Droid 4 vs Rezound vs Bionic

[ioni]

Which of these would you recommend? The Bionic looks to be pretty comparable to the Droid 4 in terms of battery life and it's cheap. I like that the Droid 4 has a slide out qwerty keyboard, but I don't know if that is worth the $100.

I think the Rezound has Ice Cream Sandwich, which is a big plus for it. If I could get Ice Cream Sandwich on the Bionic, I'd go with the Bionic in an instant. Does anyone know if that is possible?

 

[shortylickens]

Bionic is now last gen tech. Would avoid.

 

[dguy6789]

The Bionic has 1GB ram, LTE, 4.3 inch qHD display, Cortex A9 dual core, microSD, removable battery, etc...(on paper it's a more advanced phone than the iPhone 4S) If that is last gen tech then the only phone not last gen is the One X.

To the OP: the Rezound is way better than either of those including the Bionic even if they both had ICS.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

If you are on Verizon the Droid Razr Maxx and the Galaxy Nexus are the two best phones available at the moment. If you care about ICS the Galaxy Nexus is the best option by far since it is the ICS reference phone and gets updates directly from Google.

 

[trmiv]

From those three I'd go with the Rezound. My parents and a work friend both have it, and I really like it. It doesn't have ICS yet though, but it's rumored soon. Hopefully not with Sense 3.6 though!

But for other phones I'd suggest either the Galaxy Nexus (which I own) or the Droid Razr Maxx (my wife has one). The screen is better on the Rezound than the Razr, but I really like the build quality of the Razr and the battery life the Maxx version adds.

 

[ioni]

I think I'm going to go with the Rezound. Anand's bench shows it has worse wifi and cell talk time than the Bionic though. Are those benches done with the default profiles? Is it possible to set up a profile to turn off 3/4G while browsing on wifi to improve battery life?

 

[Nothinman]

I would avoid anything from Motorola until they actually allow you to unlock your bootloader like HTC. So following that, I would suggest a Rezound. My gf has one and really likes it, although I prefer my GNexus running CyanogenMod 9 nightlies.

 

[QueBert]

if I get another Android phone it's Rezound or nothing.

 

[podspi]

Having just made this decision myself, I'd go for the Droid 4. But I'm one of those weirdos who needs the physical keyboard


The Droid 4 actually has pretty great battery life (I'm averaging 20 hours a charge) but the non-removable battery is a huge bummer (and mistake, imho). Also, Bionic (and D4) both have ICS 3rd-party ROMs, BUT only the Bionic has leaked fastboot files (so far), so if you brick your D4, you are SOL at the moment.


Also, both the Bionic and D4 have pentile screens. Upside is that you can read it easier in the sun, downside is that you can totally see the pixels.

What are you going to use the phone for? If it is mostly texts and emails, I'd say D4 all the way. If you're going to be watching movies, or are one of those people who go nuts over screen ppi, Rezound is the obvious choice.

 

[dagamer34]

None of them. I think getting any phone with a 1st generation LTE chipset when 2nd generation chipsets greatly improve battery life is wasting your phone subsidy when you are stuck with it for 2 years.

If there's no rush to buying the phone, wait for CTIA in May. That's when Verizon should have more phones to announce.

 

[ClockerXP]

I am very happy with the Rezound. Battery is more than enough to go all day with me on Wifi a lot. I'm not messing with it a lot though.

Just upgraded from my Dinc 1 (3.7" screen) a week ago. The size of the phone is taking a little getting used to compared to my Dinc. 4G kills the battery but what I'm reading is that it has more to do with the 4G networks than the phone, so I'm skeptical that the next generation of phones will do much better while on 4G. Even if power consumption is reduced, I'd bet they just make the batteries smaller to cut cuts and keeps the phones slimmer. The high res. screen hurts the battery too but that's what you get when you have such a nice screen.

I disable 4G LTE because I have strong Wifi at my work & and I keep screen brightness on low. I wish there were a Sense toggle widget for 4G so I could easily enable it for the once in a blue moon time I actually want to use it.

As stated above I recommend staying with the HTC since they seem to be more developer friendly.

 

[Hans5849]

I have a Bionic, rooted, and running Eclipse 2.2. There are beta/alpha builds out there for ICS from Team Gummy and others. Problem for me is the front facing camera doesn't work yet, and I Skype a lot. The ROMs for this phone that are still in development are pretty decent, but some developers are starting to move on.
As much as I like the phone, I'd wait to get a 2nd gen 4G chipset. After flashing and using wireless at home I get about 25 hours of battery life under normal use. Also a unlocked bootloader would be nice.
If you do get one, forever root it and get rid of all the junk that Verizon puts on it.

 

[bearxor]

I wouldn't want to get a Rezound just because of the name.

Rezound? Seriously?

But yeah, if I was on the big V, I'd only be looking at a Galaxy Nexus or RAZR (or MAXX if you want the battery life).

 

[dguy6789]

I wouldn't want to get a Rezound just because of the name.

Rezound? Seriously?

Agreed. The name of the phone is one of the most important things to consider when figuring out if it is the right device for you or not.

 

[Nothinman]

Agreed. The name of the phone is one of the most important things to consider when figuring out if it is the right device for you or not.

And I think Rezound sounds better than RAZR or RAZR Maxx. The latter sounds like it needs at least a half dozen exclamation points after it's name.

 

[bearxor]

Agreed. The name of the phone is one of the most important things to consider when figuring out if it is the right device for you or not.

Totally on board with you.

 

[Thegonagle]

If I was buying an Android phone for Verizon today, it would be between the Razor Max and the Resound. <-- Note corrected spellings. () (J.K.)

Rezound if I wanted the fastest I could get and HTC Sense (which, for the record, I like).
Maxx if I wanted the big battery.

If I decided I need a keyboard again, Droid 4 looks like the one, but I'm OK with onscreen for the most part.

 

[Oyeve]

Avoid the razr if at all possible. I have one from work and 2 things annoy the shot out of me. 1. LTE on this phone is ass. My tmobile sgs2 smokes the razr. Granted it may be a regional thing but I am in NYC 99% of my time so yeah, my tmo smokes the jobs razr. 2. The sound quality on the razr is not just bad, its down right horrible! Even with power-amp it just sucks. So, if speed and sound are important avoid the razr. I dont mention locked bootloaders as that should not be a reason to pick a phone but yeah, its locked too.

 

[yh125d]

Avoid the razr if at all possible. I have one from work and 2 things annoy the shot out of me. 1. LTE on this phone is ass. My tmobile sgs2 smokes the razr. Granted it may be a regional thing but I am in NYC 99% of my time so yeah, my tmo smokes the jobs razr. 2. The sound quality on the razr is not just bad, its down right horrible! Even with power-amp it just sucks. So, if speed and sound are important avoid the razr. I dont mention locked bootloaders as that should not be a reason to pick a phone but yeah, its locked too.

Isn't NYC LTE notoriously bad?

Yeah, it's a regional thing. LTE on the Razr is just fine

And the audio quality on my Razr was great, until I did a factory reset, now it sucks. I dunno, it's like the factory reset installed an audio driver from 1997

 

[joshhedge]

Rezound for the 720p display. Also when OC'd the S3 whoops the arse of the TI chips and Tegra 2. My S3 in the Sensation actually gets better benchmarks that Tegra 3 in some instances, E.g. Velamo browser benchmark

 

[bearxor]

And the audio quality on my Razr was great, until I did a factory reset, now it sucks. I dunno, it's like the factory reset installed an audio driver from 1997

Are you knocking that Cirrus Logic FM Synthesizer?

Rezound for the 720p display. Also when OC'd the S3 whoops the arse of the TI chips and Tegra 2. My S3 in the Sensation actually gets better benchmarks that Tegra 3 in some instances, E.g. Velamo browser benchmark

The S3 isn't a bad processor, but the graphics chip is pretty bad.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Rezound for the 720p display. Also when OC'd the S3 whoops the arse of the TI chips and Tegra 2. My S3 in the Sensation actually gets better benchmarks that Tegra 3 in some instances, E.g. Velamo browser benchmark

Velamo is a Qualcomm benchmark so it's hardly surprising their hardware does disproportionately well at it.

I'd much rather have an OMAP 4430 based device than a S3 since it is a better overall package.

Although in terms of perceived speed the Rezound will be much slower than the Nexus due to all of the HTC bloat.

 

[joshhedge]

Velamo is a Qualcomm benchmark so it's hardly surprising their hardware does disproportionately well at it.

I'd much rather have an OMAP 4430 based device than a S3 since it is a better overall package.

Although in terms of perceived speed the Rezound will be much slower than the Nexus due to all of the HTC bloat.

Graphics and CPU are better on S3 than OMAP 4430 though?

Just root and install custom ROMs

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Graphics and CPU are better on S3 than OMAP 4430 though?

Just root and install custom ROMs

The Razr trades blows with the Rezound on the cpu front and seems to win pretty consistently on the gpu front. OMAP 4 also has better built in hardware for HD video decoding compared to S3.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

I have the Bionic and have played with CM9 and KANG's ICS builds. I like them. That said, they are alpha builds still and there are issues.

Out of the phones you listed I would wait. They are all (except D4) phones that have been out a bit. The Bionic won't have any new dev support. D4 is locked and most likely won't be unlocked unless Moto releases it, which I wouldn't hold my breath for. The Rezound doesn't have ICS builds yet