First Impressions

[natehoy]

- The screen.

Wow. Just... wow. Daylight performance might not be the best in class, but it is superb. Colors are bold, bright, and beautiful. This screen POPS.

The bezel is SO thin that holding the phone will occasionally cause my fingers to be detected from the side of the phone. I'll need to get a basic bumper case to solve this soon.

- The camera

seems loaded with useful features but still has a point-and-shoot "IntelligentAuto" mode. The few pictures I've taken have been very good, but I haven't done detailed comparison later.

- Battery life.

I may have had the screen up too high or something, but after three hours of Ingress last night I had to switch to my old Thunderbolt as a backup. This isn't actually BAD, but my expectations are probably unrealistically high after carrying my extended-battery-equipped Tbolt. I also need to work on screen brightness management (I left it on auto and didn't realize you affected the auto setting with the slider and had that up WAY too high) and realize that I can turn the screen off without apps blowing up on me like on the Tbolt.

I'm currently at 3 h 54 m battery usage, and sitting at 67%. Screen has been on for 2h 17m, generally around medium-bright. I should be able to get through the day with a decent amount of screen use, but I imagine a battery pack or an extended battery is in my future.

- Speed

Everything I've asked it to do has been done instantly. No sign of any hesitation even when the Play Store is installing large apps in the background. But I am, to be fair, comparing this to the HTC Thunderbolt. So my expectations are correspondingly low.

- Comfort

I have very large hands, and this phone may not be for those with smaller hands. However, having held both this and a Note II, I have to say that the OGP feels more comfortable in the hand. It's just a teensy bit narrower, but what a difference that makes. It is a little thin and a tad slippery for one-handed use, so I will be putting it in a case, but it feels great and I haven't felt like I've had to stretch to reach anything. I haven't even experimented with the "one hand operation" features.

- Build quality / cosmetics

Looks and feels great. Setting it "nekkid" on a flat surface means laying it down on the small bump that houses the camera which causes a little rocking about as you try to use it, which is a bit of a flaw, but not serious and again will be fixed by a bumper case. But, man, I hate to cover this much beauty up.

 

[friedtators]

thing of beauty

 

[natehoy]

One oddity with this phone, or the version of Android it runs, or something.. Even though I have all the location features turned on, it will only use a GPS lock (not WiFi-based location) to locate me. This is unlike every other Android device I own. Does anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? I have Google location services turned on, and I'm using the same WiFi points I use on my other devices, all of which work just dandy.

Don't get me wrong - the GPS itself gets a fast lock and seems rock solid so far, but I can't do geolocation indoors using WiFi.

 

[natehoy]

thing of beauty

It is. It truly is.

Just put it on to charge at 40%. 6h 27m runtime, 3h 52m screen time mostly at about 60-65% on auto. Not too shabby, especially considering that I haven't really done much in terms of battery savings and it's only the second full charge.

 

[David Ibarra]

I have also found the issue of only locking your location with GPS not sure why

 

[natehoy]

I have also found the issue of only locking your location with GPS not sure why

Thanks. Good to know I'm not alone in this. Anyone else?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Android Central Forums

 

[Just some old guy]

I've been using the OGP for 1 week now. Pretty happy for the most part. A few annoyances like the crapware from ATT that won't uninstall. (I don't know if I will root the phone or not. I'm not a power user and as long as the phone does what I want it to do--calls and occasional data access when away from wi-fi, I'll be happy). One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to manually zero the usage statistics like I could on the iphone. Other forums I found said I have to rely on ATT to zero it out at the beginning of the billing cycle. If true, this seems like BS to me. I don't have a "billing cycle" on prepaid. I refill when I need it. So being able to zero when I refill is what works for me. I do wish these phones came with the option to buy them pre-installed (for absolute dummies) or just running stock Android for those who want it. You shouldn't have to hack your device to get it to work better for you.

 

[Phonejock]

Yep mine is the same way

Sent from my LG-E980 using Tapatalk 2

 

[natehoy]

OK, update on battery. I went out at lunch to play Ingress, which in case anyone is unfamiliar with it is a real-time augmented reality game which uses GPS and tons of mobile data (30MB of mobile data in continuous short bursts for less than an hour of gameplay). It was bright and sunny, so I had the screen off auto and up to 100%.

In approximately an hour of gameplay, I burned through about 30% of the battery.

Yes, yes, that sounds like a lot, but that's with the screen up to 100% full, continuous HSPA+ data transmission, and the GPS on every second of the way. Precious few phones short of the Note 2 can claim anywhere NEAR three hours of continuous Ingress on a stock battery with screen set to full-on bright. Oh, and I also restarted the phone once because I had a connection glitch and things just weren't coming back as they should for some reason.

PS: The daylight performance of the screen is not stellar, but it's very adequate. I had absolutely no trouble reading the screen and did not feel compelled to constantly find shade like I used to with my HTC Thunderbolt.

I do need to get a bumper case, because it keeps "recognizing" my fingers that are holding it as screen presses along the edge of the screen, and that is rather annoying. Cost of a ludicrously thin bezel, I guess. I can live with it.