Hey Guys, I've decided it's time for a new phone. I currently have a HTC wildfire which is rooted & oc'd running CM7 RC1. I've decided it's time for a real smartphone but can't decide which one. I can pick between the Atrix, Sensation, Galaxy S 2 or the Optimus 3D. All of these are spec'd pretty similarly and all have their own advantages & disadvantages. I'm wondering if anyone here has used one or more of these phone and can provide info on real world use
I would go for either SGS2 or Sensation. SGS2 is a powerfull phone with amoled display and if you seek performace that is what you 'll get form this phone.Nice build quality also. Sensation tends to be a little slower but it has Sense UI which is just beautifull.I have HD@ and im running android on it.I've tried many builds(CM7 ....)but i just cant use it without Sense! Personally i woud go for sensation.It doesnt have amoled display(SLCD) but i had better resolution than SGS2.Also better build quality. If you whant 3D go for LG Optimus,but i think 3D on phones is just a gimmick.... If you really whant 3D and you cant live without it go for EVO3D.... Motorolla i dislike the most!
for my the atrix is not able to match these phones, the fight is between s2 and sensation, y personally would go with the s2, the screen res is the only pro with the sensation while the s2 can play even 1080p video directly from the browser, that says it all
thanks for the help guys, i've narrowed it down to the sgs2 or the sensation, does any one know which of these has the better battery life?
Not tried the others but my dad had a HTC Desire HD and although the phone was ok, his was awful, constant problems, had to go for repair 4 times, every time came back with a new problem (reboot loop, no service etc), absolute nightmare. Eventually the store agreed to swap it and he got Samsung Galaxy S2 and he said it's like a whole nex experience, so much better, faster, more efficient etc. I'm put off HTC due to all the problems, going for repair once I can live with but 4 times and it coming back with problems (the most recent time it had no service and the battery cover was the wrong colout for the phone). He gets about 2 and a half days out of the S2, although thats relatively light use for everything except a fair few calls and texts. Regardless of that with the same use on the Desire Hd he got a day so it is a big improvement and an efficient phone. Not sure about the Sensation but I'd avoid HTC.
Your dad must have had bad luck then with 4 phones, I've never really heard of HTC devices having bad problems, always heard good things of them(even I have an Evo), and what not. I would go with the S2. Either phone you're not gonna get decent battery life, but the S2 is just an amazing device. Sensation isn't bad either, but this is a personal reason, I'm not a fan of Sense and I love Touchwiz that Samsung uses. Not sure if Sense 3.0, but Touchwiz 4 is also hardware acclerated.
SGS2 all the way, it's simply better than the Sensation. battery life wise, I'm running the Litening Rom 1.5 and with what I consider light use (some gaming, bit of browsing and socialising (fb, messaging)) I get around 40 hours out of the battery. standard use I'd say a day, or near enough a day. the battery life on the sensation is worse btw.
im sure s2 has better battery life, but depends on what are your fav apps, but if you want the best smartphone battery life, the iphone 4 is waiting for you
main use will be facebook, email (work & personal), browsing while out & about, and a few calls msgs per day (about 1hr worth each day). currently I have to charge the wildfire each night, so if i'm getting about the same battery life i'll be happy
go check out xda developers forum for info on the phones. the sensation actually has 2 different manufacters for the display and i heard you can tell a difference. there are issues with pretty much every phone. if it were me i would go with the sgs2. i have an lg g2x now which i really like except for the software issues which should be fixed now since i just downloaded and installed 2.3.3 on it last nite.
ive got an atrix, and i prefer it over my brother's galaxy s2. although the galaxy s2 interface runs a lot smoother, thats mainly because of its lower resolution. the atrix's higher resolution with a slightly smaller screen (4inch vs 4.3inch) gives it good pixel density, which is good for high res videos and making everything look a lot sharper. with the 4 vertex and 4 pixel shader geforce on the tegra 2 setup, it has enough grunt to run all currently available games at well over 60fps. the lcd of the atrix is also surprisingly vivid. whilst it isnt quite as vivid as the amoled on my brother's sgs2, its a lot more vivid than most of the other LCDs available on phones. higher resolution is also very useful for web browsing as it means you can fit more on a screen at any given time. also, as of yesterday, motorola has released 2.3.4 for the atrix, so its running pretty darn well. another advantage is that there are a few tegra hd games that run with higher res textures and generally look a lot better. at the moment, there are still some incompatibility issues with the sgs2 and some games due to samsung's exynos setup being fairly new. atrix also has a fingerprint sensor, which comes in handy for quickly unlocking the phone. the only disadvantage i can think of for the tegra is that it lacks the neon core, which means there are some incompatibility issues with some videos if you dont convert them first. recently, the bootloader of the atrix has become unlockable too, so you can always flash custom roms like cyanogen mod if you want a bit more performance from the atrix as well. facebook and email will be more or less the same amongst all android phones, but diff ui may have ways of integrating it. motoblur can integrate it into its own apps which can come in handy, but i would assume samsung and htc would have something similar. high res screen of atrix is useful for browsing. and the atrix has a large battery (1930mah) compared to the other phones, so it has pretty decent battery life. mine lasts me all day with 8 hours of music, an hour of videos, an hour of web browsing, plus calls and messaging, as well as still having enough juice for me to do an hour of gaming too before it hits 30%. this is pretty good considering i leave it at maximum brightness.
omg how can you dismiss the fastest phone of them all and it has a 3D screen, Optimus 3D if i could afford it i would have it im using a lovely little Wildfire S lol
Thanks for all the help guys, i did decide on getting the sgs2, but my car decided to break down on me at the same time so I had to spend the cash there instead. Hopefully if all goes to plan I'll be able to pick one up in a month or two.
from TechRadar's review: "However, as a smartphone, it lacks the whizz of the Samsung Galaxy S2 or the solid feel of the HTC Sensation, while even LG's own Optimus 2X manages to feel like a classier phone in the hand. If you really, really want 3D, it's a good (and currently your only) choice. But in terms of modern smartphone performance, the Optimus 3D is slightly disappointing." Physically, it's a big, fat, lump of a phone. This is one big-screen phone that really feels its size, coming in wider and heavier than the competition. While the Galaxy S2 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc combine monster screens with slim style, the Optimus 3D's a bit of a monstrosity. Battery life is poor. Even without using much in the way of 3D features, we struggled to get through a whole day of casual use. You're going to need USB cables everywhere to keep this one alive. Android 2.2 on board as well - admittedly, it's not as big of an issue as many make out, but to not bring a £500 smartphone to market with the latest version of Google's mobile OS is sure to irk a fair few users. so... it's fat, heavy, sluggish with poor battery life... only Android 2.2 atm. hardly the best phone out there.
Damn all you non US folks that have had sgs2 for months! My contract is just about up, and I'm dying to get one of these at a discount
For me, I'd wait until November, because I heard Google will release Ice Cream Sandwich around that time (rumour). Probably some manufacturers will release some new phone models too. I'm due to an upgrade as well, coz my Legend starting to get sluggish (almost full onboard memory), but I decided to wait until November or December, when Google will release Ice Cream Sandwich ( still rumour tho). Rumour as well: Google has set the next handset should last for 18 months, at least, as a requirement for all of it's android phone manufacturer partners, so there would be new models when Ice Cream Sandwich out. Anyway, if u can't wait, I think u will be happy with either SGS2 or HTC Sensation. Hope this helps
Personally, I back the SAMSUNG Galaxy S II. I like it more than the HTC Sensation. However, the only reason why I like HTC better is because HTC guarantees that all their bootloaders are unlocked. deltatux
Samsung donated an SII to Cyanogen mod developers. HTC is taking the encryption off boot loaders of certain phones, but not all. As far as I know, The Evo, Evo 3d, View, Thunderbolt, and Incredible 2 won't have their boot loaders encryption taken off. Also, just to kind of note, all bootloaders are locked with the exception of Nexus devices that aren't carrier branded. People just find exploits in the encryption to gain write access to the bootloader for recoveries. HTC like Motorola just introduced a new encryption that hasn't been broken for all newer devices.