So, are there any "great" phones out there right now? Will there be?

G

Gorilla

Supreme [H]ardness
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So, here it goes. I am a relative newbie to the world of smart phones. I have a moto droid, but I hate it. It was great for the first few months, but it wasn't long before it couldn't keep up.
Now, it seems to me that every time a new phone comes out, it is bad in some aspect. It might have the latest and greatest processor, but it will have antenna issues, or a bad camera, or terrible battery life, etc.

Keeping in mind that I won't touch anything apple, and I'm with verizon, is there anything out there that is "great"? I mean, the galaxy nexus looked great prior to its announcement, but I'm disappointed in the processor and the graphics. Should I be?

I just feel frustrated that unlike desktops, I can't just put together something that is great. I find it doubly frustrating that there seems to be general consensus among hardware enthusiasts about what we want, but we never seem to get it.

In short, do I just give up and get the galaxy nexus when it comes out? Do I wait for who knows how long and see what the the future will bring? Any word yet on what the next ICS phone will be?
I really just want to get something that I won't regret getting. I don't want to "settle."

Am I reading too far into the comments that I've been reading about the nexus prime? Am I mistaking nit picking for glaring flaws?
 
Sort of in the same boat. I passed on the Nexus One because of early AMOLED problems, then passed on the Galaxy S because of the whole carrier branding mess and subsequent availability issues in Canada. Nexus S I expected to be dual core and it wasn't, which made it the best phone of the 2010 generation but released one month before the first dual core phones.

I also heard of the SGS II in Nov-Dec and decided to wait until Feb to see what it was. Turned out to be perfect except for the plastic materials and low res screen. I was hoping fast dual core AND increase in resolution. All the qHD screens that were released turned out to be crappy. SLCD / IPS just can't compete with SAMOLED.

Then the SGS II aws version is delayed to Sept. and I figure.. might as well wait a bit longer! Now we get a great design, build materials and resolution but everything else takes a small step backwards. It pisses me off not because they're noticeable or relevant differences in performance but why even do that?

They're still going to sell the damn thing for $600. It's still going to be obsoleted within 4-6 months - especially since A15 based SoCs are just around the corner - so why not give us a phone that is at least on par with one announced 9 months earlier?!

Right now I have a Nexus S I thought was going to be temporary for a few months only, but I have a hard time swallowing the idea of buying a 1year newer phone with the same gpu and IPC performance.
 
Galaxy Nexus is the official name of the Nexus Prime. And it should be a very "great" phone, as the way you defined it.

Another phone to consider is, of course, the iPhone 4S. What they lack in hardware, they made up in software.

And upon that note, Nokia should be announcing something excellent as well in a week at Nokia World, coded named Sea Ray. And I'm guessing that this phone probably has the best manufacturing quality, because it's Nokia. And supposedly the Samsung Focus S is coming in November/December as well, which has the best screen in all WP7 devices.
 
CHANG3D said:
Galaxy Nexus is the official name of the Nexus Prime. And it should be a very "great" phone, as the way you defined it.

Another phone to consider is, of course, the iPhone 4S. What they lack in hardware, they made up in software.

And upon that note, Nokia should be announcing something excellent as well in a week at Nokia World, coded named Sea Ray. And I'm guessing that this phone probably has the best manufacturing quality, because it's Nokia. And supposedly the Samsung Focus S is coming in November/December as well, which has the best screen in all WP7 devices.
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Like I said, I won't touch anything apple.

I don't know how closely you have been following the Galaxy Nexus, but I think my point was that it doesn't seem to live up to my ill-defined definition of "great." It has a great screen, nice form factor, and ICS which is great. However, it has taken a step backwards when it comes to processor, graphics, and camera; or so it seems anyway (like I said, I'm not an expert on phone internals).

Totenblume gets where I'm coming from. They seem to take one big step forward, but several small steps back with each new phone.
 
JapaneseGorilla said:
Like I said, I won't touch anything apple.

I don't know how closely you have been following the Galaxy Nexus, but I think my point was that it doesn't seem to live up to my ill-defined definition of "great." It has a great screen, nice form factor, and ICS which is great. However, it has taken a step backwards when it comes to processor, graphics, and camera; or so it seems anyway (like I said, I'm not an expert on phone internals).

Totenblume gets where I'm coming from. They seem to take one big step forward, but several small steps back with each new phone.
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Sorry, I skipped the part about Apple the first time around. May I ask you why? (Some people have a funny story, and I'm just cataloging it!)

About your concerns about the Galaxy Nexus, first, the processor should not be any worse than the one in the Galaxy SII. The graphics... yup, boo! And the camera remains to be seen. It might be 5 MP, but there's a lot more to image quality than mega-pixels. So until there is a 1:1 test vs the current camera champ, the Galaxy SII, we don't know. But, I have to agree with you somewhat. 2 days ago, I was convinced to buy the Nexus S for a penny. But then I slept over that decision and I realized that the Super HD AMOLED screen is so frigging superior to anything, and possibly will still be the best screen in the next 2 years until 1080p screens at this form factor becomes cost effective. So having a screen like that pays for itself.

About my suggestions of WP7, it is true that WP7 does not have the best hardware. But it's much more than just hardware. WP7 is a highly user friendly and user experience efficient system. Microsoft also optimize it to the extreme. I know no one personally who doesn't like the WP7. Even this total Apple fanboy I know has WP7 now (coming from iPhone 4) after forced to develop on it! I might make the move myself, but I need a really good Google Voice intergration (because I'm playing with fire as what my friends would say). Nokia's Sea Ray does totally scream manufacturing quality to me, so that's what I'm also weighing.
 
people care about the graphics cards and processors like it is really going to matter at the end, as long as the user experience is great and seamless. I mean on everyday use of the phone, I highly doubt you will be able to see a difference between cpu/gpu on the new phones coming out. It is true if you are so picky about everything in a phone you will never find a perfect one. Trust me, there will never be a perfect phone. I can live with a 720p screen and a dual core omap 4460 and a highly clocked sgx.

It is not a gaming computer people.
 
JapaneseGorilla said:
Am I reading too far into the comments that I've been reading about the nexus prime? Am I mistaking nit picking for glaring flaws?
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I think you are. Unless you want your phone to be a PSP, then I really can't think of any reason to make a big deal out of things like the GPU. And the people I know who do game a lot on their phones usually just play SNES and GB games which don't need the GPU.

The vast majority of what most people do involves website browsing and flash, and current phones already handle that quite well, without the hardware acceleration. The Prime and Razr are incredibly slim, have great screens and are quite fast, especially as LTE phones. The Razr has fantastic battery life to boot. What else are you planning to do with your phone that really requires extra power?
 
JapaneseGorilla said:
Like I said, I won't touch anything apple.

I don't know how closely you have been following the Galaxy Nexus, but I think my point was that it doesn't seem to live up to my ill-defined definition of "great." It has a great screen, nice form factor, and ICS which is great. However, it has taken a step backwards when it comes to processor, graphics, and camera; or so it seems anyway (like I said, I'm not an expert on phone internals).

Totenblume gets where I'm coming from. They seem to take one big step forward, but several small steps back with each new phone.
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I'm not sure how you know the cps, gpu, and camera suck on the Galaxy Nexus. If you watched the the unveiling or read the reviews afterwards then you would know that the camera is great, the CPU is a workhorse, and I can't say much about the GPU but I can't imagine it would be worse than what is in the Galaxy Tab.

You seem to what a guaranteed 100% package and that just isn't going to happen. Apple's 4s is pretty damn good for a phone and fits everything you asked for, the GS2 apears to be pretty damn good also, as well as a variety of other Android phones running various rom's that match personal preference.
 
Climber said:
I'm not sure how you know the cps, gpu, and camera suck on the Galaxy Nexus. If you watched the the unveiling or read the reviews afterwards then you would know that the camera is great, the CPU is a workhorse, and I can't say much about the GPU but I can't imagine it would be worse than what is in the Galaxy Tab.
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The model numbers for those have already been announced and the GPU is the same one that was in phones 2 generations old. It's not hard to predict performance based off of that. As far as the camera is concerned, various blogs have started posting pictures and the camera looks like it's complete crap. ICS software was the only thing that was impressive about it.
 
I'm looking for a high-end LTE phone with a keyboard on Verizon. I'll probably be waiting a while for that. Most slider phones that are coming out recently are all low to mid-range. All the high-end phones lately are pretty much slates. :(
 
Jaerb4 said:
I think you are. Unless you want your phone to be a PSP, then I really can't think of any reason to make a big deal out of things like the GPU. And the people I know who do game a lot on their phones usually just play SNES and GB games which don't need the GPU.

The vast majority of what most people do involves website browsing and flash, and current phones already handle that quite well, without the hardware acceleration. The Prime and Razr are incredibly slim, have great screens and are quite fast, especially as LTE phones. The Razr has fantastic battery life to boot. What else are you planning to do with your phone that really requires extra power?
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They matter because current mobile browsers still trail desktop counter parts by a long shot.

For me the magical point is when well designed rich media websites take less than 300ms to load. Until then, more processing and graphical power is never enough.
 
It's kinda disappointing the Galaxy Nexus didn't have an Exynos processor. But I think Exynos can't be paired up with LTE or HSPA+ 42 for some technical reason. For example T-Mobile wanted their Galaxy S II to support HSPA+ 42, so their phone went with OMAP4 instead of Exynos.

Would have been nice to have the best graphics processor, but I think I'd take the fastest data modem instead anyway.

Not sure how good the SGX540 GPU is. I just want something good enough to play 1080P videos I rip off the internet and 720P MKV videos. Tegra 2 absolutely sucked at that task. Hopefully the SGX540 is a step up and capable.

Though I might end up waiting for something else because I want micro SD on my phone.

Otherwise though, the Galaxy Nexus looks like an awesome phone. If you don't have a big hangup about micro SD like I do, then I probably would just get this.
 
Ravynmagi said:
Not sure how good the SGX540 GPU is. I just want something good enough to play 1080P videos I rip off the internet and 720P MKV videos. Tegra 2 absolutely sucked at that task. Hopefully the SGX540 is a step up and capable.
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From what I've read, it's the same chip that was in the nexus s. Apparently it's from 2007.....
 
Its fascinating to see how the roles have reversed -

Apple focused on improved specs in the 4S since iOS is still the same (except Siri)
Google focused on the improved user experience since the hardware is not that impressive.

Apple is breaking all sales records, and people are complaining that the Prime is not the superphone they expected.
 
Okay, I've said this in another thread, but I'm going to reiterate it here.

You folks talking about the SGX540 being outdated and weak don't know what the heck you're talking about. The SGX540 is a very powerful GPU that has been bottlenecked by crappy slow LPDDR1 single-channel memory for the 18 months it has been in production, up until it finally landed in Cortex-A9 SoCs that use dual-channel LPDDR2 with dual memory controllers.

So go look at the performance of the SGX540 in the TI OMAP 4430 in the Droid 3 and add ~26% more performance, because that's how much faster the SGX540 is clocked in the TI OMAP 4460 (which is in the Galaxy Nexus).

Lastly, go and read about how the SGX 5xx are the only GPUs that use TBDR and order independent hidden surface removal. What does this mean? It means that it's capable of drastically reducing overdraw without having to have the app specifically optimized with front-to-back vertices to allow early-z rejection in IMRs like Adreno, NVIDIA ULP GeForce, and Mali GPUs.

If you can't be bothered, let me put it simply. Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX5xx chips don't have to have apps optimized for smartphone GPUs to run well. They also require somewhat less bandwidth than the other smartphone GPUs.

Don't get me wrong; the SGX540 in the Galaxy Nexus is not going to set any records; in Android phones, Mali-400 is currently the king (though the SGX540 can beat it in high-polygon-count situations).

So please, stop being ignorant and acting as if knowing how to throw down a model number that's been around for a while means you know anything about how well it performs. Smartphone GPUs are limited primarily by the speed of the phone's memory bandwidth, and generally run at a fraction of the clock speed they are capable of because of those limitations. Remove those limitations, and you can apply the clock speeds the GPU is truly capable of.
 
Ravynmagi said:
I just hope it can play my HD videos and not stutter.
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Video playback has nothing to do with the GPU. It's handled by the SoC, using either a set of instructions handled by the CPU (FPU/VFP), or a special instruction set called NEON coupled with a hardware co-processor.

The TI OMAP4460 has NEON support, so it won't have stutter.

Tegra 2 did not include NEON, and thus the HD video stutter on those SoCs. Poor choice on NVIDIA's part IMO... they ended up putting the Tegra 250 SoC into a ton of tablets, which people mostly use for media playback. Dropping NEON out of Tegra 250 meant losing a powerful hardware encoder/decoder, and hurt video playback performance on devices used primarily for that purpose.

EDIT - My understanding is that they were pressed for time and short on die space. But the result was unfortunate nonetheless.
 
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Blown 89 said:
The model numbers for those have already been announced and the GPU is the same one that was in phones 2 generations old. It's not hard to predict performance based off of that. As far as the camera is concerned, various blogs have started posting pictures and the camera looks like it's complete crap. ICS software was the only thing that was impressive about it.
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Not sure what blogs your referencing but pretty much all I've seen and read suggests it is a very very good camera, i.e. here is one from the Verge;

The camera — though lower in resolution than Apple’s iPhone 4S and several other devices on the market — takes incredible looking photos. Matias shows a few shots he’s taken with the phone, and I have to double check with him that they weren’t downloaded from a point-and-shoot.
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and yet another...

...The Galaxy Nexus has a 5MP rear camera compared to the Droid RAZR's 8MP camera. Remember, though, that megapixels alone don't determine image quality; most early reports, in fact, suggest that the Galaxy Nexus's camera is actually quite good.
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I will give you that the I don't know what lens they are using, but the tech demo's were impressive with the fast shutter speed and the time lapse videos and other goodies. With that said, the camera isn't all that of a big deal to me but it is nice to have something to serve in a pinch or just hanging out with friends.

Blown 89 said:
The model numbers for those have already been announced and the GPU is the same one that was in phones 2 generations old. It's not hard to predict performance based off of that.
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I am disappointed in the lower end GPU, but if ICS is optimized for the GPU then we'll probably see some nice benefits from that. I think Google sorta underestimated gaming potential for it and focused more or less on video playback which is where the OMAP shines, as well as taking advantage of the dual channel memory controller. As it currently stands yes, the 4s is the regining champ but until we get some side by side hardware evals we're just speculating.
 
Ravynmagi said:
I just hope it can play my HD videos and not stutter.
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TI is bragging up their programmable HD video encoding/decoding hardware on the 4460, so I'd hope so: http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/mobile_m...ct-android-4-0-runs-on-the-omap-platform.aspx
TI said:
IVA 3 multimedia accelerator

- Full HD 1080p30 multi-standard video encode/decode
- Hardwired codecs deliver high performance at low power levels
- Programmable DSP provides flexibility for future codecs VTC 1080p30
- Provides support for high definition stereoscopic 3D encode/decode (OMAP4430: 720p, OMAP4460: 1080p)
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Here's a full breakdown of the image/video encoding/decoding hardware in OMAP4: http://omappedia.org/wiki/Ducati_For_Dummies
 
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Climber said:
Not sure what blogs your referencing but pretty much all I've seen and read suggests it is a very very good camera[\quote]The photos Engadget posted were horrible and photos from other sites were the same.
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Blown 89 said:
The photos Engadget posted were horrible and photos from other sites were the same.
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I agree that most of the employee 'leaked' photos and quick snaps weren't very impressive in the slightest.

However, going by the TIMN side-by-side photos (http://thisismynext.com/2011/10/19/galaxy-nexus-vs-iphone-4s/), I call it for the GNex in all but the last photo (the GNex focus is a bit softer). But neither look very good. Tech bloggers machine gun snapping floor pics in office lighting with little regard for focus then compressing more on upload apparently isn't exactly the most flattering situation for a camera. :eek:

With that being said, I'm not sure how anyone wouldn't be impressed by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhlL-ys5iOA (make sure to kick it up to 1080p)
 
Blown 89 said:
The photos Engadget posted were horrible and photos from other sites were the same.
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Endgaget's photos were the only ones I saw that were really bad but really you took those seriously? Low light, obviously shaken, and direct fluorescent shots don't tell the picture. Maybe recommend that endgadget doesn't send a recovering meth addict on withdrawals to take their pictures next time. :D
 
gwu168 said:
They matter because current mobile browsers still trail desktop counter parts by a long shot.

For me the magical point is when well designed rich media websites take less than 300ms to load. Until then, more processing and graphical power is never enough.
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There is no desktop counterpart. Given the latency of the 3G and LTE signals themselves, you're not going to get under 300ms. And the GPU isn't affecting any of that.

You can already run HD flash videos from a webpage, that's the mark they were looking for.
 
Climber said:
Endgaget's photos were the only ones I saw that were really bad but really you took those seriously? Low light, obviously shaken, and direct fluorescent shots don't tell the picture. Maybe recommend that endgadget doesn't send a recovering meth addict on withdrawals to take their pictures next time. :D
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What worries me is I think most of us aren't professional photographers. And many of us probably do take pictures like recovering meth addicts (or at least caffeine addicts). While anyone can take decent outdoor pictures, I'm concerned about indoor quality. And sadly those Engadget pictures looked like the mediocre results I get from my older Galaxy S.

So my concern and impression is the camera quality, while capable of taking good pictures in the right conditions with the right skill, is probably still not an improvement from past Samsung cameras.
 
Ravynmagi said:
What worries me is I think most of us aren't professional photographers. And many of us probably do take pictures like recovering meth addicts (or at least caffeine addicts). While anyone can take decent outdoor pictures, I'm concerned about indoor quality. And sadly those Engadget pictures looked like the mediocre results I get from my older Galaxy S.

So my concern and impression is the camera quality, while capable of taking good pictures in the right conditions with the right skill, is probably still not an improvement from past Samsung cameras.
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What worries me is that we're making judgements based upon a handful of pictures taken by demo devices running debug software by someone unfamiliar with the device.

I think we all need to chill out and wait until we see some quality reviews of production devices.
 
Ravynmagi said:
What worries me is I think most of us aren't professional photographers. And many of us probably do take pictures like recovering meth addicts (or at least caffeine addicts). While anyone can take decent outdoor pictures, I'm concerned about indoor quality. And sadly those Engadget pictures looked like the mediocre results I get from my older Galaxy S.

So my concern and impression is the camera quality, while capable of taking good pictures in the right conditions with the right skill, is probably still not an improvement from past Samsung cameras.
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That can't be corrected with a better lens. If your subject doesn't have proper lighting and you don't have a flash or a way to illuminate your subject than no matter what your going to get mediocre results. No matter how good a lens is if you shake it like a Polaroid picture in an outkast video your going to get poor results.

There are some new side by side comparison shots between the nexus and the 4s either on endgadget or the verge and the nexus has better quality imo but we still need to wait and see. I just don't want a lot of negative FUD flying around about a phone I'm excited about. Haha.
 
/chillin

I can agree with that. I'm waiting for the quality reviews.

Regardless, camera quality probably won't have too much weight with my decision. Hope it's good, but if not, it probably won't be a factor in buy or not buying.

Actually I'm probably buying this phone just because it's a Nexus. I really hate waiting on updates or living in fear of not getting updates. And I loved my AMOLED display on my Galaxy S, so certainly want a phone with that as well.
 
Ravynmagi said:
/chillin

I can agree with that. I'm waiting for the quality reviews.

Regardless, camera quality probably won't have too much weight with my decision. Hope it's good, but if not, it probably won't be a factor in buy or not buying.

Actually I'm probably buying this phone just because it's a Nexus. I really hate waiting on updates or living in fear of not getting updates. And I loved my AMOLED display on my Galaxy S, so certainly want a phone with that as well.
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That's the reason I'm considering the phone as well. I have a Vibrant so I don't need to tell you how I feel about updates. The camera is a big deal to me though so I'm holding off for comparisons. If it holds its own I'm dropping money for an off contract 32GB version (assuming it's not retardedly expensive). The Nexus definitely has some downsides but being Google's own phone negates an awful lot of them.
 
I would go ahead and get the G-Nex. It's going to be the best Android phone on the market in terms of hardware and software for at least 4-5 months, which is a long time in the smartphone market these days. But the best part of the phone is the guaranteed updates from Google, whereas every other phone takes 4-5 months minimum to get the update bloated up from the manufacturer/carrier before they release it for their respective phone(s).

I honestly think you can't go wrong with it as long as there's nothing majorly wrong with it that people find when in finally launches (like battery life, major software/security bugs, performance issues, etc.). But I would think Google/Samsung would have done their homework on it before launching it, given how long its taken.
 
Toyed with the Samsung Galaxy S2 for a day, saw that my 4g speeds were more like 2G in my home and area, and the large size, even for my large hands, was a bit too large for my taste and returned it.

I like the size of the iPhone 4S, but wish it had a slightly larger (4 inches) screen, but that won't happen until iPhone 5 comes out next yr I read along with 4G. Played with the iPhone version at the store and was impressed with the size of it, not too big and not too small in my hands. iPhone 4S still has a number of bugs, so I will stick with my flip phone and $29 monthly bill instead of $95 + for a smartphone. No hurries for me.
 
The Nexus sure seems like a 'great' device to me. The specs are awesome and it's 4.0 google phone so you know it will have tons of support.

Razr seems very nice too although the camera and battery life may be questionable from the reviews I've read and who knows when it will get 4.0.
 
Ravynmagi said:
It's kinda disappointing the Galaxy Nexus didn't have an Exynos processor. But I think Exynos can't be paired up with LTE or HSPA+ 42 for some technical reason. For example T-Mobile wanted their Galaxy S II to support HSPA+ 42, so their phone went with OMAP4 instead of Exynos.
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T-Mobile one uses Qualcomm Snapdragon S3 @ 1.5GHz iirc

HSPA+ is already supported on the international version of the SGS2 which uses the Exynos chipset anyway.
 
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