Sorry I took an extra day, was beat after work yesterday.
Going into this upgrade, I knew there were two things I would be giving up: On-board storage, and battery life. I pulled the trigger anyways because of the following reasons: First, I have spent the last year consolidating all of my important files on Google. My music has been uploaded, I've freed myself from iTunes DRM, etc. The only thing I need on my phone's storage is my apps, their data, and whatever pictures I take with it's camera. I spend about a month with no SD card slot in my MAXX HD to accustom myself to an "on-board-only" mentality, and tried to exceed no more than 11GB on it. When I switched, I was only using about 7GB, so I though a 4GB buffer was comfortable enough. Second, for the battery, it was a little more of a gamble. I know the X8 processing setup made the phone more juice-friendly, and on my Maxx, I would always go to bed with about 40% battery and I charged my phone every night. I rarely have situations where I can't charge my phone overnight (I even have my spare charger in my overnight bag for when I crash with friends of my lady), so I was comfortable with my gamble.
Here's what I've experienced from the phone in the 3 days I've had it.
First, the phone really flies! Like I said before, I saw zero stutter during the setup process (typically a bogging task with apps downloading, signing into accounts on multiple apps, etc). I haven't seen it flinch at anything I throw at it. I even had a podcast playing while I navigated to a job today and saw no lag when I switched to make a call. After the call, my phone had no lag switching back to the podcast.
Second: you will have an adjustment period to the size and heft of this thing. I never realized how much of a brick the Maxx HD was until I held this thing. It's a feather relatively speaking and it substantially smaller, so be careful handling it until you're comfortable with it. The dimple is a GODSEND.
Third: Battery life is pretty damn good. Not amazing like the Maxx HD, and you will need to get used to seeing your charge a lot lower at the end of the night, but it will get you through the day no problem. I'll update this post with screens of my experiences after about a week. You will be timid to use the phone at first, afraid of killing it, but trust me, you'll be fine.
That's all I can think of for now. Let me know if you are wondering about anything in particular that I did not address. I know there are a million reviews, but hopefully I can be a little more helpful seeing as I made the exact same switch as you will. Good luck and enjoy! I know I do
