Considering a Droid Maxx ... a few questions

[anon(8312128)]

Hello,

Seriously considering a Droid Maxx and I have a few questions.

1) How's the call quality? And more specifically, is there ample volume in the earpiece while on a call? When I had the Moto X, call quality seemed to be good. I would assume it's good with the Maxx as well.

2) With the stock launcher, are you able to delete the extra home screens? This was (is) an issue on the Moto X for some strange reason. I had to download Nova Launcher just to be able to delete those extra home screens.

3) I'm seeing too many threads about excessive idle battery drain. This was the deal-breaking issue I was having on the Moto X. I'm just afraid of committing to the Maxx only to run smack dab into the same battery issues. What's the consensus here? Does this seem to be more isolated or really widespread amongst Maxx owners?

Thanks in advance

 

[Einsteindks]

Great call quality, stock launchers are lame -- stopped using them LONG ago, there's more app awareness needed to keep stuff from hugging the battery. There are small, free apps for that.

fat-fingered and Maxx-ed out.

 

[doggy2965]

Maxx has better call quality and longer battery life than any phone on Verizon. (I've had them all). I used nova on them all for full customization. Maxx is the best phone on market right now.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[doogald]

1. The X and Maxx internals and software are virtually identical. I am sure that the call quality is exactly the same as the X on Verizon. Pocket Now just posted a video looking back at the Moto X after almost 5 months and call quality was one of the pluses. Motorola Moto X – After The Buzz, episode 029 (Video) | Pocketnow

2. The Maxx launcher is exactly the same as the X. I use Nova Prime myself now. To make the Maxx worse, though, there was a bug in the KitKat update that registers a single tap of the home button as a double tap, so if you launch an app from the stock launcher from one of the other home screens, pressing home will open the launcher then immediately go to the default, center home screen. In Nova (and other third party launcher) you will probably have to disable any specific home button functions. Hopefully that gets fixed in the next couple of months.

3. The battery is huge. I have started using my phone for more things, but even when I am using it the same way as I used it when I first bought it in August, it drains just a little bit more. The worst drain I have seen is about 3.3% per hour - so the battery will last 30 hours. On the X that would be about 20 hours with the sane drain (remember - the software on the Maxx and the X are essentially the same, so the amount of amps per hour is likely to be the same.) When I bought this phone, I bought it primarily because of the battery size. I actually think that the X is a better size for me, but I'm happy that I simply don't have to worry about battery life during a day when my phone gets even the worst mobile signal possible to still function (I've had one of those days; my phone ended up with 28% battery life when it typically ended a day around 60%.)

 

[anon(8312128)]

1. The X and Maxx internals and software are virtually identical. I am sure that the call quality is exactly the same as the X on Verizon. Pocket Now just posted a video looking back at the Moto X after almost 5 months and call quality was one of the pluses. Motorola Moto X – After The Buzz, episode 029 (Video) | Pocketnow

2. The Maxx launcher is exactly the same as the X. I use Nova Prime myself now. To make the Maxx worse, though, there was a bug in the KitKat update that registers a single tap of the home button as a double tap, so if you launch an app from the stock launcher from one of the other home screens, pressing home will open the launcher then immediately go to the default, center home screen. In Nova (and other third party launcher) you will probably have to disable any specific home button functions. Hopefully that gets fixed in the next couple of months.

3. The battery is huge. I have started using my phone for more things, but even when I am using it the same way as I used it when I first bought it in August, it drains just a little bit more. The worst drain I have seen is about 3.3% per hour - so the battery will last 30 hours. On the X that would be about 20 hours with the sane drain (remember - the software on the Maxx and the X are essentially the same, so the amount of amps per hour is likely to be the same.) When I bought this phone, I bought it primarily because of the battery size. I actually think that the X is a better size for me, but I'm happy that I simply don't have to worry about battery life during a day when my phone gets even the worst mobile signal possible to still function (I've had one of those days; my phone ended up with 28% battery life when it typically ended a day around 60%.)

How's your standby time? Any idle battery drain issue?

 

[doogald]

How's your standby time? Any idle battery drain issue?

When I first bought the phone, I was typically using it with screen on time of about 2.5 hrs per day and the battery (if you divided usage time by battery percent used) tended to 42 hours for WiFi mostly, 36 hours for mobile data only. Now I use the phone for mobile audio (I used to use my iPod Touch for that, but decided that carrying one device > carrying two) and now I trend toward about 32 hours battery life, maybe 28 exclusively mobile data. However, it would always be better, because that ignores the 7 or so hours that I wouldn't have used the phone while I was sleeping. I have only let the phone run down without plugging in overnight twice. In November I went to bed on day 2 with 23% battery left (so that was after about 41 hours.) Two weeks ago I made it to about 4:00 pm on day 2 when the battery hit 5% left (so that was about 34 hours after unplugging.)

My own guesstimate right now is that the phone drains about 5% more per day than it did doing the exact same thing under JB. When I first updated to KitKat in December, that was more like 15% per day, but a recent update to Google Play Services seems to have calmed battery drain down a lot.

Cell standby battery % is about the same as it was under JB. It's now typically about 4% battery used by cell radio. Is that what you were asking?

At this point I have no app that holds the phone awake in the background, with one exception: I have an app called Headset Button Controller that I deliberately set to keep the phone awake when earbuds are plugged in, so I can control the audio from the play/pause button of my Bose (and Apple) earbuds. If I don't set that app that way, every press of the play/pause button takes about 20 to 30 seconds before audio restarts after it's been paused.

 

[drvier8]

Hello,

Seriously considering a Droid Maxx and I have a few questions.

1) How's the call quality? And more specifically, is there ample volume in the earpiece while on a call? When I had the Moto X, call quality seemed to be good. I would assume it's good with the Maxx as well.

2) With the stock launcher, are you able to delete the extra home screens? This was (is) an issue on the Moto X for some strange reason. I had to download Nova Launcher just to be able to delete those extra home screens.

3) I'm seeing too many threads about excessive idle battery drain. This was the deal-breaking issue I was having on the Moto X. I'm just afraid of committing to the Maxx only to run smack dab into the same battery issues. What's the consensus here? Does this seem to be more isolated or really widespread amongst Maxx owners?

Thanks in advance

Call quality is good. No issues either using the phone itself or bluetooth.

I've side loaded the Google Nexus launcher and have been using it for a month or so. It adds home pages as needed and deletes them when you clear all the apps/widgets off the page.

There was a bit of a hit to battery when the kit kat upgrade hit (from 40+ hours to 35ish), but google updated play services and the battery has gone back to normal. It seems like that was the same hit that others were seeing on the X with Kit Kat. It hit the whole family of phones.

 

[anon(8312128)]

Thanks, everybody. Just got the phone this morning so we'll see how it goes

 

[anon(8312128)]

Do you guys enroll in the "Protect your phone" thing with Motorola? Looks like it allows you to locate/lock and wipe your phone when linked to a Google account. Good idea to do this?

 

[doogald]

Do you guys enroll in the "Protect your phone" thing with Motorola? Looks like it allows you to locate/lock and wipe your phone when linked to a Google account. Good idea to do this?

I did when I first bought the phone, but after I did a factory reset a few weeks ago I am just sticking with Google's Android Device Manager.

https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager?u=0