks than Samsung's AMOLED screens, Samsung's screens tend to tint whites blue. Maybe it's just me, but this has the effect of making colors in other things (images, etc.) seem a bit off as a side product. The blacks on the LCD screens don't do that. AMOLED sort of forces you to use Black themes a lot, to save battery. LCD is backlid so you can use whatever you want. Depending on what type of sAMOLED screen you have, you may or may not have burn-in issues. It's an issue on many Samsung phones. I'm not sure how the latter (or newer ones will) fare with that. I hated the SAMOLED On my Vibrant because of the constant image ghostine when I'd go from one app to another, plus the notification bar burned in so it was always faintly visible in games that I played in landscape on that left side of the screen. Colors are typically over-saturated as well. Some people like it, some people don't.

2. The Skyrocket has a WVGA screen that you can see pixels on. I can't see the pixels on the Vivid's qHD screen. Personally I have no clue why Samsung used a WVGA panel on those phones. Even the Pen-Tile qHD sAMOLED would have been a bit more future proof but WVGA just looks terrible on a screen at 4.3" or higher (I don't even care about 720p on anything < 5"+ personally I think it's unnecessary and taxes the processor/GPU more for not so much benefit in end-use). Personally I think the low screen resolution on those screens pretty much eliminate any advantages they have in color reproduction (though the Vivid produces accurate colors). Viewing angles aren't a big deal for me since I typically give my phone face on, and outdoor visibility of SLCD isn't nearly as bad as TFT LCD screens (think HD2, HD7).

The One X lacking an SD Card Slot was a deal breaker for me. I went with the Vivid since on ICS the One X really doesn't outperform it all that much outside of the better camera - for general use they felt comparable to me. The lack of a removable battery can be an issue if your phone freezes. I have had my iTouch freeze and force me to keep it on until the battery ran out in order to reboot it (no other methods worked). So I can't deal with that :-( Sometimes bad things can happen :p

So I personally give the Screen to the Vivid. The camera goes to the Vivid by hundreds of miles. SoC differences have negligible impact on usability (especially with ICS on the Vivid). The GS2/Skyrocket does have a higher HSPA+ cap than the Vivid for those in non-LTE markets, but that will only matter if you're hitting the cap on the Vivid otherwise the devices will likely have almost the same data speeds side-by-side.

As a UI layer Sense looks like Mac OS and TouchWiz looks like a DOS shell. I really have been waiting for TouchWiz to get a decent revamp and it seems they are going in the right direction with the Galaxy S3, but TouchWiz up to 4.0 just looks like it was drawn in Microsoft Paint. So many of the user controls just look too dated and some of the stock Apps on TouchWiz just look TERRIBLE, like the stock SMS app and FriendStream vs. Social Hub. Also like the HTC People App better (showing the last Social Update) and HTC has much better Widgets. Sense is more configurable than TouchWiz. That seems odd since Samsung obviously aren't putting much emphasis on their design and materials, so you'd think maybe it's in the software...

Personally, Sense is so much more superior to TouchWiz that I'd buy an HTC phone over a Samsung phone just for that (now that HTC removed that ring from the bottom of the Home Screen, I hated that...), since I don't root or tinker with my phones.

Does the Samsung Media scanner still make your phone unusable for seconds at a time everytime you add or delete something on your phone using a file manager? I wish HTC put a built-in File Manager in SEnse 3.6/ICS, the way Samsung does on their TouchWiz phones, though. I prefer QuickOffice to Polaris. Really have no clue how to use that app since there is just a document on the screen and it doesn't seem like I can even select text in it without zooming in/out in Edit mode every time I try to double tap, nor are there any toolbars on the screen. I might buy QuickOffice and disable Polaris, Lol.
 
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