Still Liking this phone Droid RAZR MAXX

[cordoni]

Had a chance to grab a Moto X at the discounted 350 price, but ultimately decided I am going to stick with the Droid Razr Maxx until the next round of Moto phones. Why?

-Battery life is still amazing. I sometimes work 12 or more hours a day, and like not having to even consider my battery life. That means being on bluetooth headset conference calls, playing Google Play Musinc, running 4 active push email addresses, my to do list app syncing, and Google Keep. All this and I still have 45% or more battery when I go to bed.

-Notification light. Sounds silly, but it matters to me.

-Audio quality. Combined with the Equalizer app this phone just sounds incredible to me. Used to be a sound engineer and still think it sounds great.

-Got "Popup Notifications Free" which enables me to read my full notifications from the lockscreen. Just push the power button, read, dismiss swipe right or open app swipe left.

-Phone is rock solid reliable. yes it is only Android 4.1.2, but it just works. No mess, no fuss, every time.

Only thing I really hate is that the camera sucks, completely sucks. However, I hardly ever take pictures, and the Moto X camera isn't supposed to be all that good, so I am okay with that.

Ultimately I will wait for the next round of Moto devices, and will be eligible to upgrade with Verizon then. Ultimately, after a lot of thought, I am still happy with this phone 16 months later.

 

[Eclipse2K]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I will say Active Display is the best thing to happen to cell phones in a while. That's my opinion anyways. I'm getting used to the small notification LED on my Note 3 now that I switched from Motorola. Not really liking that but I guess it's because I got used to Active Display. As you said your phone does all you want right now so why spend the money?

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[B. Diddy]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I wish I could say the same. I still feel the Razr Maxx is a solid phone, but I definitely have noticed significant lag that has set in over the past few months that clears up only temporarily with a cache partition wipe. I'm just speculating, but I wonder if it has to do with successive updates to Google Play Services and other Google apps that aren't playing well with the old TI OMAP chip in the phone. In addition, I've been noticing that I get kicked down to 3G more often, but it's hard to know if that's due to an overloaded network, or due to my phone's hardware. Oh well, just have to ride it out until March, and then the fun begins of choosing which phone to upgrade to!

 

[FredBassett]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I'm still liking my maxx. It's a tad slower than it was and I have to restart it from time to time when it freezes but like the op, a full day of use and I'm still on 60% battery left. I'm due to be able to get a new phone in Feb but I'm not going to just get any new phone because I can, I'm waiting till the right phone comes along when ever that will be

 

[dpham00]

Re: Still Liking this phone

My razr maxx was good for its time but my Note 3 is way better for my uses. I regularly use my phone in densely populated heavily loaded areas and I would get slow downs and limited connections. In the same areas on my note 3, I get great speeds thanks to advanced wireless services.

Besides that, my note 3 gets better battery life and has way better screen and runs way faster.

Don't get me wrong, or was great for its time but for me, my note 3 is way better

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[cordoni]

Re: Still Liking this phone

My razr maxx was good for its time but my Note 3 is way better for my uses. I regularly use my phone in densely populated heavily loaded areas and I would get slow downs and limited connections. In the same areas on my note 3, I get great speeds thanks to advanced wireless services.

Besides that, my note 3 gets better battery life and has way better screen and runs way faster.

Don't get me wrong, or was great for its time but for me, my note 3 is way better

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

Interesting. I am the opposite. I live and work in a more rural area where Samsung phones tend to struggle. I think it is due to the larger distance between towers.

Anyway, the best thing I did to get rid of lag was install Apex launcher and disable Chrome.
For whatever reason, Chrome stays running in the foreground on the RAZR Max, hogging a large amount of limited resources. Once I disabled it (or uninstalled can't remember) performance shot way up.

Using Exsoul paid browser now, but UC browser was good too.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Groundhound]

Mine runs great for a phone that's almost 2 years old. I found a rom that has really been smooth.
http://www.droidrzr.com/index.php?/topic/22282-[ROM]-[xt912]-[JB-.16]-Blurry-2.2-(Official-Build-10-18-13)

 

[dpham00]

Re: Still Liking this phone

Interesting. I am the opposite. I live and work in a more rural area where Samsung phones tend to struggle. I think it is due to the larger distance between towers.

Anyway, the best thing I did to get rid of lag was install Apex launcher and disable Chrome.
For whatever reason, Chrome stays running in the foreground on the RAZR Max, hogging a large amount of limited resources. Once I disabled it (or uninstalled can't remember) performance shot way up.

Using Exsoul paid browser now, but UC browser was good too.

Posted via Android Central App

Just out of curiosity, which Samsung phones did you have? Both my note 2 and Note 3 perform better in terms or radio than my Droid razr maxx. My s3 was worse though.

Rural areas don't have advanced wireless services deployment.

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[cordoni]

Re: Still Liking this phone

Just out of curiosity, which Samsung phones did you have? Both my note 2 and Note 3 perform better in terms or radio than my Droid razr maxx. My s3 was worse though.

Rural areas don't have advanced wireless services deployment.

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

Galaxy S3 was the one I had signal issues with

Posted via Android Central App

 

[dpham00]

Re: Still Liking this phone

Galaxy S3 was the one I had signal issues with

Posted via Android Central App

Sure the s3 wasn't great, but I have heard complaint of the Droid Maxx dropping signal as well. Can't really compare personally because I don't have a droid maxx myself.

Sent from my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note 3 via Tapatalk Pro

 

[woody nh]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I still am happy with everything except for the camera. Good photos in ideal conditions but otherwise throw away photos.

When my 2 year contract is up in May I'll look for a phone with a better camera.

 

[cordoni]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I still am happy with everything except for the camera. Good photos in ideal conditions but otherwise throw away photos.

When my 2 year contract is up in May I'll look for a phone with a better camera.

Yep, camera sucks. Totally agree. I am using camera zoom fx, so not as suckish as originally, but still sucks.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[mhans311]

Re: Still Liking this phone

I am thinking of selling my note 2 to buy a tablet and going back to the Razr Maxx for a while until I can upgrade to a new phone. I am nervous to go back though. I liked my Maxx but the camera was awful and the screen is hard to look at after having higher rez screens. As I remember, everything else about the Maxx was solid. I always had reliable cell reception. Gonna try to throw a custom rom on my old Maxx and use it for a couple days before I make the final decision.

Noted via tapatalk

 

[fantic]

Re: Still Liking this phone

It's nice to see a thread about someone liking there phone. Most are about problems. I have had the Maxx since the beginning and now out of contract. Can't make up my mind on a new phone. It's been a good phone for me. Yea it get's a little wonky sometimes and I still have the random notification sound problem. It's been dropped I don't know how many times and been under water a couple of times but it's still going. I'm curious. What is everyone going to after this phone? Can't make up my mind. Think I'll just wait till it dies.

 

[Jack33]

My Maxx works, but like many people it has issues that comes with age. A little disappointed that a phone cannot hold up for two years. I'm getting the Note next time. Good battery and large screen. What's not to like?

 

[cordoni]

Well I think I finally maxed out my Maxx.
I have around 10 apps that I use daily for personal and business purposes. Of these, around 5 are always running services. I really need and use all 10.

Well I tried to install a new app last night to replace one of these. It used more resources, but not by a large margin.
Instant lag hell. Uninstalled and no problem.

Tried same thing with a different app later on. Worked fine when phone was awake, but coming out of deep sleep this morning, bam, locked up whole phone. Uninstalled also, and now its fine.

Looks like I have hit the limit of what my Maxx can handle with what I have installed.

What worries me is that one update adding features to one of my everyday apps may just push it over the edge.
:/

Thinking about picking up a Moto X at the sale price now

Posted via Android Central App

 

[B. Diddy]

Sounds like it's time to upgrade. It's weird--now that my Razr Maxx is deactivated from Verizon, I just use it as a bedside alarm clock and media device, but even after a factory reset and keeping it pretty lean in terms of apps, it's still pretty laggy. It's hard to tell if this is how it was to begin with, and I've just been spoiled now by the Nexus 5, or if the performance has really degraded with time. This is probably way off base, but I still wonder if there's some inherent incompatibility between the recent updates to Google Play Services and this phone's outdated (and not very well-supported) TI OMAP processor.

 

[cordoni]

Sounds like it's time to upgrade. It's weird--now that my Razr Maxx is deactivated from Verizon, I just use it as a bedside alarm clock and media device, but even after a factory reset and keeping it pretty lean in terms of apps, it's still pretty laggy. It's hard to tell if this is how it was to begin with, and I've just been spoiled now by the Nexus 5, or if the performance has really degraded with time. This is probably way off base, but I still wonder if there's some inherent incompatibility between the recent updates to Google Play Services and this phone's outdated (and not very well-supported) TI OMAP processor.

I don't know about the processor. The lag is deffinitely worse now. And i only use a handfull of apps. There are a number of apps I would love to keep on it, but they degrade performance terribly.


My thing is I use this for work all the time. I have multinational customers contacting me on it, and even 1 day with it being down is a disaster of epic proportions.

I think I may go ahead and upgrade while it still works and the X is on sale.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[brian7751]

i have a 2013 droid maxx & had a note 3 and so did my dad and now we have droid maxx's we live close to 2 rural roads that we drive down from time to time and both our note 3's would drop down to 3g where our droid maxx's stay on lte at the same spots although it does drop down to 121-122 dbm i can still use the lte internet with it though

almost forgot both our note 3's would also drop to 3g at my uncles house that is heavily surrounded by trees

 

[B. Diddy]

i have a 2013 droid maxx & had a note 3 and so did my dad and now we have droid maxx's we live close to 2 rural roads that we drive down from time to time and both our note 3's would drop down to 3g where our droid maxx's stay on lte at the same spots although it does drop down to 121-122 dbm i can still use the lte internet with it though

almost forgot both our note 3's would also drop to 3g at my uncles house that is heavily surrounded by trees

That's good to know, but we're talking about the old RAZR Maxx, not the new Droid Maxx. No doubt that the new Maxx is pretty awesome!

Posted via Android Central App