Verizon upgrade time, need some advice

[nathancipher]

I've been rocking my old HTC Eris for quite some time now and was mincing about changing carriers or maybe going prepaid but my situation has changed and I'm going to stick with Verizon for now since my new job requires communications on the road all over the lower 48.

I have some fairly specific needs from a phone, and mainly they all center around GPS. I drive for a living so quick and accurate GPS is a must for me. I also need something that can be rooted or a custom rom installed so I can use GPStether over wifi to send maps and gps info to an android tablet (currently a nook color running cm7.) Battery life is not so important to me as I'm pretty much always near a power source, unless the phone somehow consumes power faster than it charges with wifi and gps on.

Right now I'm looking at the HTC Rezound and the Galaxy Nexus. HTC Rezound has a CM build in alpha and the hardware seems better than the G'Nex, but the G'Nex already has CM. I am also considering keeping a stock ROM and just rooting for the wifi capability I need. Any advice or suggestions?

 

[Shadowprice]

I picked up the Razr Maxx, I absolutely love it. Build quality is fantastic and the battery life is out of this world. It will naturally lack on the software end compared to a Rezound/Nexus which I am okay with, I'm a more casual user on my phone. (calls/text/emails/music/light browsing.) are my main functions, so having the comfortable build quality and battery life to get me through the day makes it very worth it to me. I upgraded from a iPhone 4.

Edit: Just read your post, from what I hear the Rezound is a lot more robust and has a better build quality, while the Nexus has better software support. I remember demoing the nexus and ICS felt nice and clean, but the phone felt a little cheap and the audio levels were low for me.

 

[blackhand1001]

I've been rocking my old HTC Eris for quite some time now and was mincing about changing carriers or maybe going prepaid but my situation has changed and I'm going to stick with Verizon for now since my new job requires communications on the road all over the lower 48.

I have some fairly specific needs from a phone, and mainly they all center around GPS. I drive for a living so quick and accurate GPS is a must for me. I also need something that can be rooted or a custom rom installed so I can use GPStether over wifi to send maps and gps info to an android tablet (currently a nook color running cm7.) Battery life is not so important to me as I'm pretty much always near a power source, unless the phone somehow consumes power faster than it charges with wifi and gps on.

Right now I'm looking at the HTC Rezound and the Galaxy Nexus. HTC Rezound has a CM build in alpha and the hardware seems better than the G'Nex, but the G'Nex already has CM. I am also considering keeping a stock ROM and just rooting for the wifi capability I need. Any advice or suggestions?

My dad has the rezound and I have the nexus. I Would get the nexus or get the razr maxx ( that battery is too good to give up). The rezound is nice too but sense 3.5 is a little bloated compared to sense 1.0.

 

[nascasho]

Wow, was in your shoes last week, ended up with the Nexus because it'll be the first the get every new update. Guess it's a Google thing. Also some of the best if the THE best Dev's create some crazy ROM's for it, then again so do other phones, but for a phone that's not that old, it's got HUGE support.

I was also looking at the MAXX, didn't get it because I felt I wasn't really a power user of my phone, so don't need the battery life. The standard RAZR is $100 cheaper though, and I think they already have an ICS rom out.

If you get the Nexus I recommend AOKP and franko kernels, and set your DPI to 240 and mind = blown.

 

[T4rd]

Galaxy Nexus if battery isn't as much of a concern. Otherwise I would go with the Razr Maxx. Not that the Nexus has bad battery life, but the Maxx is significantly better than anything else.

I'm not sure why you say the Rezound has better hardware than the Nexus though? It may have a higher clock speed CPU, but the Cortex A9 CPUs (such as the OMAP and Exynos SoCs in the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S II) have consistently shown to be faster clock-for-clock than the Snapdragons (what's in all HTC phones). So CPU performance is about the same despite the different clock speeds. The GPU is definitely better too as the Adreno graphics in the Snapdragon SoCs have been trailing the SGX and Mali GPUs since they were created.

I would definitely go for the Nexus based on your criteria though. It's the best at all that, including GPS since it has super fast GPS lock-on due to the internal barometer to help it fix on elevation faster.

 

[nathancipher]

Galaxy Nexus if battery isn't as much of a concern. Otherwise I would go with the Razr Maxx. Not that the Nexus has bad battery life, but the Maxx is significantly better than anything else.

I'm not sure why you say the Rezound has better hardware than the Nexus though? It may have a higher clock speed CPU, but the Cortex A9 CPUs (such as the OMAP and Exynos SoCs in the Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S II) have consistently shown to be faster clock-for-clock than the Snapdragons (what's in all HTC phones). So CPU performance is about the same despite the different clock speeds. The GPU is definitely better too as the Adreno graphics in the Snapdragon SoCs have been trailing the SGX and Mali GPUs since they were created.

I would definitely go for the Nexus based on your criteria though. It's the best at all that, including GPS since it has super fast GPS lock-on due to the internal barometer to help it fix on elevation faster.

See and this right here is why I come to [H]. I didn't know any of that about the cpu clocks or the gpu's. Thanks for the info, looks like I'll be getting the Nexus. I almost got suckered by a spec sheet apparently.

 

[lodingi]

I hope the op made his purchase yesterday. Verizon had a Leap Year sale giving $100 of any 4G phone. If not, do some reading over at Android Central's forums. The Nexus is a wonky device, that has some issues. I got a Nexus at launch. Had lots of annoying issues that frustrated me, so I returned it.

My wife has the Rezound & it's a very good, stable device. Don't worry about the processor nonsense. The Rezound is plenty fast. One advantage it has over the Nexus, is its ability to do simultaneous voice & data over 3G.