Re: Prior phone
S4, which was a very logical progression from the S3 before it other than they have yet to unlock the bootloader, if it was I'd have
probly kept it longer. In fact I still have it.
The turbo is a nice moderate upgrade in some areas, battery obviously though the S4 consistently impressed with it's life given a little care,
the screen size up is nice, not-touch-wiz is nice though I've used either the Google Now launcher or Nova for a long while on the GS4, but I do
miss some of the TouchWiz shortcuts and have had to go find widgets for them on the DT. The DT camera is not better exactly, or not all the time,
it's just different. One leg up is the stinking samsung can't adjust balance and such to a selected point on the screen, one has to re-frame the shot.
Not insurmountable but annoying, the DT can, and it takes HDR photos much faster, and it has slo-mo video which is pretty neat. Otherwise with a lot of back to back shots I'm having a really hard time picking a clear winner. The GS4 has noticeably superior wifi and bluetooth range/sensitivity, both are repeatedly demonstrable. The DT screen color temp and such is more pleasing to me but that's subjective and the GS4 was not bad, not perfect of course but not bad. And the GS4 is easier to one hand, top left is far away on the DT for my thumb. As much junk has been talked about it, the non-phone-call audio is vastly superior in all ways on the DT compared to the little speaker on the BACK of the GS4. It's sufficient, but not pleasant.
People call the DT "tinny" in audio, they should listen to a GS3 or GS4, the DT is a large upgrade and I'd be willing to put my dB meter on it and prove it if anyone is that curious. I had some issue with the on call ear volume as well but I see what they did with speaker position and will experiment more later, though even before it was acceptable, just not great. I think it's software fixable myself.
I'm not super disappointed at the DT, but I don't think it's a $300 upgrade at all. More like $150 if I had to put a dollar sign on it.
I still have my GS4 on wifi here at home and I pick one up instead of the other now and again and I don't find myself feeling that
I'm missing anything using the GS4 which isn't a good sign for the DT. I can't help but think I could have saved a few bucks and got
a screen upgrade, more processor and memory and a wee more battery going with the GS5 and just continued to ignore all the goofy
Samsung/TouchWiz stuff, and if they ever unlock the bootloader on either I'll be thrilled.
All that said, I had a pretty pleasant day with the DT yesterday, streamed a bunch of music outside and it was plenty loud, took some really nice
pics both close up of flowers in the garden and some neat slo-mo video of the dogs and a couple great pics with challenging lighting of the wife doing her
garden thing, and it managed to more or less maintain wifi connection and upload the pics to my NAS by the time I was back inside despite it's very marginal reception out that far. So I'm not hating it at least. The hassle of returning might be enough to make me keep it.
I really, really wish the Nexus 6 was a Nexus 5.2 or 5.5 though, but it isn't, so.
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