New phone on Verizon....

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I just flashed my gf's phone to ICS and our mutual friend spills beer all over it. The LCD seems shot. Idiot. He destroyed my S95, lost his own S90, and lost his iPhone all in a period of 3 months.

The one good thing about him is he paypaled me $160 in no time, and left my gf $200 for repairs.

Anyway, my gf just paid $50 to repair the USB port of her phone (just a week before the beer incident), and I don't think it's wise to sink in another $100 for LCD repair. For all we know other components are damaged.

So her choices seem to be GNex or SGS3. I'm leaning towards the Nexus slightly, but only because the SGS3 on VZW is a locked down biatch. I have this horrible tendency to cling onto old phones (I bought a Nexus S when the SGS2 came out, and then an SGS2 when the GNex was out). Perhaps I'm wrong in being biased towards the GNex, but perhaps its Nexus status will make it more attractive?

BTW does the Nexus have JB yet (VZW)? Or are we waiting still? And if so, what is a realistic timeline a stupid carrier like VZW would get JB?

I should just have her switch to a GSM carrier. She can at least take my phone when things go wrong. Not to digress, but today I soft-bricked my friend's captivate and threw her my Nexus S for a day while I diagnosed her phone. I TB restored most of her data on my Nexus S so the transition was seamless. Believe me I almost freaked myself out when rooting my GF's Inc2 and installing ICS last week because I knew if I made any mistake, she'd be phoneless.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

The nexus and sg3 both have jelly bean ROMs.

Nexus doesn't have official jellybean yet. (Only the gsm version has official jellybean)

 

[dguy6789]

SGS3 is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the Nexus imo. I have the Nexus and can't get a GS3 without paying full retail for it and I am still considering buying one despite that. S4 Krait and next gen low power LTE radio are what do it for me. The VZW GN is getting a new radio update that is still on ICS before the Jellybean update so it's probably going to be a couple months until JB at the least.

 

[AstroManLuca]

It'll probably be a while before an official OTA Jelly Bean update comes from Verizon, but stable, bug-free Jelly Bean builds have been available since the day after GoogleIO. I don't even care when Verizon pushes out updates, since I always just install them myself well before they're available.

As for the GS3 being locked down, well, it is, but there are already workarounds. It can be rooted and apparently you can even install roms. The only drawback is you can't install custom kernels, which does limit the potential of what you can do but there are already experimental stock Jelly Bean builds available for it and I expect a full, stable CM10 within a couple months. So don't count out the GS3. It seems like a great phone. Probably gets better battery life than the Nexus.

The Nexus modding community feels more "mature" to me than the ones for my past phones. All of the roms I've tried out have been pretty much indistinguishable from stock Android, with any changes being under the hood.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Based on battery life alone I would go for the GS3.

<-- Verizon GN owner.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

It'll probably be a while before an official OTA Jelly Bean update comes from Verizon, but stable, bug-free Jelly Bean builds have been available since the day after GoogleIO. I don't even care when Verizon pushes out updates, since I always just install them myself well before they're available.

As for the GS3 being locked down, well, it is, but there are already workarounds. It can be rooted and apparently you can even install roms. The only drawback is you can't install custom kernels, which does limit the potential of what you can do but there are already experimental stock Jelly Bean builds available for it and I expect a full, stable CM10 within a couple months. So don't count out the GS3. It seems like a great phone. Probably gets better battery life than the Nexus.

The Nexus modding community feels more "mature" to me than the ones for my past phones. All of the roms I've tried out have been pretty much indistinguishable from stock Android, with any changes being under the hood.

That explains why I have a custom overclock kernel on my Verizon GS3.

You could install custom kernels for a few weeks now.

 

[AstroManLuca]

That explains why I have a custom overclock kernel on my Verizon GS3.

You could install custom kernels for a few weeks now.

Sweet, I wasn't keeping up with that.

So I guess to answer OP's question, the locked down thing didn't really change much. I think the main difference now is price. The Nexus is 1 cent with contract (Amazon) or about $300-$400 without, while the GS3 is $200 with contract or $600 without.

 

[cl-scott]

My thoughts on it...

The Gnex is a Nexus phone, so unlocking the bootloader and rooting it is very simple, and there's a very active community of people creating custom ROMs for it. That includes a number of Jelly Bean AOSP based ROMs. I wouldn't exactly call them bug free, but plenty of people have been using them as daily drivers. I landed on AOKP after my previous favorite Team Gummy more or less disbanded. The CM team and AOKP team seem to liberally borrow code from one another, which is part of the great thing about an open platform like Android. Then there's a few other players, which I hesitate to call minor players, but they don't get the same level of attention or might only be one or two developers instead of a small team.

The SG3 has slightly better hardware, but it's still pretty locked down and while I have to cop to not keeping up on the latest, based on this thread it sounds like it might be a while before you have the option of a custom ROM. Maybe someone can disabuse me of that notion.

The one thing I would kind of question about either phone, is the sheer size. Especially if this phone would be for your girlfriend. Unless she's Amazonian in stature, with massive hands, you might want to consider something with a smaller form factor. I probably have slightly larger than average hands, and I can just barely get my thumb to the far end of the GNex screen with the Otterbox case on it. The average woman would need two hands to use this phone. So something with a 3.x" screen might be better than a 4.x" screen.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Well either the GNex or SGS3 are definitely too big. I can tell the SGS2 is a little big in her hands... but what can I do? Even for a male like me with medium sized hands, the SGS3 is too big. The GNex too.

But it's not like we can't use it. Shrug. There aren't many 4"-4.3" phones that are great anymore. I hate Motorola, but if I were to get an older dual core phone, I think the Nexus would at least be the winner. I don't see how settling to a RAZR could be justifiable unless she desperately needs the battery of the MAXX model.

 

[Spoooon]

Well, one thing is that my wife always seems to use her 4S with 2 hands. I don't know if she's just more comfortable doing it that way or what. For her, the phone size would pretty much be irrelevent because she'd just use two hands regardless.

If it's a choice between the RAZR or Nexus, go Nexus (better screen, more comfortable to hold, Jelly Bean eventually).

 

[cl-scott]

Well either the GNex or SGS3 are definitely too big. I can tell the SGS2 is a little big in her hands... but what can I do? Even for a male like me with medium sized hands, the SGS3 is too big. The GNex too.

But it's not like we can't use it. Shrug. There aren't many 4"-4.3" phones that are great anymore. I hate Motorola, but if I were to get an older dual core phone, I think the Nexus would at least be the winner. I don't see how settling to a RAZR could be justifiable unless she desperately needs the battery of the MAXX model.

Another consideration, is how many women out there (or men for that matter) really use even a fraction of the full capabilities of their phones? I have a GNex, and I know for a fact that I'm probably only using a tiny fraction of what it's really capable of, and I'm likely to be far more of a power user than the average woman.

How much of a phone does she really need? Does she really even need 4G? It's entirely possible you could go with a more mid-range Android phone and she'd never really notice that it didn't have a 1.2GHz dual core CPU, or maybe even a dual core CPU period.

I'll just take a guess, and I may well be way off base, but I'd guess she will primarily be texting, using it for facebook/twitter/etc, maybe some light email, and then maybe the odd phone call here or there. That's probably all the more about 90% of people ever do with their phone, and I'm not really sure that such people are really going to notice a huge difference between say a single core 1GHz CPU and the dual core 1.2GHz CPU in the GNex or dual core 1.5GHz CPU in the GS3.

It can be easy for some of us to forget that most people don't care about the hardware underpinning the phone. They don't care about the difference between say a Ti OAMP and Snapdragon CPU. All they care about being able to do are the above tasks, the end. So you may just be setting your sights a little high. Maybe take your girlfriend to the nearest Verizon store, let her play around with different phones, and I'd bet a shiny nickel that she will pick something very different from what you would pick. You also probably don't want to ask her to explain her decision making process. I have a friend who had a couple of extra charging cables, and wanted to know if I wanted one... His wife apparently saw one, decided it was "cute" and so took that one.

 

[Nintendesert]

I'll tell you what, the GNex has some of the shittiest battery life of a smart phone I've seen. It's HORRID. So take that into account. If you can always be plugged in ( kinda defeats purpose of a mobile device....) or buy a bigger battery or multiple batteries I'd get something other than a GNex. My wife is hating the phone because of how fast it loses it's charge.

 

[cl-scott]

I'll tell you what, the GNex has some of the shittiest battery life of a smart phone I've seen. It's HORRID. So take that into account. If you can always be plugged in ( kinda defeats purpose of a mobile device....) or buy a bigger battery or multiple batteries I'd get something other than a GNex. My wife is hating the phone because of how fast it loses it's charge.

You can argue that you shouldn't have to do this, but if you install something like the LeanKernel on a GNex, the battery life gets a lot better. It's undervolted by default, you can knock the voltages down even more for each clock speed, and you can even go with the "experimental" kernels which offer a 180MHz or 230MHz minimum clock speed compared to the stock kernel 350MHz. You can also use the InteractiveX CPU governor, which shuts off one of the cores when the screen is off. There are other governors which would probably give better battery life at the expense of some performance, like hotplug, which can shut down the second core at any time it decides it's not being used.

I'm not addicted to my phone the same way some people are, so I can easily get a full day with about 60% charge left using the latest experimental LeanKernel with the 180MHz lowest speed.

The stock setup for the GNex can be a big battery suck, no question, but there are some things you can do to improve the situation.

 

[bearxor]

GSM GNex owner here

The nerd in me says to buy the SGS3 and go at it with custom ROMs.

The adult in me says that no one should ever buy a non-nexus phone because no other device is going to get more than one major update and I don't feel like fucking with that ROM flashing shit.

Buy the Nexus.


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[amdhunter]

I watch a friend of mine bitch and moan about every single rom, ics or jb, not working in one way or another on his SGS3.

My Nexus, on the other hand, hasn't had a single rom that didn't work flawlessly. Currently using ParanoidAndroid in tablet mode and I couldn't be happier.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

You can argue that you shouldn't have to do this, but if you install something like the LeanKernel on a GNex, the battery life gets a lot better. It's undervolted by default, you can knock the voltages down even more for each clock speed, and you can even go with the "experimental" kernels which offer a 180MHz or 230MHz minimum clock speed compared to the stock kernel 350MHz. You can also use the InteractiveX CPU governor, which shuts off one of the cores when the screen is off. There are other governors which would probably give better battery life at the expense of some performance, like hotplug, which can shut down the second core at any time it decides it's not being used.

I'm not addicted to my phone the same way some people are, so I can easily get a full day with about 60% charge left using the latest experimental LeanKernel with the 180MHz lowest speed.

The stock setup for the GNex can be a big battery suck, no question, but there are some things you can do to improve the situation.

The problem isnt so much the CPU. Its more of the screen draining power and LTE. All these different kernels do is give me more standby time. If Im sitting there lurking FB or streaming music, my phone is dead within hours.

 

[dguy6789]

I'll tell you what, the GNex has some of the shittiest battery life of a smart phone I've seen. It's HORRID. So take that into account. If you can always be plugged in ( kinda defeats purpose of a mobile device....) or buy a bigger battery or multiple batteries I'd get something other than a GNex. My wife is hating the phone because of how fast it loses it's charge.

My VZW Galaxy Nexus usage on a daily basis at work with the stock rom: Connected to 4G LTE the entire time, about 1 hour of screen on time web browsing split across a few breaks, 8.5 hours of mp3 playback, screen on auto brightness, every sync option turned on, gps on(turns on every time I open Facebook), every haptic feedback and vibrate notification option turned on. I get about 12 hours unplugged before it gets really low. I haven't had it die on me yet. If I wasn't listening to music the entire work day I could probably go unplugged for that same 12 hour period and have more than 40-50% left. I don't think that's so bad battery life wise.

 

[AstroManLuca]

The problem isnt so much the CPU. Its more of the screen draining power and LTE. All these different kernels do is give me more standby time. If Im sitting there lurking FB or streaming music, my phone is dead within hours.

I was going to respond saying that LeanKernel has done wonders for my battery life, but you're probably right. It really has dramatically improved my standby time though, wow. Drains only like 2% an hour - last night I went to bed with ~60% battery remaining and when I woke up I was at ~45%. But yeah, it does drain fairly fast when I'm using it, especially when I'm using LTE a lot. But normally I have my phone plugged in and connected to WiFi.

Unrelated note, I think we had the exact same phone progression! Did you have an Epic 4G before, and now a Nexus? Because I did the same thing. Funny. I actually loved my Epic but the Nexus is still a huge improvement.

 

[cl-scott]

The problem isnt so much the CPU. Its more of the screen draining power and LTE. All these different kernels do is give me more standby time. If Im sitting there lurking FB or streaming music, my phone is dead within hours.

And how exactly is that different from any other LTE phone? Generating that 700MHz wave takes a lot of power, and the display is always probably the single biggest drain on battery life for any candybar style phone.

I am rather anti-FB for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, but from what I understand that program is very poorly written and as a result is a major battery killer. Can't verify those claims myself, just reporting what I've heard elsewhere. Point being, sometimes even those of us more technically minded than the average have a tendency to get lazy and blame Microsoft or the in this case Samsung, rather than really going through and working out that maybe it's some app like the FB app that is sucking down the power, not some shoddy/lazy engineering work on the part of the manufacturer.

 

[ponyo]

I was going to respond saying that LeanKernel has done wonders for my battery life, but you're probably right. It really has dramatically improved my standby time though, wow. Drains only like 2% an hour - last night I went to bed with ~60% battery remaining and when I woke up I was at ~45%. But yeah, it does drain fairly fast when I'm using it, especially when I'm using LTE a lot. But normally I have my phone plugged in and connected to WiFi.

Holy cow! It drains 2% an hour on standby and that's pretty good and acceptable? Maybe you meant 1/2%. Because even 1% is bad.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

You should drain around 1%/hour tops on 3G/4G in my opinion. 1/2% might mean you don't sync diddly squat.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

And how exactly is that different from any other LTE phone? Generating that 700MHz wave takes a lot of power, and the display is always probably the single biggest drain on battery life for any candybar style phone.

I am rather anti-FB for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, but from what I understand that program is very poorly written and as a result is a major battery killer. Can't verify those claims myself, just reporting what I've heard elsewhere. Point being, sometimes even those of us more technically minded than the average have a tendency to get lazy and blame Microsoft or the in this case Samsung, rather than really going through and working out that maybe it's some app like the FB app that is sucking down the power, not some shoddy/lazy engineering work on the part of the manufacturer.

Never said it was different. Just saying that different kernels do not help that much when in active use. And yes the FB app is a huge drainer. I have to make sure I clear the app out of the task manager every time otherwise it will drain while the screen is off.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Unrelated note, I think we had the exact same phone progression! Did you have an Epic 4G before, and now a Nexus? Because I did the same thing. Funny. I actually loved my Epic but the Nexus is still a huge improvement.

LoL yea I did. Although I did sell my Epic 4G a bit early and had a Nexus One and a Razr for a few weeks before the GN officially came out. I liked my Epic, I just hated Sprint.

 

[Nintendesert]

Well we sent the GNex back to Amazon and replaced it with the Droid Razr Maxx. The crap battery was able to be overcome but the crap radio antenna in the GNex was the deal breaker.

Too many dropped calls and times where the wife would get no reception in the house. I'd have gotten a signal booster but she needs it at work too and when she's got no signal due to the GNex's radio issues it was time to try something else.

I'm not sure how you make a damn cell phone with the most basic function being a phone and use a crap radio setup for it.