Picked up a Maxx yesterday morning and wanted to list my Pros and Cons. First off, I am not a FanBoy of any OS or phone, but do stay away from Apple products. I have had about 24 hours to compare the Maxx to the Note 2, S4, Lumia 928 and the Razr Maxx HD. I have always liked Motorola products, but in my opinion this one falls a little short.
Pros
1. Long battery life. This is subjective as I was losing about 10% per hour and I am a heavy user so I don't think this phone would last me two days but would probably make it through a full day of power use.
2. Feels good in the hand. Build quality is less than what I expected. The plastic power and volume buttons feel cheap. Based on the way they added the Kevlar it looks like it might push away from the screen over time with heavy use and no case.
3. The speaker is pretty loud but not any louder than the Note 2, S4 or Lumia 928.
4. Bluetooth connection worked well with my carkit and music streaming was good. Not any better than my other phones and actually not as good as the Note 2. With no equalization settings on the Maxx it is just flat but not terrible.
5. The email app allows for the dark background which I like alot and the ability to swipe to delete in the email app is great. Can't do that on the S4, Note 2 or Lumia except for Gmail.
That is it for Pros, now the Cons.
1. The camera is horrible. Doesn't even come close to the other phones I own. The software is basic and featureless with the touch-anywhere to take a picture poses some issues when trying to focus on an object. Hopefully this is just a software glitch and something that Motorola will fix but they certainly knew about the poor camera before it was released so time will tell. I get much better low light shots with the S4 and Lumia. The gallery is featurless as well.
2. The display is slightly brighter than the S4 and crisper than the Note 2 but has a yellowish tint and is doesn't compare to a 1080p display. If you have not used a phone with 1080p then you won't miss it but if you have you will be able to tell the difference. The downside to the stock OS on the Maxx is no display adjustment so colors are very saturated just like the Samsung phones before they created different display settings to adjust the tone.
3. Call quality has been worse on the Maxx than all of my other phones. It is not even close. And I have full bars of 4G in my house and neighborhood. This was one aspect of the Maxx that I was counting on and I am very dissapointed. There is alot of crackling and background noise. It might be a bad phone but my friends Maxx sounds the same.
4. Signal strength is only slightly better than my Samsung devices and about equal to the Lumia 928. WiFI signal is no better or worse than the rest of my phones. This was another feature I assumed would be better and was not.
5. Contacts, Messaging and Calendar. Because they are stock Android you lose all of the features that Samsung and HTC provide. You can't merge all of your contacts together (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) under one. They are all separated and that is what you get with stock. The messaging is bland and the Calendar is terrible. For those that don't care about the features it will work fine but creates alot of frustration for users like myself that want to be organized and efficient.
6. Wireless Charging. It is Qi compatible but Motorola placed the charging spot slightly above the center of the phone. What this means is that it does not work on the Nokia DT-910 charging stand either in portrait or landscape. If you have big wireless charging pads or mats it should work fine, but I am not replacing my 5 wireless charging docks just to keep this phone.
7. No accessories. This usually happens with a new device but one thing I used to love about Motorola is that they always made high quality accessories. The car dock and desktop chargers are all third party products now and not up to Motorola standards.
8. Active Notifications are hit and miss. It doesn't always show when you need it to and the Maxx no longer has an LED notification. I like that feature on my Samsung and HTC devices. Some may not and you will be fine with this feature.
9. Voice control. The "Ok, Google Now" works ok but I found out that I can't use it while driving and connected to Bluetooth. That is when I would use it most. There might be a software issue that gets fixed down the road but I need handsfree control in my car all of the time. I did not find myself using this feature when the phone was off. I have never lost or misplaced a phone so the "call my Droid" feature doesn't make sense to me. Dragon Mobile Assistant provides the same capability with more features and the ability to use it in the car with Bluetooth.
10. No microSD card. This is not a big deal for most users and I am grateful that Verizon graced us with at least 32GB on the Maxx, but I like having 96GB of storage on my S4 and 80GB on my Note 2. This keeps me from having to store everything in the cloud.
There are many more but I picked out the main Cons that have caused me to return mine. The Maxx offers nothing more than a little more battery life over my current options and with replaceable batteries in my Samsung devices I already have almost double the battery size over the Maxx. Call quality would have clinched it for me about whether I kept the Maxx or not, but sadly my Razr Maxx HD has better call quality than the new Maxx so that made the decision easy.
For all of you coming from lower resolution displays, crappy battery life and love bare bones, stock Android this phone is probably your best choice on Verizon. It certainly is not worth $299 IMO, but everyone has different needs. Good luck to those that pick one up. I hope it is everything you were hoping for and more.
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