It's funny. I think that if the Vivid had been released in September or early October, the reviews we're seeing would be a lot better. Put up against all the hot phones the other carriers are getting, the Vivid is getting clobbered in the press, even though it's a good phone. It's that hyperdriven Moore's Law situation again. We get the best we can get, Knowing the darn thing is going to be obsolete almost from the day we get it. What are ya gonna do? What we have now were desktop computers 10 years ago. By our next upgrade, they're Really gonna be handheld computers. Quad core? DDR3 RAM? That's a modern desktop, just less storage and RAM.
Yeah, Engadget's reviewer (Joseph Volpe) must be seriously pissed about his SGS2 getting obsoleted so quickly by the skyrocket, or something. The thing that ticked me off was that the items most of he ticked off in comparison to the skyrocket were actualy
plusses to me (and he didn't even allow that some people might agree with me):
It's (slightly) thicker and heavier than the Skyrocket. And? The skyrocket just seems like a flimsy sliver of plastic to me. I have never doubted HTC's build quality (I really wish that Sprint had coverage that would have allowed me to keep my Touch Pro 2, that phone was sick hardware for its day, which, being two years ago, is a frightening testament to Moore's Law), and my Vivid does not disappoint in that regard. Samsung, on the other hand just doen't seem to get it. I owned an SCH-i760 on Verizon a few years back, and while it performed well, it still felt flimsy despite its rather sizable girth, especially with the (thankfully factory-supplied in box) extended battery. Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I'll take Christina Hendricks over Kate Moss any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
Its benchmarks are "slower" than Sammy's offerings. And? Rather than drool over numbers like any of the geekerati, I prefer to look at real world performance. Will it do what I want it to without choking under the load? I test drove both LTE phones in store, and found no difference whatsoever in how snappy and responsive they were. Hell, even my iPhone 3GS with its now (comically) underpowered hardware did what I wanted it to. It
did seem to slow down some with iOS5, but only infrequently. I jumped ship for display and customization options, not benchmarks.
Is the battery smaller? Yes. However, I'm well accustomed to having chargers on hand for my iPhone at nearly all times, so this really doesn't bother me.
The one plus Volpe lists, the screen, is absolutely gorgeous, and a clear winner over the Skyrocket's recycling of the Infuse's screen. Better resolution, more hand-friendly aspect ratio, and a high-end LCD that beats the bright, almost neon-sign-esque Super AMOLED plus.
All that being said, to each their own, I just feel that the Vivid is a better fit for me and my needs.