need a new smartphone for Verizon.

should have went with the 4S... large upgrade from the 4, and only 50 bucks with an upgrade @ radioshack....

 

Got a good deal on it. I don't think the 4S would have fixed the things I don't like about it anyway. I intend to keep my unlimited data so no upgrades. Really I just switched because my droid drops calls and texts all the time at my house and my GFs 4S seems to do better. I'll have full 3G and then nothing and then 1x and then 3g... so I'm hoping maybe the 4G will work better? Or something that does better, if that's even possible?

 

you just need to upgrade the droid x's radio... its not a huge deal, dial *228 and option 2.

 

Been there done that! :/ No help. Even the iPhone hasn't been much better. I got about 6 texts back to back yesterday morning all sent from various times. With my droid I'd have trouble sending a text, sometimes I'd have to re-send it endlessly. I'd also have trouble making calls, it would show there being signal but it would never call out. Same with dropping calls. Or sometimes I'd have conversations for hours no problem.

Fucking verizon.

 

hmm.. i dont have good service in MOST of NH, and ive never had those problems... if you plug your iphone into the computer you can update the carrier settings...

 

I think it's time for a new phone...

I'll buy used though. I wouldn't mind the GS2 or GS3 but I've been reading about poor connectivity. Razr M? Note 2? S3? S2? RAZR MAXX?

 

Most the time i have good service. hell 85 or 90% of the time i have the best.(or who every els around me with verizon has the best.) they are the best service provider around here.

Anyway even when i’m up in the mountains and have piss poor service I have never had this happen with the Iphone.

 

Last month recently upgraded from iphone 4's (not S) to iphone 5's......with Verizon.

I can't say I'm an Apple Fangirl... but once you go with Apple and utilize some of the features, it's hard to switch.

We also have 3 ipods in the house, a nice music collection, knowledge of itunes, and fully integrated airplay setup in the house. Airplay is awesome!

Although, the fact that Apple changed the charging/syncing cord on the new phones - sucks. We have an over abundance of the old cords and have to buy new stuff for the new phones. My husbands bluetooth in his car doesn't work like it did with the iphone 4 - something with compatibility ??? Still not sure he can remedy this situation yet, as he hasn't researched deep enough. We've been utilizing Siri, which we didn't have before.

I think, because of our music / itunes and airplay .... we stick with the iphones (and because its what we are familiar with). If you are not committed to 'other apple features' - it certainly won't hurt to switch. I'm sure you'll be happy with whatever you end up with.

 

I recently switched from an Anroid to an iphone 5. The iphone 5 is a nice phone and it feels like a solid phone.

I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means (only have an iphone 5 and an ipod) but I will say that my iphone 5 is a really nice phone. I had a Samsung Galaxy before and the IOS operating system is much more stable. My android used to do random weird stuff. It would start acting like I was pressing buttons but I wasn't doing anything. My bluetooth would take forever to sync up to my Alpine headunit (many times having to manually pair). With my Android there was a lag period if I turned off the truck for it to switch from bluetooth back to the handset and I had to stop my conversation to sit there and wait for it to switch over. My iphone 5 connects almost instantaneously and disconnects quickly as well when I turn the truck off.

I also had an issue before with the android where if I sent picture messages to iphone users, it would take sometimes days for them to receive them. Usually whenever they would send me a picture message it send the "backlog" of picture messages I though they already received but they never did.

As for the whole free app argument. All the apps I had on my adroid, I have on my iphone and the only one I had to pay for was tapatalk which I had to pay for on android as well.

The cord change thing kinda sucked because I had to buy new cords, but I will say that the new cord is much nicer and less "clunky" the the old cord. It can also be plugged in either way up or down... whereas the old cord had to be plugged in a certain way. I also bought an adapter to use with the old style cords.

The open sourcing for Android is nice, but it also welcomes a lot of glitchy and garbage apps. Apple is trying to maintain their quality image which is why they limit what apps they will allow.

Personally, I won't go back to an Android phone. But to each his own.

Edit: Just realized I forgot to mention battery life. With my Android, I usually had to charge my phone twice a day (overnight then about mid-day). The battery on my iphone 5 will last all day long. Sometimes I don't even charge it overnight. For example, here's a pic of my battery life. I pulled my phone off the charger when I left for work at 7:15 this morning. I've been streaming music on soundcloud since about 8:45am (it's now 11:13AM) and checking emails and facebook every so often. I would usually be plugging my Android in to charge by now.

I can stream music all day long from about ~9am - 6pm at work and when I put my phone on the charger at night before bed it has about 25% battery remaining.

 

What do you consider good battery life?

 

Been very happy with my Casio Gzone commando in every way including battery life. Any phone will drain the battery with all the shit running on them all the time. Turn shit off unless you are using it and wallah, battery life.

 

I have had several co-wrokers drop their BlackBerries and switch over to the Samsung Galaxy III. They are all extremely happy with it. A couple of iPhone 4 and 5 users have switched over also with one of them getting the Samsung Note II. Both have good battery life and are really functional...

 

I have a razr maxx HD. And it runs circles around my iphone4s.

Battery last for 2 days. Screen is bigger
It uses Google programs.

Apple lost me with ios6 and then the 5 came out and I felt like they dropped the ball. I have had iPhone since the first one came out and this time I was ready to go a different route and I'm glad I did , well see in 2 Years when the iPhone6 comes out if I go back

But being able to have 64 gigs of memory and a battery that last 2 days. And all the free apps. I think apple has a lot of catching up to do

 

Well i learned something today. Ahaha

 

I have recently ran the gamut of iPhone, Windows, and Android. I'll share each because I'm bored today.

Apple
I used to have an iPhone 4, which was my first venture into smartphones (my company provided me phones before then).
Other than the iPod in the truck (which really doesn't count), this is my only Apple product. As an overall package, I think this (and the 4S) is the best phone available, even considering current offerings.
The size of the phone is perfect when placed in a case (my favorite is the Griffin Form Graphite). Comfortable, easy to handle with one hand, and fits in a pocket well.
Gorilla Glass or no, the screen on mine looks the same as the day I bought it. At the time, the Android offerings were plastic screens that needed a scratch protector.
The music app and integration with a music library is still arguably the most complete and easy experience.
Email, text, and notifications work the way you expect, and how you want them to. Having multiple email accounts is easily managed.
Despite what others may say, I've found the spellchecking to be quite excellent. Keyboard was easy to use and I was fast with it.
Calendar works excellent, with good notifications and an excellent interface: a month view on top with 'dots' to show what dates have events, and an area below to show the events for that day. Clicking an event gives you more info.
My battery life was outstanding. I could probably do 2.5 days between charges, wherein I would use the phone for personal and work email, one 1-hour session of Netflix, various levels of web browsing, and app usage.
I actually like the 'desktop' interface. I'm OCD about organizing the phone, so I appreciated a dock bar for my most-used apps. I like a gridded area for my other apps. I use the different pages to segregate my functional areas (main screen for constant-use apps, second page for games, third for news/finance/information, fourth for settings). I organized the hell out of things with folders.
A dedicated mute switch is such an excellent button to have.
I never worried about having too many apps open. iOS doesn't seem to care.
Task switcher was no frills, exactly what you want it to be.
Everybody on God's green earth has some hardware that supports it. A clock radio, a car stereo, a coffee maker, a printer...

Onto the downsides:
there is of course 'do it Apple or don't do it at all'. If you don't like iTunes, you bought the wrong phone.
I had to have it jailbroken. Not for a lot of reasons, but just a few critical areas: First, I need SBSettings. This app allows you to manage wifi, bluetooth, and other toggles from the information pulldown. This is built-in to Androids. I see no logical reason why Apple hides this in the Settings app. Second, I use Five Icon Dock. There's room for 5 icons, I want that. Third, I hated that the weather icon mocked me with a sun and 73º, so I got an app to reflected real conditions. Last, I don't like having to see icons for apps I will never use, so I got an app that hides icons for apps.
Wireless is terrible in a corporate environment once you introduce security. I have access to two different networks at work. The first network requires a network key, the other one is open access with an authentication page. With the first network, it would have trouble connecting. With the second network, it couldn't launch the authentication page all the time, or would never authenticate. On both networks, it would drop the connection after 5 minutes. I've talked to some other companies and they reported similar issues. Note that it works just fine at home with WPA2, or around town at restaurants, etc.
When trying to type and you want to move your cursor somewhere, putting the cursor where you want it is a royal bitch.
Trying to get pictures into emails as an attachment or as an inline pic always seemed to be a hassle.

Windows
After selling the iPhone, I picked up a Nokia Lumia. My God, what a piece of hardware perfection. A little too tall, but otherwise fits in my hand so well. Fit an finish feels great, felt solid. Screen was marvelous to look at, and the camera was outstanding - optical image stabilization with sensitivity levels that started to rival my SLR in low light conditions. the speakers were outstanding as well.
I wasn't sure if I would have needed a case, it felt like I could use it as a weapon.
Sure, it was heavy, but I'm a man, not a wuss.
The Windows Phone 8 OS is a huge leap for MS. It's fast, the apps they have work well, and integration is on par or better than Apple. Setting up email, especially work's Exchange connection, was insanely easy - it also did my calendar and address book on the spot. Gmail came next, and again calendar/addresses played nice. It was easy to see where an contact came from (google/hotmail/work), and visually more appealing the more social networking I added (the phone would instantly place a contact picture from gmail/work/facebook/hotmail, where ever it could glom onto something).
Keyboard was excellent, writing emails was great.
App store is very good, despite the small offerings.
However, I had to return it after 2 days:
First, my OCD. Remember me talking about pages, folders, etc? Windows has none of that. There's one page which is one long list of tiles to scroll through, or the Apps page (similar to Android's app page). I don't want one big list. I don't want to scroll halfway down a list to find my app.
Tiles can be changed to one of three sizes, and fit like a jigsaw into where you want it placed. I hated having to micromanage the hell out of everything whenever I get a new app.
Live tiles verged between helpful or chaos.
The calendar app opens into either a month view, agenda, or day. The month view doesn't do a split like the iPhone, where events are underneath. You have to open up a day, look at stuff, back out to the month, look at the next day... Also, another weird thing: On the month view for an iPhone, you get a dot for events. For the Windows phone, it shows tiny words. I was able to find a magnifying glass and realized it was LOREM IPSUM!!! What the heck? Why display words for my events if it's going to be meaningless words?? I downloaded a separate calendar app that showed me readable event overviews on the month overview, but after drilling down into a day, you couldn't edit any event. Granted, this is a third party app, but it was insane. One tile app to give me an overview, the other one for management - ridiculous.
Also, Windows doesn't have a concept of 'favorites' on the phone app. Instead, you can make a tile out of a contact, which is sort of a shortcut to that contact card. Now you have to waste more tile screen space with a bunch of contact tiles. I guess you could voice dial the rest of your life...
The map program is OK, but I didn't like driving directions app. It was also missing locations - I thought it was funny that it couldn't find the AT&T store I was standing in. Google has completely shunned the device, so there's no Google maps to escape to.
Finally, there is a dedicated hardware button for search, which does nothing but launch Bing search. Seems utterly ridiculous.
I really wanted to like it, but it was too much to bear. With a bit more work, though, I can see the Windows platform being a serious contender. They have so much they did right when you actually get into what you are doing, but the initial presentation is needing serious work.
I can't comment on battery life because I was constantly hammering it with usage, but I don't think the batter can match an iPhone.

Android (Samsung Galaxy SIII
First, the bad - which is a short list, and some of it can be my inexperience:
This phone feels like it is a throw-away. No heft, feels like I could twist it in half. Plastic, plastic, plastic (even if the screen is Gorilla Glass 2)
I don't like what I'm using for a music app, probably with how ingrained I am with iPod usage.
For battery life, I'm getting about 1 day between a full charge
It feels more complex than it needs to be. With the iPhone, I felt like I didn't need to think about stuff, and there didn't feel like there was a bunch of hidden features. Here, there's tricks hiding everywhere, and I really don't need all of them.
The phone is too big. I stick to the principle that phones should be a pack of cards, hence why I like the iPhone 4. All current offerings, including the iPhone 5, is getting too ungainly.
To keep the phone safe, I have it in an Otterbox defender, making it massive
I'm hoping there's something I'm doing wrong, but Android isn't doing any spellcheck. It does predictive text that I can make a selection from, but I can mash down any word and I get no autocorrect. I think there's a setting I overlooked...
I think JellyBean is doing a better job of app management (power wise), and it did get help from the proprietary task manager, but I think there's still some usage robbery going on, so I'm now playing garbage man with apps.
Also, my clock radio dock is now worthless

On to the good:
First, it's the easiest transition from an iPhone, and it improves on all the things I've fought with. The information pulldown has easy access to bluetooth, wireless, and a host of other settings. Arranging apps is great, there's pages, and even a way to quick-access a page. Apps that I don't use and don't want to see go into the 'all apps' area. There's no stupid weather app with a sun mocking me - now I get a nice widget that shows date, time, weather condition, and temperature!
google maps and navigation - 'nuff said! Also, the otterbox defender has a neat trick: The belt clip mounts into my Garmin Nuvi mount, so I can use the phone easily as a GPS
the calendar widget is the best. I get a month overview, and on each day 'block' I can read the text for upcoming events (Oh my God Microsoft, can you believe it? Can you handle that it's on a smaller screen than the Lumia, too, yet READABLE???). Clicking a day launches the app, where I can choose several views, one of them being the familiar month overview with event list below.
Apps don't have as much polish as an Apple, but are still robust.
The OS as a whole feels complete and capable.
Wifi is doing very well with my corporate network as well
My company has better support for the androids. Again, very easy email/contact/calendar setup.
Micro USB charging!!! Yay for a standard format!!!


Conclusion
For me, the Samsung Galaxy SIII seems the best choice.
I don't know what the proper word for it is, but certain Android phones follow the Android OS standards, meaning that they are capable of upgrading to the new OS version, whereas other phones (typically the cheap or free smartphones) only make it to two versions up the chain before they lose support. For instance, my brother's HTC is capped at Gingerbread. My Galaxy will keep getting upgrades as far as as the current-generation Nexus will go.
Limitations on the OS aren't an issue.
It works the way it should, and there's a good support base.
Wifi works better, and it's more corporate-friendly than the iPhone.

I know that I haven't mentioned the Motorola offerings (I'm on AT&T), so you have to do your own research for that - sorry.
Also, I left out the Nexus. I did this because the Nexus costs significantly more than the Galaxy, and I didn't have in-store access. Due to the cost factor, I didn't consider it when I was looking.

It will be interesting for me trying to decide which phone to choose after this one. I enjoy both the iPhone and Android OS, I just wish they could match my hardware desires.

 

RAZR Maxx or RAZR HD Maxx 20+ hrs of real time use battery

 

Traded in my iphone for a Galaxy Note 2, wouldn't dream of going back, absolutely love it. A lot of people think it's too big, but after using it for 2 minutes I never want to use a smaller phone again.

 

Lucky. My first smartphone experience was Windows Mobile 5.0 on the Motorola Q. And battery life was 6 hours on a good day.

 

OK yes, I guess I did have a T-Mobile Wing and a Samsung Ace, but that's hardly 'smart'

 

This is more of an FYI....

The iphone 5 is FAST. I don't know if its a faster processor or the LTE but its a lot faster than the iphone 4.

In terms of Verizon... We have two iphones on our account. We had the Unlimited plan for many many years. This year....
We could've KEPT the unlimited plan if we paid FULL PRICE for the new iphones.

If you guys look at your past phone bills and look at your usage....for each month. You'll get an idea of how much data you're using. Our highest usage was 1.7GB for one phone in ONE month for the entire year. Average usage for each phone was below 1GB. So, we opted to pay the $200 for each phone and went with the Non-Unlimited data plan which allows 2GB per phone.

We had originally thought it was 2GB for the entire account.... but from what the Verizon salesman told us....its 2GB per phone and we were way under that.