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I think there is a HUGE audience of people righ tnow who have the 6800 model phone (Titan) who want to upgrade to the Raphael/Touch Pro, but feel the price right now just isn't worth it, with the cheapest new Raphael listing at $480! Ouch!
So, I am hoping that people who previously owned the HTC Titan/6800, can shed some light about what is so much better about the Raphael. Both have a flip out keyboard, both can take SD cards upwards of 8gb, both can do GPS, data/text/video/pics, etc...
I welcome all input from all Raphael owners, but I am really interested in those that used to own the Titan, an dnow use the Raphael.
THANKS!! I think this will help bridge the gap between Titan users still holding out, or perhaps convince them to stick with the Titan, we will see.
===
I posted this here instead of the Titan forum because most Raphael users don't visit the Titan forums anymore, so I figured I would get more responses here. Once the thread is well-established, I will post a link in the Titan forums to read what everyone wrote
It's way better than the Mogul, in my opinion. The only thing lacking is the multiple hard buttons like on the Mogul, but I'm gradually getting used to it. The keyboard keys are a little smaller and are taking some re-training, but I like the 5 rows better than 4.
Otherwise...
The abundance of RAM on the Touch Pro makes this device superior in almost every way possible.
The screen is amazing.
Build quality is better, and the keyboard feels more solid than the Mogul's when sliding out.
Voice quality is so-so... not better than the Mogul but not worse.
The speed of the user interface is great.
I sold my Mogul well over 8 months ago because I was so sick of the issues of it..
The biggest issue I had was the memory leak issue... The phone would slow to a crawl...
I went out and purchased the Touch Pro last week...
The difference is night and day between the two phones..
yes the touch pro is still slow at times but it doesnt require a reset to fix the issue and i havent experienced ANY memory leak issues yet.
The camera is amazing for a cell phone
It looks amazing...
The only think i liked better on the mogul was the speaker.. mine sounds tinney and has no clarity whatsoever.
I loved my 6800 but I was rebooting constantly to keep it running. I rarely reboot with my touch pro. The RAM upgrade is the biggest reason I love it. The VGA screen is the other. The Touch Pro is everything I wished my mogul was. The G-Sensor is great too. No more manually flipping the screen or popping the keyboard out.... I wish it had more buttons to map things too like the mogul, but it's minor.
i'm still using my titan (only with wifi), and i love it. for what i do with both of the phones, i think the battery lasts slightly longer on my titan than my touch pro. other than that, the touch pro is amazing and beautiful. the titan is more utilitarian and all business. the touch pro, i love because i can leave all sorts of programs running in the background and still have something like 35%-45% free ram. i bought my phone at best buy with the final price being around two hundred dollars. they told me that their insurance policy was better than sprint's, but i still have the $7 TEP. i do miss the titan's jog wheel, start and ok buttons, the wifi switch, the five-way joy-stick thing (i still press the talk or end button sometimes using my touch pro), and the size of the buttons on the hardware keyboard (the touch pro's are very slightly smaller because there are a greater number of keys).
Pros:
-Much better keyboard
-Phone is more appealing to the eye
-the system RAM is a big improvement!
-the screen is simply amazing
Cons:
-Straight out of the box, the phone is SLOWER than my No2Chem rommed Titan. I don't blame the hardware, I blame TF3D and the ROM. I took TF off immediately and saw a big improvement, done all the speed tweaks and it is better, but I still think the Sprint stock ROM makes it very slow and inefficient.
-Keep your 6800 charger if you can help it, the cord on the new charger is very short
-lack of buttons
At the end of the day; I miss my Mogul a lot but I like this phone too. I guess I am still on the fence to which I like better
I had the 6700 and when i got the 6800, i could not put the thing down. Then i got the tp-6850, and i have to say i would never ever go back. This phone just seems to flow, all the others had so much lag. Yeah i know they were older, but this one just seems to have caught up to being able to run the programs with minimal lag. Of course the day will come that the tp will join the 6700 and 6800 in being a thing of the past.
hooges said:
Pros:
-Much better keyboard
-Phone is more appealing to the eye
-the system RAM is a big improvement!
-the screen is simply amazing
Cons:
-Straight out of the box, the phone is SLOWER than my No2Chem rommed Titan. I don't blame the hardware, I blame TF3D and the ROM. I took TF off immediately and saw a big improvement, done all the speed tweaks and it is better, but I still think the Sprint stock ROM makes it very slow and inefficient.
-Keep your 6800 charger if you can help it, the cord on the new charger is very short
-lack of buttons
At the end of the day; I miss my Mogul a lot but I like this phone too. I guess I am still on the fence to which I like better
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually thought the phone was quite functional and eye pleasing strait out of the box. I think they got a fairly good handle on the stock ROM. Still not my cup of tea, as I like flashing custom. But imagine the average joe user that just uses the phone......I don't know how mogul users were ever happy with that phone strait out of the box? It was terrible. My TP out of the box wasn't choppy slow, just a lot of minor annoyances. Like tacking on sprint to music tab and what not...
Design of the TP is pretty good. I REALLY miss the scroll wheel like other said. This is taking some serious getting used to. But the strait sexyness of the phone more than makes up for it, not to mention the added hardware.
This phone has great potential....looking forward to messing with it.
Although it's not fair to compare my stock Titan to a modified rom Touch Pro, I am getting twice the battery life (2 days) with good usage on my TP after running Y4G rom. I'm so glad I upgraded.
I agree with what most other are saying about the extra memory and better screen alone make the TP better.
The G sensor on the TP is very cool.
I never used the jog wheel on my Mogul, so nothing to miss there.
I've never modified the ROMs in any of my phones with the exception of installing updates from Sprint (I had my Mogul running the latest Sprint ROM with WM6.1 and it worked great) That being said, I think the TP is awsome right out of the box.
I really like the TF3d interface as I have big fingers and had a lot of trouble trying to touch the Mogul screen (I always had to use the stylus) I can use my fingers on the TP with no problem.
The KB is much better because the numbers have their own row, just like a normal KB.
And last (but not least) I just love the way it looks, it makes the Mogul look cheap.
Ok, GREAT responses, everyone thank you.
So here's a recap...
PRO's
- improved RAM
- no need to reboot often (doesn't slow down as much)
- screen and camera resolutions
- look and feel
CONS:
- less programmable hard-buttons
- smaller keys on keyboard
- no scroll wheel
- current price (lowest brand new price is around $450 USD - ouch!)
- speaker volume/power
The big CON for me is the no scroll wheel. I use that ALL the time when I am typig with it in landscape mode. You can even click with the scroll wheel (most people dont know that), and it makes menus and websites a breeze...you can just scroll down to the next box like on forms/fields and even click buttons like submit just by pressing the wheel down.
The big PRO for me however would be the RAM improvement and not having to reboot as often.
I think the G-sensor (motion sensor) inside would be useless to me. The ONLY time I turn my current 6800 sideways is when I am typing, and since opening the keyboard makes it flip anyway, g-sensor wouldn't help me. I also care more about functionality than "looks" so that PRO of it being sleeker and all would not matter to me since I use mine for GPS, Instant Messaging, and Email, so looks dont matter.
Two unanswered questions:
What about GPS performance? Is it a NMEA chip, or a MTK/Sirf III chipset? (NMEA relies on your number of reception bars, like the 6800, and has a longer cold-lock time. The other two chipsets will work without cell-reception, and are what is indie REAL stand-alone GPS units)
Also, does it come witrh a RevA ROM? Meaning you can use data and voice simultanously? Right now, if I have my instant messenger running, it signs off when a call comes in, then signs back on when I hang up...I hate that.
I guess the GPS question is my biggest concern since right now I can run TomTom 7 on my 6800, and get free GPS (dont have to pay for a 3rd party program like VZ Naigator), but all 6800's are NMEA (not a real GPS chipset), so what is inside the TouchPro?
Thanks!!
here's the problem: the purported XV6850 or Verizon's TP may be entirely different. The keyboard is a concern with only 10 columns of keys vs 12 on Sprint. So the keys may be bigger, and you still get a number row but the layout is horrible!!!! There's an up arrow in between N and M there's an enter key in the very right bottom corner and a sym key above that. the period is on the left of the space bar! It's a disaster! It also has less ram than Sprints (64MB-92MB less, but possibly more for graphics)
Now these are rumors, but the pictures appear real and are inline with the FCC. Also where's reset hole on the Sprint TP? It appears to be UNDER the battery cover according to the FCC....ouch! I use that button a lot!
Cycomachead said:
here's the problem: the purported XV6850 or Verizon's TP may be entirely different. The keyboard is a concern with only 10 columns of keys vs 12 on Sprint. So the keys may be bigger, and you still get a number row but the layout is horrible!!!! There's an up arrow in between N and M there's an enter key in the very right bottom corner and a sym key above that. the period is on the left of the space bar! It's a disaster! It also has less ram than Sprints (64MB-92MB less, but possibly more for graphics)
Now these are rumors, but the pictures appear real and are inline with the FCC. Also where's reset hole on the Sprint TP? It appears to be UNDER the battery cover according to the FCC....ouch! I use that button a lot!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reset hole is definitely not under the battery cover. It's right next to the micro USB port, just like the Mogul. The Diamond is the one with the reset hole under the battery cover.
Does the Pro Come With Holder for the MiniSD Card?
I bought a Pro in-store. When I checked everything at home, I saw the plastic case for the miniSD card and cardholder. The miniSD card was already inserted in the phone, but there was no cardholder. Does anyone know if the Sprint supplies one in the box? I called Sprint and spoke to tech and sales. Also called the number they gave me to HTC. Neither could give me a clear answer.
I bought the Pro because of the TouchFlo. I don't drive, and I take public transit a lot. I'm often carrying grocery or other bags or holding on the rails on the bus. The Flo capability and the smaller size of the Pro makes one-hand web use, page scrolling, and other functions easier for me. I found it annoyingly hard to use the scroll wheel, stylus, and hard buttons on the Mogul in those instances.
The soft wheel on the Pro provides great 4-way direction, and I like the circle-and-zoom capability. Again, using one hand, I can increase the size of the screen and easily hit the button or link I need.
I am a fan of the new keyboard. It is made out of a harder and more tactile material. I have more confidence in knowing that I'm hitting the right key. Glad they moved the numbers to their own row. Also, the on-screen keyboard is larger. I have few problems hitting the right keys with my fingertips.
The camera is more complicated than on the Mogul. There are sub menus to access to change basic things like resolution. There are fewer zoom options. Although there are a lot more customization options on the Pro, I like the Mogul's camera/video interface design better.
some poetic license please
I realize I am not really supposed to reply to this because I don't have a TP yet, it arrives Tuesday from Alltel for me. I do have a 6800 that replaced a 6700 and run stock ROM's generally with a lot of registry hacks and software enhancements from XDA usually. I am upgrading for two reasons, one I travel a lot, in fact at times I live in hotels more than at home and I hate carrying a heavy notebook that takes forever to boot up and drags like crazy when I VPN to our enterprize software apps back at the plant. So I use a Redfly with my 6800 and it is amazingly good for email, and for remote control of my pc back in my office for those enterprise apps.
But with only 64 meg of RAM the 6800 is down to about 10 meg after the Redfly comes online so forget about Opera, or PIE. The only browser you can use well is a server based one like Opera Mini or maybe Skyfire someday if they fix the Redfly issue they have. I think the increased RAM in the TP will let me use any Redfly compatible browser including the slightly older Opera (not what comes on the TP) or PIE. That's big for me since I need to surf on the road. So I think you can't minimize the value of more RAM for a Redfly user, though I realize there aren't very many of us. Also any increase in speed is a big deal when you are using your phone as your only travel PC. I expect I will turn off TF3D since it appears to slow the phone down but I will try it first in case it isn't a hassle. The Redfly drivers turn it off anyway when you connect since it is incompatible. Cuz
gsvnet said:
The reset hole is definitely not under the battery cover. It's right next to the micro USB port, just like the Mogul. The Diamond is the one with the reset hole under the battery cover.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I thought but the Verizon version is really different. It has recently appeared on HTC's site.
http://www.htc.com/us/product.aspx?id=76994
That nearly confirms almost everything I have said. You may need to use magnification of some sort but look at that keyboard layout.
I've been in several discussions with users that have come from (or previously owned) the 5 inch HTC Advantage. I see Dell Streak users have a thread to compare/contrast to the Note, so I thought I would do the same for the Advantage. This may help some to decide to move from the Advantage to the Note - or not.
For those that don't know what the Advantage is, it came out 5 years ago - the first phone with a 5" screen. It also included a detachable keyboard, stereo speakers, video port, stylus/pen, and a 8 GB hard drive when most SD cards at the time were below 2 GB. It had its problems, too. Since it was so far ahead of its time it was fairly bulky and heavy even with the keyboard removed. It didn't have a private speaker for phone calls. It had room for a vibration motor internally but it was never implemented even in later models, presumably because it caused problems with the hard drive. The other references in the thread title are the development name, and model names/numbers used by various carriers. Here is the XDA forum for the Advantage: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=351
My personal reaction, as I've told several already, is the Note is by far a better phone. Physical stats, operating system, having things like a private speaker and vibration which the Advantage should have had, all add up. Not to mention that the Note costs 1/3 of what the Advantage did so you have far less to loose. The Note/Android has its deficiencies. I've had to install a half-dozen apps to add features which were built into Windows Mobile - things like incremental ring volume, ability to get more than a single system notification for things like texts and calendar appointments (miss the first one and you've missed your appointment!), or keeping the screen from timing out when it is plugged in or for specific apps. But at least you can extend/improve the OS with apps without unlocking/rooting or flashing to a whole new OS. Which many Advantage owners did including me.
All that said, the Advantage held a special place in my heart. In the 4 1/2 years I used mine, I often told my wife it was the best gadget I had ever owned and I meant it. Which is saying a lot with all the gadgets and computers I've owned since 1984. But the Note is so good that if IT had come out 5 years ago, I'm sure I would be saying the same thing about it right now. Buy one.
I have a x7501 for a few years, but haven't been actively using it in the last few years also (went to iPhone, Android etc). I am interested in the Note, but haven't decided to get one yet.
But I think one fundamental difference is that the Athena is a keyboarded device (you can use it without, but you also loose the stand at the same time). Its stereo speakers and other positioning makes it a mainly landscape orientation device.
I really don't care about its thickness, it's not that bad. It is a bit thick w/ its leather case, but it does that to any other devices anyway.
What I don't like about the Athena: battery life, speed (I'm shocked reviews that said it's fast), photo taken with camera (rear) has off (red) colour (no ROM can fix that). Especially the last piece, it's unforgivable for a $1,500. USD product! The 8GB HDD is both slow, and battery eating, and cannot be turned off.
I just can't say I like it as much as some of you do. I don't hate it, but I don't think it was worth the $1,000. I paid for. If I had paid $1,500. then, I'd have sued them (just kidding).
I lugged the keyboard around for 1 1/2 years, but finally left it on my work desk permanently. Only used it there when I was streaming XM.
I never had a problem with battery life, it would last me much longer than the 12 hours I would go between unplugging in the morning and plugging it back in when I got home. Never had a problem with the camera, either. Good colors all around, not that the quality was that great.
I think you'll like the Note, all the advantages (pun intended) of the 7501 and none of its problems. After you add some apps to tweak the downfalls of the OS.
i'm one, see my siggie
i've had still have that gigantic heavy monstrous HTC 5" for the longest time
still trying to get Android installed on it someday
I had the x7501, then the x7510, and the note is 1/2 as thick, has a "phone" speaker, and besides all of the obvious spec advantages, is lighter and easier to hold. The screen is far more responsive than the old tft pressure technology without the inaccuracy of the iphone/android capacitive blunt-object to write/draw with issue.
all thumbs up for the note... though the Advantage was WAY ahead of its time.
I don't understand these threads. I get that the advantage was way ahead of its time, but it's 5 years old. 5! Would anyone seriously pick the advantage over the note?
I sold my x7501 long ago. Good times, lol.
nstong said:
I don't understand these threads. I get that the advantage was way ahead of its time, but it's 5 years old. 5! Would anyone seriously pick the advantage over the note?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess sometimes people can't let their old devices go.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using XDA
This isn't about keeping the Advantage. Its about comparing one to the other for those that are familiar with the Advantage and loved all of its features.
I think it is not about keeping the Advantage / Athena, may be it's partly nostalgia, partly comparing what's missing on current devices (bad things are not missed, I'm talking about things that users might like or prefer):
1. Stereo speakers. How hard can that be? But so far, iPhone doesn't have it, none of my Android phones up to 4.65" have it, my Tablet P by Sony has a tiny mono speaker. Only the Playbook (once had, now sold), and the Samsung Q1 have stereo speakers and good sound.
2. The metal case has pros and cons. It can get dented and discolouring when bumped / scratched, but it made it more sturdy as it is metal. But at least it is unique, and also makes it feel more premium (until it gets dented, like mine, from dropping, that is). Now everything besides iPhones are just plastics.
3. Magnetic keyboard. Now, no more, never seen and all give way to on screen ones, except a few. But those few, including Blackberry, do not want to do a magnetic keyboard, may be it's the cost, or fear of bad contacts. But again, this is very unique and hasn't been replicated. The see thru window to mimic the status bar on it makes it even cooler.
4. External connections for: USB host (only very lately, there are USB OTG for Android devices, before this, support was very poor, mostly only HID stuff), VGA out, cellular antenna, GPS antenna. Granted, the last 3 are not as needed today, and some Android devices have HDMI outputs that replace VGA more or less.
right now, few Android phones can stand on a desk unless with a kick stand case (which is usually the kind I buy, as I want it stand similar to what Advantage can do w/ the keyboard).
I think some clamshell MIDs like UMID / Viliv had come close to the design of Advantage but physically not as cool, no magnetic keyboard etc.
I guess the problem with modern design is that nobody would make a $1,500. device unless it is for industrial or military use, so they have to save cost and won't engage in fancy design and materials. In the case for Advantage, it's HTC flagship product, so they went all out.
Looking at current HTC products now, there aren't anything really special (I'm talking strictly from the physical point of view, since operating systems are all the same across the manufacturers anyway).
People are often amazed when I tell them that the Note is my third 5" phone. I loved the Advantage and the Dell Streak I had before the Note. No way I can go to a smaller screen. Very happy that the rest of the world is catching on to the benefits of a large screen device. And there are things I miss from Windows Mobile. I found it easier to flash ROMs and change the look and feel of the device.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I717 using xda premium
Is it time for a new Nokia 7280?
"When twilight falls, prowl the night with the mysterious Nokia 7280 phone. Shrouded in the mystery is a passion that will only reveal itself as you slide it open. Its sublime form is exquisitely crafted, leaving you with a slim, sleek object of beauty, unmatched by any other. You and the Nokia 7280 phone, a combination that's as compelling as the night."
The mobile market has changed a lot in recent times. The mobile phone, as we know, was quite petit at one time, the fancier the phone, the smaller it was. If you were a high flier just after the dot com boom, your phone was tiny - Then things like the Panasonic GD55 were the coolest things out there. As media and screens became more and more vibrant and phone capabilities started to expand, people demanded bigger screens to view media, and such, these days all of the flagship phones are 5.5" or even bigger in some cases.
This is further demonstrated by the tablet boom... People demanded tablets - with their 10" screens. Media is consumed now at a higher rate than at any other time.
For most people and most times it's OK - they view movies, read the internet, play games - All of that stuff. Immersed in a world by themselves.
For many people however, the weekend is a time to be anywhere except for alone watching a movie or looking up Pintrest while drinking a tea.
In 2005, Nokia launched the 7280.
A lot of people wondered why anyone would spend $1100 on a phone that... by the days standards, wasn't all that great. Bad battery life, look some learning to interface with, was a pain to text with... But it was simple, it was shaped like lipstick, so it fit in a girls clutch when she went out on the town. Also, it was as fashion phone, and primarily, it was a second phone. Nokia was selling so many phones at the time, that they wanted to sell people more than one! At the time, the 7280 and the 7380 sold pretty alright for what it was. I wouldn't call it a flop, but I wouldn't call it great.
These days... with Galaxy Note's and iPhone 6S's selling quite well, soon enough all of the "smaller" phones will be phased out... I can't even buy a new phone with a 4" screen anymore. What is a girl to do? Carrying a phone around is hardly elegant, and shoving one down ones bra is even less so. Clutches are kind of getting bigger to accommodate bigger phones, but once you've shoved mascara, lipstick, a packet of cigarettes and a few bank cards into it, space can be a premium.
Could another "fashion phone" sell well? One specifically to fit in a clutch and only to be used when one is out of the town? One designed to be a second phone. The components would be cheap, as there is absolutely no need for the latest processors, and 512MB of RAM would suffice, after all, i'm thinking of a slim device, one shaped like a 7280 that is half as thick. Typing SMS's could be done by holding the thing landscape, or maybe even an implementation of Swype.
It would only need one camera, maybe one that is optimised for low light. No need for a front facing camera, but maybe a small screen for selfies if space allows (Like the Samsung DV150F) I don't think multi-tasking would be needed, after all, once you're at home you pop your SIM back into your normal large phone. The light-on hardware would also mean the battery (which would be small) gets at least 12 hours. It could run on a slimmed down OS too, be that iOS, Android or Windows Phone. The light hardware also makes the device cheap, I would hope for no more than $150.
All of the cloud services available these days mean that any SMS's or photos taken would sync up to your normal phone once you get home.
Manufacturers are always looking for new markets, and I think the female fashion market is a big one that no manufacturer caters to.... yet. No-one wants to wear an Apple Watch when they're dressed up to the 9's.
PURPOSE
So 1st and foremost, the plan here is to give you my experience with these 2 phones. Granted, I have only used the Axon 7 for about 3 days now and can say I have yet to fully break it in to find everything that may or may not be right / wrong with it. However, this will be a unbiased look and comparison. I'm neither a fanboy or sheep. No brand affiliation. Not a programmer either, just a pro-sumer Senior Member of XDA willing to get trolled, flamed, etc. for sharing a look at these 2 phones. Hopefully, I can give "the everyday guy / gal look" without getting bogged down in stats, variables or benchmarks. Here goes...
MY BACKGROUND
No one special. Just a guy that likes the latest tech... phones being at the top of the list. I am a nerd. No doubt about that. I think anyone that knows about XDA probably is to some extent. No brand loyalty. Recently, I have had the privilege to try out the following phones:
1. Axon 7
2. OnePlus 3
3. HTC 10
4. LeEcco Le Max 2
5. Huawei P9
6. LG G5
7. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
8. Huawei Mate 8
9. Huawei Nexus 6P
10. LG Nexus 5X
11. Samsung Note 5
12. Apple iPhone 6s+
And probably some more, but these are the most recent. Does that make me qualified to make a review... Maybe. It does make me an idiot that likes new phones, though. I am always looking for something that meets my needs but also is a good phone. Currently with TMobile but have been with ATT, Verizon & Sprint at some point over 20 years of using cell phones.
MY NEEDS
I drive about 40 miles everyday to work (yes, my work week is currently 7 days a week with a few occasional days off). So, with this in mind and where I drive, I need the minimum requirements:
1. Can Stream Music
2. Bluetooth is fully compatible with my 2016 vehicle
3. An equalizer of some sort since I have only switch out my new cars speakers for better ones and don't plan on changing or adding a better sound system.
4. Decent pictures when needed
5. As a nerd, I like to "mesmerize" people with a pay with your phone app like Apple Pay or Android Pay
6. Works with my Huawei Watch
7. Relatively not laggy - will sometimes do some ROM-ing or some customization but since I tend to get rid of the phones quickly I try not to void warranties or make it too non-stock
THE COMPARISON
I am looking at my experience with the OnePlus 3 and the Axon 7 under/around these requirements and some normal stuff like battery, screen, snappiness, heat, speakers, etc. Here goes:
SOUND OVERALL
There is not too many times when I do a review comparison where 1 phone just crushes the other... and I don't mean like crushing an empty aluminum beer can in your hand crushing... I mean like BigFoot crushing late model junk cars at the end of a Monster Truck Rally Crushin'.... 'Mericaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Sorry got carried away there a second. Honestly, how phone manufacturers cannot include a system-wide sound equalizer with all the other STUPID GUI tweaks and bastardizations they do to Android especially is beyond me in 2016. Most people are transitioning to bluetooth headphones or have bluetooth in their cars and for the most part use streaming services to/for music. Yes, there is the occasional dude with the $1000 plug-in headphones that also plugs into a in-line $2000 DAC that only listens to download Loseless Quality Music with the Music App that came with the phone.... with a show of hands, how many fall into this category??? Then why pray tell is this the only music equalization most manufacturers are catering too on their phones (Apple included)? I don't know just wanted to rant a little. With that said though, the inclusion of Dolby ATMOS without having to root on the Axon 7 plus its dual stereo forward facing speakers makes this a non-competition. Yes, you could add ViperATMOSBeatsDon'tcare Mod.zip to a rooted TWRP OnePlus 3... but why should I have to? Why can't some system-wide equalizer be included Mr. FlagShip Killer? Look at their own Community Forum and its one of the most active requests since the OnePlus 3 came out (along with actually using all the RAM the phone has)... Good Work ZTE!!! I'm sure for all you headphone people too that the AXON 7 would dominate even though I have zero to judge that on since I have never taken either the OnePlus 3's headphones nor the AXON 7's headphones out of the box.
WINNER: AXON 7 BigFoot- Crushing OnePlus 3 Grave Digger.
BATTERY
People get bent out of shape nowadays about the "wall hugger" syndrome... this is the need to re-charge your phone more than once, twice, 3-times etc. per day and being attached to a charger constantly. Well, we only have ourselves and technology to blame. Battery technology has yet to progress to a point that adequately matches all the other advances cell phones have made... I can remember in the 90's getting my first Li-ion Battery Cell Phone and was like "WOW!!! I can charge this anytime I want, days of battery life, no need to discharge the whole phone before recharging and no need for extra batteries..." Fast forward almost 30 years... AND its the same type of battery... So no phone truly wins here until technology gets better. This too along with our need for skinny things... women, cocktails, bank account, soda, etc. have phones getting increasingly skinnier without ever considering what it has do with the battery is disturbing. If only we could get back to the simpler times of a bagphone, then the battery could be as big as you want it... AHHH, the simpler times. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Really though, the batteries on both phones perform very similar in my use. The place where they differ the most is the charging. For OnePlus 3, you have to use their proprietary DASH Charge as oppose to QuickCharge 3.0. This means you can only buy OnePlus 3 chargers (or some not trustworthy knock offs) to take advantage of feature... it's not so bad now that they made the car charger available again on their website and the phone comes with a wall plug with the feature... it's just a departure from the standard many others are using and requires new accessory purchases... basically a OnePlus Money Grab.... DASH Charge is slightly faster but not enough for anyone but a battery loving neophyte to really take notice.
WINNER: AXON 7 - Sorry QuickCharge 3.0 Industry Standard beats proprietary DASH Charge even though DASH Charge is slightly faster.
HEAT
Not going to spend much time here. Both phones run Snapdragon 820's. Both phones are metal... guess what... they get hot under stress... so no winners here, only losers. Neither had to be powered off for getting too hot though, like my S7 needed to when I was doing its initial setup... so there's that. :good:
WINNER: Both or None... They get hot under processor stress and in the dreaded "At an event and have your camera constantly on then stick it in your pocket only to have 3rd degree burns on your thighs or butt" Test
SNAPPINESS
Neither phone I have taken the time to Mod or root or stare at compassionately... but both perform really well like they should. Now, let the 6GB vs. 4GB debates begin!!! First, it is well known that even after 2 updates, the OnePlus 3's RAM management is still wonky and does not fully utilize all that RAM. No matter. I can't see an advantage yet. Yes you could AnTuTu-whogivesapoop test them all day. I rather just talked about how using the phone feels. Neither have extensive bastardizations over stock android so neither grinds the phone to a halt like TouchWizCement does. I run the BETA of Sense 8 Launcher for All Android Phones on both. Both phones perform well with it. I have played Pokemon GO! on both along with Clash Royale... both run fine. GPS works good on both and locks in fairly quickly. It isn't the best I have seen but not the LG Worst either Until there's another processor to look at, I think most manufacturers are taking full advantage of the limits of the 820. Throwing RAM at it doesn't dramatically do anything either. I guess it good to always have it in your back pocket if needed.
WINNER: ONEPLUS 3 - Simply because it has more RAM, no real-world experience proves it faster. Fanboy Benchmarkers withstanding
************DISCLAIMER / NEWSFLASH************* FOR IT PEOPLE FROM NEW JERSEY AND/OR GENERAL KNOW-IT-ALLS
YES... One can easily claim that RAM on the face of it has nothing to do with Snappiness since no present day Android phone fully utilizes 4GB let alone 6GB of RAM... The point to be made here is that the OP3 although having more RAM has no advantage in snappiness over an AXON 7. With that said, since both phones cost the same, neither phone is snappier, why not pick the one with more RAM based on stats alone... for this particularly on the face of it unrelated category? Furthermore, there has been many tests of the OP3 that show that RAM in a way DOES influence its snappiness when compared to 4GB phones... not because of the amount of RAM but by OP3's RAM MANAGEMENT. Lastly, although it may seem like a marketing ploy now for OP3 to have 6GB of RAM since it is not needed since it is not utilized.... I have kind of heard this argument before... when phones had 1GB of RAM and 2GB phones were introduced, then when 3GB phones were introduced, etc. etc. and from basically every iSheep out there, that more RAM does not necessarily make a phone better or faster. Albeit true for the most part for Apple because they spend a vast amount of time developing their RAM Management and have iOS lock down, for Android and what seems to be a lack of development on this front, RAM amounts increase to handle the sloppiness of the RAM Management and/or lack of focus on developing this overlooked section of the phone's programming. Basically, OP3 moves the needle for better or worst towards 6GB at the same price as 4GB... more is more in this one scenario only...
DISPLAY
Not much to mention here either. Both have good displays. On paper, the AXON 7's is better. I would say that the average person not knowing that one has higher resolution than the other would have a hard time calling it out. Color reproduction is about the same on both as well. Neither have a "always-on" feature which would have been nice. Both have LED's for notifications. Here's where once again you just have to stick with the stats and say....
WINNER: AXON 7 - higher stats mean better screen right!!!!???
PHONE DESIGN
Wow! a bit to talk about here. Let's start on both phones exterior features and design. Both are designed well. Definitely not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. The AXON 7 was designed with help from BMW and significantly improves on the previous generation iteration, like having actual speakers in both of the speaker grill looking forward facing top and bottom of screen. I do have the gold AXON 7... the color isn't the greatest but I wasn't going to wait for the gray one to come out to test it... I might return the gold for a gray if they become available in my return window. The OnePlus 3 is a pretty phone too. It doesn't have a firm like BMW attached to it, but one feels they did a good job of improving on the OnePlus 2 design without getting away from their bread and butter core design elements. With that, I love the alert slider... call me an isheep but I feel to this day that it is the single greatest design advantage the iPhone has had over any Android phone for years now. Although not as perfectly functional as Apples is, the OnePlus 3 is a great feature. Both have excellent fingerprint readers. Very fast. For my use case, a front facing fingerprint reader is better. That's my use case, in a cradle, in my car, that I get in and out of while sometime leaving my phone in the cradle, makes the front facing reader slightly more convenient. NFC chip and camera placement good on both as well. AXON 7 does have one design characteristic that I found annoying and I noticed while playing Clash Royale.... the power button is on the right side of the phone near the center. While playing and trying to drag drop to the top of the screen, you can easily inadvertently toggle the on/off button, this might be the button is overly sensitive or just my clumsiness. OnePlus 3 scores some extras too with swapstyle cases... Why can't other phone manufacturers take notes here. I think it is great that I can get relatively cheap exclusively designed nice looking cases for my OnePlus 3... for the AXON 7, I'm stuck with Chinese knock off cheesy poop designed cases with TPU raining from skies... I need a case and sure the first thing that comes to mind when I get a nice looking professionally designed by BMW phone is to put it into a TPU trashcan of a case because 0.0 (zero point zero) cases by ZTE are available or even look worthy of residing on the phone.... yep, I so love it. AXON 7 does step it up with one thing, SD card compatibility. More storage... sure I can use that anytime...
WINNER: TIED - OnePlus 3 would have won here, but not having SD Card capability is just dumb... especially since you used the space for a dual SIM.
*********************ADDITIONAL DESIGN DISCUSSION************CAPACITIVE BUTTONS ON THE AXON 7**********************
Purposely I left this discussion out about the capacitive buttons on the AXON 7. WHY? You may ask. At first, like many, when I heard that not only does the AXON 7 only have capacitive buttons without the option to toggle to turn them off for on-screen buttons, the buttons themselves do not light up, did make me a little worried. But to not buy a phone based on a untested worry is just fear mongering at it best, plus I bought my AXON 7 from Amazon so that I could easily return it if I hated it. Well, surprisingly the capacitive button "issue" is really just a bunch of hype... yes, I do think that OP3 has the advantage here with the toggle for on-screen and that its buttons light up. However, the AXON 7 does provide a on-screen button solution although it is way more sloppy looks wise then OP3's. The whole light up button thing to me can be excused by what was an intentional design choice by ZTE. So, unlike the OP3 which has its all app and back buttons spread out along the bottom of the display, the AXON 7 distinctively has its all-app and back buttons crowded towards the center closer to the central home button. Why do this? Well, from my use in dark rooms and at night, it makes not seeing the actual buttons not an issue. Let me explain further. I know from muscle memory that the home button is in center of the bottom of screen... pretty easy to hit in a completely dark room unless I'm drunk that is... being able to do this on muscle memory then in turn with a slight adjustment to the right, makes it easy to hit the back button (setup for right hand in the AXON 7's setting) and same to the left with the all apps button. If the buttons were spaced out like OP3's without lights then it would be an issue... but in this case and what I hope is design answering function, the AXON 7 doesn't have an issue... once again to me, maybe not you.... hahahahaha
CAMERA
I have done a couple of these reviews and every time I point out that I am not a big fan of cameras on phones. I went to school for photography and movie making back when film was still used. Have seen lenses that cost more than my current house and have seen Ansel Adams original prints first hand. So, it makes me a camera snob... thus, my opinion of on phone cameras is that they are all Bantha PooDoo. However, improvements are made with every new phone and even though innovations have seem to slow in favor of the pixel wars... one day they might be great.
Looking at both and later I will put up some similar shots from both, each phone have decent cameras. The OnePlus performs better in low light especially however I would not count the AXON 7 out in the cold as I feel that the AXON 7's low light difficulties might be able to be corrected with feature updates. The AXON 7 does have it's ripoff version of a "live photo" that works pretty decent plus some decent scenario modes that just work better for pictures I may take. The OnePlus 3's camera software is just basic with good custom manual settings. The AXON 7 has manual mode as well. Like I said, I will upload some similar shots from each and you can decide.
WINNER: TBD
CONCLUSION
So, what can I conclude? Both phones are awesome... Both have plus and minuses. I don't think there's a clear hands down winner and would not want to argue that point. I can only tell you that beyond everything else that the lack of a system-wide equalizer for sound just annoys little brown stinkies out of me. My commute to work is a big part of my day sometimes 7 days a week. I want to listen to Sirius XM app and Google Play Music so it sound great in my car. I want to set some equalization that make it sound awesome then forget it is even there. Not constant resetting of bass boost, tweaking sound to have it all reset again and again. Why provide a basic equalizer in Google Play Music on the OnePlus 3 that always has the bass setting reset when a call comes in, you switch to a new app or the crappy RAM Management software kicks it out of memory even though you locked it into memory on the all apps screen? That just pains me... If OnePlus does listen to their customer base, maybe just maybe they will add one in a future OTA update. Who knows. Having had the original AXON, I have to say that this phone is definitely an improvement and is worth checking out if you liked the original. I am still a little off-put by the fact that ZTE has done very little to support this phone with accessories like cases and stuff making me hit Aliexpress for the Oscar the Grouch specials that they have there. Could you survive with either one of these phones as your next new phone... of course! Hopefully, this little review will help you out in that decision. Lastly and as always, this is just Some Guys Opinion...
:highfive:
Newsflash - Having 6gb of RAM doesn't make a phone more snappy than a 4gb phone... people need to stop thinking this...4gb is more than enough RAM for even the most hardcore user...6gb is just a gimmick for sales.
gparmar76 said:
Newsflash - Having 6gb of RAM doesn't make a phone more snappy than a 4gb phone... people need to stop thinking this...4gb is more than enough RAM for even the most hardcore user...6gb is just a gimmick for sales.
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Newsflash- didn't say it did but with proper RAM management it COULD in theory be more snappy if it kept more apps in memory not requiring them to be reloaded. Also if the phones are the same price why not have more. Was pretty much my point. It makes no difference but higher quantity wins out. Your argument is the same for better displays 1080p is good enough why would you need more? Because they can and do... Snore
mahst68 said:
Newsflash- didn't say it did but with proper RAM management it COULD in theory be more snappy if it kept more apps in memory not requiring them to be reloaded. Also if the phones are the same price why not have more. Was pretty much my point. It makes no difference but higher quantity wins out. Your argument is the same for better displays 1080p is good enough why would you need more? Because they can and do... Snore
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lol...why don't you read what you wrote...Snappiness -OP3 simply because it has more RAM.
All I'm saying is you're wrong...the OP3 could very well be "snappier" but it sure as hell isn't because it has 6gb of memory... memory management issues or not...the only time RAM would take away from a modern day smartphone's speed or cause heavy lag would be if it had very low amount of RAM (512mb or 1gb)....even 2gb phones run great on Android M...most high end phones that have 3 or more GB of memory never use all of it...you could load up 250,apps simultaneously and you would never use 4gb of memory...trust me I've tried and I'm using the OP2...most if not ALL issues related to lag these days or just spotty performance in the UK is related to the OS and how the OEM implemented it...heavy skinning, bloatware, etc etc.
gparmar76 said:
lol...why don't you read what you wrote...Snappiness -OP3 simply because it has more RAM.
All I'm saying is you're wrong...the OP3 could very well be "snappier" but it sure as hell isn't because it has 6gb of memory... memory management issues or not...the only time RAM would take away from a modern day smartphone's speed or cause heavy lag would be if it had very low amount of RAM (512mb or 1gb)....even 2gb phones run great on Android M...most high end phones that have 3 or more GB of memory never use all of it...you could load up 250,apps simultaneously and you would never use 4gb of memory...trust me I've tried and I'm using the OP2...most if not ALL issues related to lag these days or just spotty performance in the UK is related to the OS and how the OEM implemented it...heavy skinning, bloatware, etc etc.
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Bra- I know you guys in the UK think you invented English language but...
The whole paragraph explains that neither the Axon 7 or the OP3 is faster or more snappy. In so much as this is true, why not have 6GB of RAM if it doesn't cost more. Thus exactly what I wrote rather than the trainwreck you wrote :
WINNER: ONEPLUS 3 - Simply because it has more RAM, no real-world experience proves it faster. Fanboy Benchmarkers withstanding
Which simply means in headlines, newsflashes or whatever else makes you feel like you are telling someone that you're important that when 2 phones perform the same, might as well have the one with more stuff, regardless if it helps or not...
I prefer that I pick who puts words in my mouth and it turns out you're not one of them
mahst68 said:
Bra- I know you guys in the UK think you invented English language but...
The whole paragraph explains that neither the Axon 7 or the OP3 is faster or more snappy. In so much as this is true, why not have 6GB of RAM if it doesn't cost more. Thus exactly what I wrote rather than the trainwreck you wrote :
WINNER: ONEPLUS 3 - Simply because it has more RAM, no real-world experience proves it faster. Fanboy Benchmarkers withstanding
Which simply means in headlines, newsflashes or whatever else makes you feel like you are telling someone that you're important that when 2 phones perform the same, might as well have the one with more stuff, regardless if it helps or not...
I prefer that I pick who puts words in mouth and it turns out your not one of them
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"BRA" It was spell check that changed UI to UK... would have thought that was clearly evident...but alas...
And I know what he was implying...bra...lol...aren't bras worn by women? Maybe you mean Bruh?
gparmar76 said:
"BRA" It was spell check that changed UI to UK... would have thought that was clearly evident...but alas...
And I know what he was implying...bra...lol...aren't bras worn by women? Maybe you mean Bruh?
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Nope I meant to call you "bra" and spell check had my back. Bruh is for my bruhs. "Bra" is for someone exactly like you because since you must wear them since you're a little biatch... Trolling flaming gnome. Go get in line for Harry Potter and have a nice day BRA
mahst68 said:
PURPOSE
So 1st and foremost, the plan here is to give you my experience with these 2 phones. Granted, I have only used the Axon 7 for about 3 days now and can say I have yet to fully break it in to find everything that may or may not be right / wrong with it. However, this will be a unbiased look and comparison. I'm neither a fanboy or sheep. No brand affiliation. Not a programmer either, just a pro-sumer Senior Member of XDA willing to get trolled, flamed, etc. for sharing a look at these 2 phones. Hopefully, I can give "the everyday guy / gal look" without getting bogged down in stats, variables or benchmarks. Here goes...
MY BACKGROUND
No one special. Just a guy that likes the latest tech... phones being at the top of the list. I am a nerd. No doubt about that. I think anyone that knows about XDA probably is to some extent. No brand loyalty. Recently, I have had the privilege to try out the following phones:
1. Axon 7
2. OnePlus 3
3. HTC 10
4. LeEcco Le Max 2
5. Huawei P9
6. LG G5
7. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
8. Huawei Mate 8
9. Huawei Nexus 6P
10. LG Nexus 5X
11. Samsung Note 5
12. Apple iPhone 6s+
And probably some more, but these are the most recent. Does that make me qualified to make a review... Maybe. It does make me an idiot that likes new phones, though. I am always looking for something that meets my needs but also is a good phone. Currently with TMobile but have been with ATT, Verizon & Sprint at some point over 20 years of using cell phones.
MY NEEDS
I drive about 40 miles everyday to work (yes, my work week is currently 7 days a week with a few occasional days off). So, with this in mind and where I drive, I need the minimum requirements:
1. Can Stream Music
2. Bluetooth is fully compatible with my 2016 vehicle
3. An equalizer of some sort since I have only switch out my new cars speakers for better ones and don't plan on changing or adding a better sound system.
4. Decent pictures when needed
5. As a nerd, I like to "mesmerize" people with a pay with your phone app like Apple Pay or Android Pay
6. Works with my Huawei Watch
7. Relatively not laggy - will sometimes do some ROM-ing or some customization but since I tend to get rid of the phones quickly I try not to void warranties or make it too non-stock
THE COMPARISON
I am looking at my experience with the OnePlus 3 and the Axon 7 under/around these requirements and some normal stuff like battery, screen, snappiness, heat, speakers, etc. Here goes:
SOUND OVERALL
There is not too many times when I do a review comparison where 1 phone just crushes the other... and I don't mean like crushing an empty aluminum beer can in your hand crushing... I mean like BigFoot crushing late model junk cars at the end of a Monster Truck Rally Crushin'.... 'Mericaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! Sorry got carried away there a second. Honestly, how phone manufacturers cannot include a system-wide sound equalizer with all the other STUPID GUI tweaks and bastardizations they do to Android especially is beyond me in 2016. Most people are transitioning to bluetooth headphones or have bluetooth in their cars and for the most part use streaming services to/for music. Yes, there is the occasional dude with the $1000 plug-in headphones that also plugs into a in-line $2000 DAC that only listens to download Loseless Quality Music with the Music App that came with the phone.... with a show of hands, how many fall into this category??? Then why pray tell is this the only music equalization most manufacturers are catering too on their phones (Apple included)? I don't know just wanted to rant a little. With that said though, the inclusion of Dolby ATMOS without having to root on the Axon 7 plus its dual stereo forward facing speakers makes this a non-competition. Yes, you could add ViperATMOSBeatsDon'tcare Mod.zip to a rooted TWRP OnePlus 3... but why should I have to? Why can't some system-wide equalizer be included Mr. FlagShip Killer? Look at their own Community Forum and its one of the most active requests since the OnePlus 3 came out (along with actually using all the RAM the phone has)... Good Work ZTE!!! I'm sure for all you headphone people too that the AXON 7 would dominate even though I have zero to judge that on since I have never taken either the OnePlus 3's headphones nor the AXON 7's headphones out of the box.
WINNER: AXON 7 BigFoot- Crushing OnePlus 3 Grave Digger.
BATTERY
People get bent out of shape nowadays about the "wall hugger" syndrome... this is the need to re-charge your phone more than once, twice, 3-times etc. per day and being attached to a charger constantly. Well, we only have ourselves and technology to blame. Battery technology has yet to progress to a point that adequately matches all the other advances cell phones have made... I can remember in the 90's getting my first Li-ion Battery Cell Phone and was like "WOW!!! I can charge this anytime I want, days of battery life, no need to discharge the whole phone before recharging and no need for extra batteries..." Fast forward almost 30 years... AND its the same type of battery... So no phone truly wins here until technology gets better. This too along with our need for skinny things... women, cocktails, bank account, soda, etc. have phones getting increasingly skinnier without ever considering what it has do with the battery is disturbing. If only we could get back to the simpler times of a bagphone, then the battery could be as big as you want it... AHHH, the simpler times. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Really though, the batteries on both phones perform very similar in my use. The place where they differ the most is the charging. For OnePlus 3, you have to use their proprietary DASH Charge as oppose to QuickCharge 3.0. This means you can only buy OnePlus 3 chargers (or some not trustworthy knock offs) to take advantage of feature... it's not so bad now that they made the car charger available again on their website and the phone comes with a wall plug with the feature... it's just a departure from the standard many others are using and requires new accessory purchases... basically a OnePlus Money Grab.... DASH Charge is slightly faster but not enough for anyone but a battery loving neophyte to really take notice.
WINNER: AXON 7 - Sorry QuickCharge 3.0 Industry Standard beats proprietary DASH Charge even though DASH Charge is slightly faster.
HEAT
Not going to spend much time here. Both phones run Snapdragon 820's. Both phones are metal... guess what... they get hot under stress... so no winners here, only losers. Neither had to be powered off for getting too hot though, like my S7 needed to when I was doing its initial setup... so there's that. :good:
WINNER: Both or None... They get hot under processor stress and in the dreaded "At an event and have your camera constantly on then stick it in your pocket only to have 3rd degree burns on your thighs or butt" Test
SNAPPINESS
Neither phone I have taken the time to Mod or root or stare at compassionately... but both perform really well like they should. Now, let the 6GB vs. 4GB debates begin!!! First, it is well known that even after 2 updates, the OnePlus 3's RAM management is still wonky and does not fully utilize all that RAM. No matter. I can't see an advantage yet. Yes you could AnTuTu-whogivesapoop test them all day. I rather just talked about how using the phone feels. Neither have extensive bastardizations over stock android so neither grinds the phone to a halt like TouchWizCement does. I run the BETA of Sense 8 Launcher for All Android Phones on both. Both phones perform well with it. I have played Pokemon GO! on both along with Clash Royale... both run fine. GPS works good on both and locks in fairly quickly. It isn't the best I have seen but not the LG Worst either [emoji14] Until there's another processor to look at, I think most manufacturers are taking full advantage of the limits of the 820. Throwing RAM at it doesn't dramatically do anything either. I guess it good to always have it in your back pocket if needed.
WINNER: ONEPLUS 3 - Simply because it has more RAM, no real-world experience proves it faster. Fanboy Benchmarkers withstanding
DISPLAY
Not much to mention here either. Both have good displays. On paper, the AXON 7's is better. I would say that the average person not knowing that one has higher resolution than the other would have a hard time calling it out. Color reproduction is about the same on both as well. Neither have a "always-on" feature which would have been nice. Both have LED's for notifications. Here's where once again you just have to stick with the stats and say....
WINNER: AXON 7 - higher stats mean better screen right!!!!???
PHONE DESIGN
Wow! a bit to talk about here. Let's start on both phones exterior features and design. Both are designed well. Definitely not ugly by any stretch of the imagination. The AXON 7 was designed with help from BMW and significantly improves on the previous generation iteration, like having actual speakers in both of the speaker grill looking forward facing top and bottom of screen. I do have the gold AXON 7... the color isn't the greatest but I wasn't going to wait for the gray one to come out to test it... I might return the gold for a gray if they become available in my return window. The OnePlus 3 is a pretty phone too. It doesn't have a firm like BMW attached to it, but one feels they did a good job of improving on the OnePlus 2 design without getting away from their bread and butter core design elements. With that, I love the alert slider... call me an isheep but I feel to this day that it is the single greatest design advantage the iPhone has had over any Android phone for years now. Although not as perfectly functional as Apples is, the OnePlus 3 is a great feature. Both have excellent fingerprint readers. Very fast. For my use case, a front facing fingerprint reader is better. That's my use case, in a cradle, in my car, that I get in and out of while sometime leaving my phone in the cradle, makes the front facing reader slightly more convenient. NFC chip and camera placement good on both as well. AXON 7 does have one design characteristic that I found annoying and I noticed while playing Clash Royale.... the power button is on the right side of the phone near the center. While playing and trying to drag drop to the top of the screen, you can easily inadvertently toggle the on/off button, this might be the button is overly sensitive or just my clumsiness. OnePlus 3 scores some extras too with swapstyle cases... Why can't other phone manufacturers take notes here. I think it is great that I can get relatively cheap exclusively designed nice looking cases for my OnePlus 3... for the AXON 7, I'm stuck with Chinese knock off cheesy poop designed cases with TPU raining from skies... I need a case and sure the first thing that comes to mind when I get a nice looking professionally designed by BMW phone is to put it into a TPU trashcan of a case because 0.0 (zero point zero) cases by ZTE are available or even look worthy of residing on the phone.... yep, I so love it. AXON 7 does step it up with one thing, SD card compatibility. More storage... sure I can use that anytime...
WINNER: TIED - OnePlus 3 would have won here, but not having SD Card capability is just dumb... especially since you used the space for a dual SIM.
CAMERA
I have done a couple of these reviews and every time I point out that I am not a big fan of cameras on phones. I went to school for photography and movie making back when film was still used. Have seen lenses that cost more than my current house and have seen Ansel Adams original prints first hand. So, it makes me a camera snob... thus, my opinion of on phone cameras is that they are all Bantha PooDoo. However, improvements are made with every new phone and even though innovations have seem to slow in favor of the pixel wars... one day they might be great.
Looking at both and later I will put up some similar shots from both, each phone have decent cameras. The OnePlus performs better in low light especially however I would not count the AXON 7 out in the cold as I feel that the AXON 7's low light difficulties might be able to be corrected with feature updates. The AXON 7 does have it's ripoff version of a "live photo" that works pretty decent plus some decent scenario modes that just work better for pictures I may take. The OnePlus 3's camera software is just basic with good custom manual settings. The AXON 7 has manual mode as well. Like I said, I will upload some similar shots from each and you can decide.
WINNER: TBD
CONCLUSION
So, what can I conclude? Both phones are awesome... Both have plus and minuses. I don't think there's a clear hands down winner and would not want to argue that point. I can only tell you that beyond everything else that the lack of a system-wide equalizer for sound just annoys little brown stinkies out of me. My commute to work is a big part of my day sometimes 7 days a week. I want to listen to Sirius XM app and Google Play Music so it sound great in my car. I want to set some equalization that make it sound awesome then forget it is even there. Not constant resetting of bass boost, tweaking sound to have it all reset again and again. Why provide a basic equalizer in Google Play Music on the OnePlus 3 that always has the bass setting reset when a call comes in, you switch to a new app or the crappy RAM Management software kicks it out of memory even though you locked it into memory on the all apps screen? That just pains me... If OnePlus does listen to their customer base, maybe just maybe they will add one in a future OTA update. Who knows. Having had the original AXON, I have to say that this phone is definitely an improvement and is worth checking out if you liked the original. I am still a little off-put by the fact that ZTE has done very little to support this phone with accessories like cases and stuff making me hit Aliexpress for the Oscar the Grouch specials that they have there. Could you survive with either one of these phones as your next new phone... of course! Hopefully, this little review will help you out in that decision. Lastly and as always, this is just Some Guys Opinion...
:highfive:
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Thanks but no thanks... You actually didn't influence my thoughts. More like 1 step forward, 1 step backward, your pros fit both phones matched your cons
Sent from my SM-A9000 using Tapatalk
Thanks for your comparison! Not sure why people are so arrogant or condescending. Appreciate your effort writing this up so some of us can make a better decision.
ashburton said:
Thanks but no thanks... You actually didn't influence my thoughts. More like 1 step forward, 1 step backward, your pros fit both phones matched your cons
Sent from my SM-A9000 using Tapatalk
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That's the whole point. Too many so called "real" reviews online do not give an honest opinion and are influenced by the author getting free stuff, free phone, etc. My point is to not make you say "hey I need to go get one of these phones now" but rather "I did know that and didn't know this... now I do." Thanks for reading!
Charkol said:
Thanks for your comparison! Not sure why people are so arrogant or condescending. Appreciate your effort writing this up so some of us can make a better decision.
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Yep!! You got the point exactly. I'm not here to "influence" anyone into making a decision. I'm not a ZTE or OP3 salesperson. Just laying out real world facts as I see them (Thus the title of the post). Too many blog reviews make phones out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread or the bottom layer of poop in an unattended bird cage (like the stuff stuck to newspaper on the bottom). The fact of the matter is that these people tend to be influenced in other ways (monetarily, free stuff, etc.) to make or break a review. Just because I posted in the AXON 7 forum, does not mean that the AXON 7 wins every category automatically. The AXON 7 is a good phone but not without some flaws, same with the OP3. It's knowing what flaws you can live with and which ones you can't that should influence your decision rather than Some Guys Opinion hahahahahaha :highfive:
Post some stats of battery life comparison. I highly doubt the A7 gets better battery than the OP3.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
mahst68 said:
Nope I meant to call you "bra" and spell check had my back. Bruh is for my bruhs. "Bra" is for someone exactly like you because since you must wear them since you're a little biatch... Trolling flaming gnome. Go get in line for Harry Potter and have a nice day BRA
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I'm an American and am embarrassed to read what you wrote.
Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
darkjedi said:
I'm an American and am embarrassed to read what you wrote.
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You are an American?
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
darkjedi said:
I'm an American and am embarrassed to read what you wrote.
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I am too but he stopped commenting so there's that. Sorry I know it was very lame
brickedvice said:
Post some stats of battery life comparison. I highly doubt the A7 gets better battery than the OP3.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
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Didn't say it did actually.... I said it performed similarly. I also said that the OP3 actually charges faster. Why did I pick the AXON 7 then.... well, that's the question isn't?
Oh wait... it's right there in the Battery paragraph if you only took time to read thoroughly... thanks!
I guess, that the snappiness of the OnePlus 3 isn't only because of more Ram, but also because of the much slimmer Oxygen OS.
I didn't receive my OnePlus 3 so far, but even when it's faster, I think I can't live without those awesome speakers of the ZTE Axon 7.
mahst68 said:
Didn't say it did actually.... I said it performed similarly. I also said that the OP3 actually charges faster. Why did I pick the AXON 7 then.... well, that's the question isn't?
Oh wait... it's right there in the Battery paragraph if you only took time to read thoroughly... thanks!
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Your review was kind of big b.s that's why no time to waste on reading all of it. Do a better job next time. Thanks!
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
Cypher_01 said:
I guess, that the snappiness of the OnePlus 3 isn't only because of more Ram, but also because of the much slimmer Oxygen OS.
I didn't receive my OnePlus 3 so far, but even when it's faster, I think I can't live without those awesome speakers of the ZTE Axon 7.
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Yep. I wish I could get past the sound thing. Unfortunately it consumes about an hour of my day everyday if not longer. You'll enjoy the OP3. Great phone!!
brickedvice said:
Your review was kind of big b.s that's why no time to waste on reading all of it. Do a better job next time. Thanks!
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
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Why is it a bs review? Explain
I'll start with my final thoughts, the LG G8X is a mid tier phone with a flagship design, spec wise its on the lower end of the "flagship" phones. Without the second screen the G8X would be a easy pass.
I've had the phone for about a month now, design wise its not premium, its not smooth or fluid around the edges front to back, the buttons sticks out a bit too much IMO, compare to my S9 plus its about the same thickness maybe a 2mm thicker front to back. it feels ok in the hand, I would never want to drop it, unlike all the other major brands I could not find a case or screen protector from Amazon Canada that was not shipping from China. I end up going to ebay to find a case, even the retailer could not find a case, this is how far LG have fallen.
Costco no longer carry LG phones nor does Rogers and best buy since the G7. Back to cases, it seems in other regions LG gave a case and headphones with the phone, for that frak you LG that was a shyty thing to do, for now I have to keep the phone in the dual screen case to protect it. Not including a case to all market is a disappointing move on LG part. (update) I just sold my S9 plus, the buyer was surprised the phone was used because of the condition the phone was in, zero scratches anywhere on the phone because I had a screen protector and various cases on the phone since day one ( Our secret don't tell the buyer I dropped that phone at least 5 times ). I finally received 2 case I bought from ebay as I could not find any local retailer with any LG G8X accessories.
Before I forget, the charging cable needs to be longer its too short to use with the magnetic adapter, it looks really cool on youtube, that's because its super light weight but once you plug the cable in depending on where or how far your plug is it will not work, the weight of the cable going down my side table have caused the phone to not charge because the magnet came loose which led me to buying a new wireless charger because the G8X did not work with my was current wireless charger.
On to the important stuff, the second screen works (yeah), it turns on sometimes by itself when I don't want it on or it turns off and will not turn on until you disconnect the phone and reconnect it, I've had to power down the phone a couple times to get the second screen or the outside info screen working again. As for software, many of you already know its sucks, first off out of the box the unit was not working properly I had to a factory reset twice not a big deal but I never had to do this with any other brand new phone in the last 10 years. I tried using the the LG keyboard but had to change it to the GB.
I've notice I have to hit the back button 2, 3 times for anything to happen, same with the home button, I know I pressed it from the taptic feedback, sometimes there's just a delay either way we should not have these kind of issues on 2019 major brand phone "flagship" at that.
To conclude again the LG G8X is not a flagship phone design and software wise, the idea is great and somewhat refreshing but it is not a game changer in its current form. Software aside if this phone with dual screen cost $10 to $100 more it would be a major pass for me, without the dual screen it would be a major major major major pass at its current price, it would have priced lower than the one plus phones. New G8 can be had for $400 Cad so there you go.
I just got mine and i only got it as a second phone. This phone is a novelty to me. I think that any tech enthusiast buying this phone will buy it with extremely low expectations. This is an LG after all. The same company that hasn't turned a profit since Q3 2014
It's regrettable if you thought you would get flagship performance from this phone. I got it for the party tricks.
Other than that everything you said was spot on and i agree wholeheartedly.
Yeah, I had to disable things like Mini-View and Floating Bar, just because they don't work reliably enough. There are just lots of little things like that. The Samsung equivalents on my Note 8 works much more reliably and has better UI/UX.
It has much promise and potential, but they gotta work on the software and make the UI/UX more cohesive. Now, it's just too rough around the edges.
I think you have buggy phones. I have not had any issues with the duel screen turning on or off. For gaming (Call of Duty) the dual screen is amazing! Wide View is rubbish though as the case is too thick, but works ok for Facebook, seems to add to the experience not detract. Even if you end up reading from only one screen, knowing from peripheral vision what is coming next actually enhances the viewing experience.
I will admit the phone is a bit laggy at times but fingers crossed LG will release Android 10 and we'll get some improvements.
inzimam said:
I think you have buggy phones. I have not had any issues with the duel screen turning on or off. For gaming (Call of Duty) the dual screen is amazing! Wide View is rubbish though as the case is too thick, but works ok for Facebook, seems to add to the experience not detract. Even if you end up reading from only one screen, knowing from peripheral vision what is coming next actually enhances the viewing experience.
I will admit the phone is a bit laggy at times but fingers crossed LG will release Android 10 and we'll get some improvements.
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I'll have to agree with inzimam here. I haven't had any issues with this phone as of yet. It hasn't exhibited any of the characteristics that have been complained about thus far. No lag (at least, no more lag than what is to be expected from a phone), no stuttering, no screen randomly turning off and if it is off I can always get it to turn back on.
As far as the OP is concerned, yeah, if you wanted a phone that was easy to find cases for, you should have gone with an iPhone. Or at the very least, a Samsung. Cases have been and will always be cheap and plentiful for those phones. Everything else, good luck. You are gonna need it.
atirox said:
I'll have to agree with inzimam here. I haven't had any issues with this phone as of yet. It hasn't exhibited any of the characteristics that have been complained about thus far. No lag (at least, no more lag than what is to be expected from a phone), no stuttering, no screen randomly turning off and if it is off I can always get it to turn back on.
As far as the OP is concerned, yeah, if you wanted a phone that was easy to find cases for, you should have gone with an iPhone. Or at the very least, a Samsung. Cases have been and will always be cheap and plentiful for those phones. Everything else, good luck. You are gonna need it.
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I respectfully disagree with both of you, I forgot to mention when in "dark" mode the notification is still white, how ridiculous is that, the software needs cleaning up, at least 3 times this week the second screen turned on when I unlocked the phone, I know for sure I did not have it on before. Today I got another vague update, no info other than it will make the phone work better, really LG.
You're I could've bought pretty much any other phone and found a case at locally not just an Iphone or Samsung, you bringing up 2 other popular brand is a moot point because you can find cases for Moto, Nokia, Sony, HTC, Honor, Huawei easily. Consumers voicing their opinion is the least we can do, we deserve better not just mediocre like what we got from LG.
I'm using the G8X without the dual screen case right now, I have to be honest its not a upgrade over my S9 plus, this have nothing to do with branding, I still have my G6, I'm no fanboy, I have a Android tablet and a Ipad mini, I see things for what they are..
I haven't reached yet, can anyone tell me if we can remap the google assist button, I hated it on my S9 plus I hate it the same on the G8X.
Thinking on your comment regarding the cases, only a id$#t would suggest to buy another phone if I wanted a case to protect my hard earn money that spent on this phone, finding a case was one issue but it shouldn't be one seeing that LG gave a case to other regions. The product should entice others instead companies after companies are dropping LG phones or their accessories, please leave this fanboyism out of this. LG as company could very well be in trouble, their phones are not selling as well as they should be, more and more companies are coming out with Oled panels so Lg and Sony are no longer the only game in town, in a few years LG oled TV will be meh in the marketplace.
LG needs to clean up the software on their phones, better build, stick to the innovation for at least 3 years, oh, the V50 got Android 10 why not the LGX the last phone you released?
sonspot said:
I respectfully disagree with both of you, I forgot to mention when in "dark" mode the notification is still white, how ridiculous is that, the software needs cleaning up, at least 3 times this week the second screen turned on when I unlocked the phone, I know for sure I did not have it on before. Today I got another vague update, no info other than it will make the phone work better, really LG.
You're I could've bought pretty much any other phone and found a case at locally not just an Iphone or Samsung, you bringing up 2 other popular brand is a moot point because you can find cases for Moto, Nokia, Sony, HTC, Honor, Huawei easily. Consumers voicing their opinion is the least we can do, we deserve better not just mediocre like what we got from LG.
I'm using the G8X without the dual screen case right now, I have to be honest its not a upgrade over my S9 plus, this have nothing to do with branding, I still have my G6, I'm no fanboy, I have a Android tablet and a Ipad mini, I see things for what they are..
I haven't reached yet, can anyone tell me if we can remap the google assist button, I hated it on my S9 plus I hate it the same on the G8X.
Thinking on your comment regarding the cases, only a id$#t would suggest to buy another phone if I wanted a case to protect my hard earn money that spent on this phone, finding a case was one issue but it shouldn't be one seeing that LG gave a case to other regions. The product should entice others instead companies after companies are dropping LG phones or their accessories, please leave this fanboyism out of this. LG as company could very well be in trouble, their phones are not selling as well as they should be, more and more companies are coming out with Oled panels so Lg and Sony are no longer the only game in town, in a few years LG oled TV will be meh in the marketplace.
LG needs to clean up the software on their phones, better build, stick to the innovation for at least 3 years, oh, the V50 got Android 10 why not the LGX the last phone you released?
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Hey, never said that I was right. Just that I haven't had those issues yet.
I agree with you about the dark mode notifications. I suspect that it has something to do with dark mode not officially being available for Android 9... Coming from the LG V30, I'll take any dark mode I can get though.
Not sure where you live, but where I've lived, unless you have an iPhone or Samsung, your options are to order a case online, or order a case online... The HTC One M8 is the last phone I had where cases were actually stocked somewhere in a decent selection... The HTC 10 had a pathetic offering of one case I found at Bell in Vancouver. The case on that phone was almost like Randy's kid brother Ralphie getting wrapped up by his mother to go to school from the movie A Christmas Story. The V30 had exactly double the number of cases as the HTC 10 did, and both were equally as pathetic. The better case was utterly useless after 3 months as it was falling apart. So while I may be an id#$t for suggesting purchasing another phone, it always seems to be that ic you want a decent case to protect your phone, the answer seems to be iPhone or Samsung cause i can never find anything but the cheap chinese garbage cases that wont protect anything let alone a glass sandwich.
As far as fanboyism goes, you should have seen me when Nokia announced they were gonna be purchased by Microsoft... Or when HTC sold its engineering division to Google... This isn't fanboyism... LG would need to make a product that I don't immediately want to re-skin with a third party launcher before I'd consider being a fanboy of LG. ... You know what? I'd even settle for an Android OS upgrade that doesn't drop almost 24 months since that version of Android launched. (Looking specifically at the Android 9 update for the V30 H933 model.) I don't even want a cleaned up OS... I just want a freaking update!
To be honest, all the good phone makers of years gone by are in financial trouble unless they are Apple or Samsung... Nokia got sold to Microsoft, HTC sold its soul to Google, Motorola sold numerous times only to be acquired by Lenovo, and just like that relationship, the big names that are left are still here because they have massive companies backing them up. They don't have to turn a profit to stay alive... Those who did are no more, or aren't what they used to be. If memory serves correctly, Sony and LG haven't turned a profit in phones in close to 5 years. HTC is all but dead, Nokia is a sliver of what it used to be, and we know what happened with Motorola.
(Edited for clarity)
I'm gonna chime in because I've had ever single G and V series device since the G3 so I'm a big fan of LG devices.
I really tried to love the G8X. I think the price point in the us at least (albeit I'm in Canada) is spot on. The concept is fun and the screen is actually pretty nice. I liked the ui although slightly disappointed with night mode not having dark notifications. That will change with Android 10.
Theme system is still great. Actually lg has the best theme system on the market. I'm not talking about variety or quality but rather ability out of box to theme virtually anything with little restrictions.
I found battery life to be exceptionally good. I am also impressed with the sound quality of the device. It is a very loud device.
The second screen is cool and works very well. It obviously adds a lot of bulk and weight to the device. I found myself not actually using it after about a month. For me at least it just isn't needed. I don't play enough games and it just was more of something to show off to people like a hey look at this. But for my use it was impractical.
Camera is a big disappointment from what I'm used to with LG. I think they could have done better. Especially the front one. Mind you I don't do many selfies at all, but when I tested it I was disappointed.
Fingerprint sensor is absolutely horrible. I tried to pretend it wasn't crap but it really is bad. Slow and doesn't consistently work as many have complained. In the end I had to admit it just sucks. The animation for it was badass though. Having no face unlock is kinda disappointing. Even just regular face unlock would have been fine as it always worked well on other non tof devices.
What really killed me was how for at least Canadian devices for almost 2 months now LG has allowed devices to have broken LTE. November security patch broke LTE and lg simply told users to just not use lte and switch to 3g. I did find a fix and made a thread for it. Mind you my fix breaks voicemail shortcut. It does restore LTE. They still have not addressed this. That is completely unacceptable.
So I made the decision last week to sell my G8X. It pains me to say it but I feel I made the right call. It just isn't good enough. My G8 is just so much better and has better features imo.
I'm still kinda bummed about it but I did what I felt I needed to do to recover my money as best I could before the device that I just couldn't love no matter how hard I tried lost too much value.
I've had my G8X for about a month now, coming from a V30. Is it a gimmick? Sure... but it's an incredibly useful gimmick. I've had none of the issues the OP refers to. Zero crashes or second screen shutdowns. I find the fingerprint sensor to be only marginally worse than the case-back sensor on the V30, so to me it's a nonissue.
Complaining that without the second screen the G8X isn't all that is IMO a head-scratcher. The only reason to buy the G8X is for the second screen. If you're not going to use that, I don't know why you would buy this phone.
The charging issues I'm not going to address, as I have Qi wireless chargers both at home and my office, so I have yet to even try wired charging.
Do I wish the case front wasn't mirrored and a fingerprint magnet? Yes. Do I wish the front screen was more than a tiny notification screen? Yes. Since the case is a USB-C accessory, my hope is that either LG or third parties develop other second-screen options that improve the functionality and usability of the second screen case. That's the interesting thing about this approach compared to the "folding phones" model: accessory case replacements and improvements can presumably be acquired without having to replace the original phone.
Negan said:
Fingerprint sensor is absolutely horrible. I tried to pretend it wasn't crap but it really is bad. Slow and doesn't consistently work as many have complained. In the end I had to admit it just sucks. The animation for it was badass though. Having no face unlock is kinda disappointing. Even just regular face unlock would have been fine as it always worked well on other non tof devices.
What really killed me was how for at least Canadian devices for almost 2 months now LG has allowed devices to have broken LTE. November security patch broke LTE and lg simply told users to just not use lte and switch to 3g. I did find a fix and made a thread for it. Mind you my fix breaks voicemail shortcut. It does restore LTE. They still have not addressed this. That is completely unacceptable.
So I made the decision last week to sell my G8X. It pains me to say it but I feel I made the right call. It just isn't good enough. My G8 is just so much better and has better features imo.
I'm still kinda bummed about it but I did what I felt I needed to do to recover my money as best I could before the device that I just couldn't love no matter how hard I tried lost too much value.
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Sad to see you go, But I totally agree with the fingerprint scanner. It's pitiful. Pathetic. Sorry excuse for a fingerprint scanner. As far as LG software goes, well, you know my opinion on that... The worst part about being stuck on the Android 8 update was Bluetooth on the V30 was so beyond buggy it was a freaking joke... I get your frustration with their pathetic software..
heavyharmonies said:
I've had my G8X for about a month now, coming from a V30. Is it a gimmick? Sure... but it's an incredibly useful gimmick. I've had none of the issues the OP refers to. Zero crashes or second screen shutdowns. I find the fingerprint sensor to be only marginally worse than the case-back sensor on the V30, so to me it's a nonissue.
Complaining that without the second screen the G8X isn't all that is IMO a head-scratcher. The only reason to buy the G8X is for the second screen. If you're not going to use that, I don't know why you would buy this phone.
The charging issues I'm not going to address, as I have Qi wireless chargers both at home and my office, so I have yet to even try wired charging.
Do I wish the case front wasn't mirrored and a fingerprint magnet? Yes. Do I wish the front screen was more than a tiny notification screen? Yes. Since the case is a USB-C accessory, my hope is that either LG or third parties develop other second-screen options that improve the functionality and usability of the second screen case. That's the interesting thing about this approach compared to the "folding phones" model: accessory case replacements and improvements can presumably be acquired without having to replace the original phone.
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Agreed as well. What's keeping me here is I've found the second screen to be useful more than I thought I would, it's supposed to have a Quad DAC (I suspect the ESS Sabre 9218 out of the standard G8, but no one will tell me), and finally, because my pathetic phone carrier wont stock the standard G8.
atirox said:
Sad to see you go, But I totally agree with the fingerprint scanner. It's pitiful. Pathetic. Sorry excuse for a fingerprint scanner. As far as LG software goes, well, you know my opinion on that... The worst part about being stuck on the Android 8 update was Bluetooth on the V30 was so beyond buggy it was a freaking joke... I get your frustration with their pathetic software..
Agreed as well. What's keeping me here is I've found the second screen to be useful more than I thought I would, it's supposed to have a Quad DAC (I suspect the ESS Sabre 9218 out of the standard G8, but no one will tell me), and finally, because my pathetic phone carrier wont stock the standard G8.
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Only thing I disagree with is the fingerprint scanner. It's not the best but it's definitely not horrible. Coming from the V30 which worked 10/10 times, the G8X works about 9/10 times. However, I still wish it had a face unlock. It would be nice to have it automatically unlock after opening the second screen.
I use the dual screen case about 50% of the time. Having two screens is super fun and useful but I find myself using it less and picking up my V30 more when I have it attached.
There are a few software hiccups that I do find annoying, mostly when I'm using the gestures so I just stick to the button navigation. Also pulling down the notification shade looks kind of janky so I hope they fix some of the animations.
I'm trying hard to love this phone but LG software experience is making hard. The fingerprint sensor is a 7/10 for me, battery life is a hit or miss, with the same usage, the phone in the case no dual screen sometimes I will get 6 hours screen time with 30% battery end of day but other times only 3.5 hours screen on with 34% end of day, more of the latter in my experience. As some mentioned the software is not smooth, be it flickering, delay or just not smooth, comfort view keeps turning off for not reason; lately I've been thinking about my S9+, I'm no fanboy I know Samsung had their issues but it was a better experience all around..
Anyhow hope we get android 10 soon and hopefully it fixes some of these issues, sad thing is you can pickup a G8 for around $300 Canadian, like I said if there was no second screen the G8/V50 would be a better buy if you're looking for an LG phone. I going to try a day or 2 without the dual screen case to see if I get a more consistent battery life.
I'm not hating on LG I just wish they would clean up their software before the go the way of BlackBerry. I think in the next week or so I going to post it for sale, just hope I don't lose money on it. I love the concept, idea, just from the wrong company. The LG G8X should've been released with android 10, instead LG is doing the same old thing, I would take a cleaner experience over android 10 but since I'm not getting either from LG I'll just complain and move on lol.
FYI you can turn on the second screen using the "knock on" or double tap feature.
Some of you that have issues with the screen turning on by itself could just be you accidentally double tapping that screen while handling the phone.
I was also able to find a case for it at The Source.
It's just a basic Pure Gear slim clear case, but the hard case packaging that it came in makes a great storage case for the dual screen when I'm not using it.
I personally love the feel of the phone in the hand being glass all around and not having a camera hump, but it's a slippery unit so a case is pretty necessary.
And the weight of 192 grams makes it feel like a premium device in the hand that could take some abuse (minus broken glass, but that's all phones nowadays).
I was on the fence about keeping the phone when I initially upgraded, and was contemplating returning it for an S10, but I figure the S10/S10+ are going to drop dramatically in price very shortly, whereas I think the G8X will hold it's value longer having the dual case option, and it being less expensive initially.
So far I'm having a good experience, but I may put up for sale or trade for an S10+ in the near future simply because I have zero clue if and when LG will be updating this thing to Android 10, never mind 11....
No way was I going to go for a newer Pixel with their abysmal battery life and no option for an SD card.
Also, anyone who tells me they can tell a difference between the 855/855+/865 I have a bridge to sell you...
ATRIXXIRTA said:
FYI you can turn on the second screen using the "knock on" or double tap feature.
Some of you that have issues with the screen turning on by itself could just be you accidentally double tapping that screen while handling the phone.
I was also able to find a case for it at The Source.
It's just a basic Pure Gear slim clear case, but the hard case packaging that it came in makes a great storage case for the dual screen when I'm not using it.
I personally love the feel of the phone in the hand being glass all around and not having a camera hump, but it's a slippery unit so a case is pretty necessary.
And the weight of 192 grams makes it feel like a premium device in the hand that could take some abuse (minus broken glass, but that's all phones nowadays).
I was on the fence about keeping the phone when I initially upgraded, and was contemplating returning it for an S10, but I figure the S10/S10+ are going to drop dramatically in price very shortly, whereas I think the G8X will hold it's value longer having the dual case option, and it being less expensive initially.
So far I'm having a good experience, but I may put up for sale or trade for an S10+ in the near future simply because I have zero clue if and when LG will be updating this thing to Android 10, never mind 11....
No way was I going to go for a newer Pixel with their abysmal battery life and no option for an SD card.
Also, anyone who tells me they can tell a difference between the 855/855+/865 I have a bridge to sell you...
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If you check kijiji, the G8X is selling for less than the S10 or S10+, too late to get rid of it now, you'll lose money. Even sadder is the s9 and S9+ are getting Android 10 updates while the G8x is still in wind. This is my last LG phone, I can't in good conscience support them, I don't think we the consumers are asking for much from a company that claims to produce "flagship" devices.
Like I said, the idea was a good one but everything else is sloppy not on par with a major flagship smartphone.
I wonder if LG is going to use Covid-19 as a excuse to continue delay of Android 10 update release for the G8X. I'm done with this company, they don't deserve our money.
ATRIXXIRTA said:
I was on the fence about keeping the phone when I initially upgraded, and was contemplating returning it for an S10, but I figure the S10/S10+ are going to drop dramatically in price very shortly, whereas I think the G8X will hold it's value longer having the dual case option, and it being less expensive initially.
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Without the 2nd screen, these are going for 200 USD on ebay, which is crazy for a 6 month old phone. I'm thinking about picking one up.
man this guy is a harsh critic. the phone is great. it's mid-range, so expect mid-range at a nice price point. but this thing has got several flagship features that set it it above other devices in this price range, obviously the dual screen, but also headphone jack + quad dac and surround sound, snapdragon 855, SD slot + 128gb built in, excellent cameras, insane battery life, sleek and quality design. I got it so cheap with Sprint (50% off plus free dual screen) that I can't imagine complaining about it, but maybe if you paid full price unlocked it would be different. great phone imo.