All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

No sir. I know there's a couple of people on here interested in them and I don't want anyone to think they can jump into one of these handsets for $199 out the door. Take it for what it's worth.

 

I don't get it. So what makes you think there won't be a subsidized release?

 

I have to go with Tailgunner on this one... you won't see them on US carriers, unless they're slightly redesigned/neutered and have carrier branding all over them. IMHO, doing that to the Z completely ruins it. More people need to start buying unlocked phones anyway.

 

It's Sony. They've never been popular here and the devices that Sony have offered in the past haven't caught on.

Xperia Play or Ion anyone?

 

Nexus 4 much?

 

Has anyone else noticed the settings menu lag on the Note II(and presumably the S3)? Whenever you tap an option in the settings menu, the effects lag a bit.

 

I've been afraid this might happen. May have to buck up and pay full price for it. (the xperia Z)

That or wait for the GS4, but I'm getting mighty sick of not having a smartphone...

 

Yeah, with my GS3, when I hit a settings menu, it's an "and-ONE" count with it opening on the one instead of opening instantly. Didn't notice it until you said so. Now I can't un-notice it. Thanks a lot

Do you have any issues with your Note 2's camera being blurry? I have noticed that while it's a massive step up from my HTC 7 Pro, there is a definite blurriness to the photos oftentimes, and haven't figured out how to remedy it. Sample shots from GS3 reviews on its release didn't have it.

 

Yeah, cannot un-see that delay now, although I hadn't really noticed it before. Not much in Settings I need to access that I don't already have a shortcut for.

As for the camera blur, if you tap to focus, are you seeing the box turn green as you take the picture? As long as I see that, I haven't had any blurring issues. If the box is red on the other hand, some blurring can occur.

 

But there's absolutely nothing concrete to say that. It's just speculation.

And I won't bother with an unlocked phone because I'm not paying 500-800 dollars when I'm going to have to pay for the plan anyway. Maybe if cell plans were cheaper here, but you still pay the same rate whether you bring an unlocked phone or get a subsidized one.

 

RunPee.

It lets you know (without spoilers) the right moment to go take a whizz during a film so you don't miss any important scenes.

RunPee.com | Helping your bladder enjoy going to the movies as much as you do.

 

Regarding the settings pause:

On my Note II, It's a small delay... but not any different from my other phone which is running Android 2.3.5.

My Tab is different because the menus are to the side so the whole screen doesn't refresh.

 

Yeah, that's my experience as well. I did the math when I upgraded to a GS3, and even with a slightly less expensive plan made possible by having an unlocked phone, for the same amount of data, buying on contract was still cheaper by a fair margin.

 

You could get an iPhone on your contact, sell it, and buy that Sony phone.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

I could, but it's not worth the effort. I'll just get the Galaxy S4 when it comes out.

 

Ultimately it boils down to what you are looking for and most importantly, if you really want LTE or not. Solavei is a MVNO riding on T-Mobile's towers and they are pretty popular with the Nexus 4 crowd:

T-Mobile: Unlimited Talk/Text/Data + Nexus 4 16 GB (Subsidized) + "Due Today" Fee = $250 + ($89.99 x 24 months) = $2410
Solavei: Unlimited Talk/Text/Data + Nexus 4 16 GB (Google Play Store) + "Due Today" Fee = $350 + ($49 x 24 months) = $1526

 

An MVNO PLUS a pyramid scheme? Nice!

 

I switched to H2o Wireless (AT&T prepaid). $60 for unlimited minutes and texts, and 2GB of data.

 

Out of curiousity, can you define the difference between a pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing? The program's entirely optional; the service is $49 a month regardless.

 

All MLMs are basically pyramid schemes. Some are less sketchy than others. I'm not saying it's not cheap, I just tend to be mistrustful of MVNOs and the MLM component doesn't help.

 

Subsidized Nexus 4 price is outrageous, you might as well buy an unlocked one if you don't want to renew the contract. In fact I went to the T-Mobile store near my work, and even the workers there scratched their heads at the Nexus 4 subsidized pricing.

 

Trust me, I do not like the MLM concept either, but given that you can opt out of that charade entirely and use the prepaid service for what it is, I wouldn't mind. I know a few people that uses Solavei and they go month-to-month opting out of the offer with no issue. If I had to paid for a service, I would have at least tried them without the fear of getting bit by ETF if I decide it's not working out.

 

Of course there's nothing concrete. There never is, until announcement.

But there's a staggering chance that these will never see major US carriers.

 

Sony does not have a good track record of getting its phones on US carriers, for whatever reason. It's a shame; Sony makes great-looking hardware, and more competition is in eveeryone's best interest; Samsung makes a great phone (as my sig reveals) but their overwhelming dominance of the Android market isn't good for consumers long-term.

 

If the past is any indication, that's certainly true. I just don't understand the motivation for piping up with that tidbit all of a sudden. I figured there had been some announcement or something.

 

No, no announcement... just was saying.

Also, about your comment of sticking with the subsidized devices... subsidized devices are the exact reason prices for service are so high. If everyone would start buying un-subsidized devices, service prices would drop. It's simple supply and demand. The carrier would need to provide an incentive to stay with them, because at any time you could switch to another service provider.

I applaud T-Mobile for even considering (much less acting on the idea) going full-on un-subsidized. It's what the US wireless market needs... a swift kick in the ***.

 

I'm grandfathered into a cheaper AT&T family plan that's no longer offered (550 minutes per month, no texting, no data), and between my mom's basic phone (no additions), my brother's phone (identical to mine), and my GS3 (additional $30 data plan--texts through Google Voice so no plan), we pay total $110 a month, and I just haven't found a plan that can match that for three phones including the subsidized pricing.

Don't need a lot of data (1GB is more than enough) and don't need texts or a whole lot of minutes either (most of my long phone calls are after 9).

 

Something to be wary of is that not all carriers allow their prepaid customers the same coverage maps that their prepaid-plan customers get. US Cellular, for example, has two coverage maps: one for prepaid customers and one for plan customers (the latter being a LOT better).

 

Well, it's kind of a cart before the horse sort of thing. Buying an unsubsidized device just to go on a plan that's going to charge you the same amount as they would for a subsidized device just doesn't work from a financial standpoint. The carriers (and not just MVNOs, but the major carriers) need to start offering some sort of unlocked plan in order for people to buy unlocked phones. It's going to be tough to buck the trend.

I do find the idea of an unlocked phone that I can just pop a sim card into appealing, but not if I have to pay 500+ for the handset and then still have to pay 100 a month.

 

The family plan we have is eligible for an upgrade. Last time I got the phones and contracts at a Go Verizon Wireless store. My question is how do you shop for your phones and contracts? Everything seems negotiable, but what is fair? For example they seem to be selling the Galaxy S3 for $199 with a two year but I see it on Amazon for $149. Should I demand that price from them? They say they can grandfather in my unlimited data so would anyone be able to do this? I think they will waive the $20 activation fees if we all upgrade. Two smartphones and one basic phone upgrade. This is a bit of an open ended post but just general questions on what I should expect, what to bargain for, etc.

 

Ugh just now I'm reminded about why I'm so excited to leave this damn phone behind. Finally trying to move to JB (it's finally stable enough for prime time...sans camera of course) but since this is a Motorola handset...there's a lot of just garbage one has to do to work around the forever encrypted bootloader/eFuse. So I backup everything off my SD card and internal storage, which takes forever, then I have to install the latest version of Safestrap (a recovery/partitioning system that essentially allows Motorola devices to dual boot) but whne I try to boot into the stock system to remove the old Safestrap.....I get a boot loop.

What. The. Hell!?

I'm hoping someone will get me up and running again....I may have really screwed up. But the point is...these shenanigans shouldn't be necessary. It's ridiculous...the OG Droid was dead simple to do stuff to....this thing's locked down better than Fort Knox and everything's a battle.

You couldn't pay me to own a Motorola handset EVER again. Period, bar none. I don't care if the rumored X Phone turns out to be sent from Jesus himself, cures cancer, and is made of freaking tiffany crystal....Never. Again.

I'd at least ask if you can price match. Since Go Wireless isn't a Verizon "Corporate" store, you may have wiggle room.

 

You're going to need to see if the phone can at least make it into fastboot. Connect the phone back to the computer, hold the power button and 'M' key on the keyboard when the phone is off and hopefully that puts you into the fastboot screen with the black screen and 8 bit text. If you can get that far, there should be an option called AP Fastboot. Use the volume down key to move the selection bar down to it, and press the volume up key to select it. Get RSDLite and hope this SBF gets your phone back to stock.

Alternatively, someone has made a 1-click SBF restore that may be more simple than dealing with RSDLite here.

 

I know we haven't seen the S4 yet, but as far as next couple months goes, what do you guys say the best upcoming/current phone is? I'm trying to decide on what to get when i upgrade if the Sony Xperia Z isn't available.

I'd link to be able to mess around with it, so something rootable would be nice. I was looking at the HTC One, but I'm no sure how easy it will be to root and put custom software on.

 

Based on past years... Galaxy S4.

People wait for the Galaxy S phones like they do the iPhones now.

 

If history holds, the GS4 will have a strong, competitive set of specs and due to its wide adoption, it'll have a huge dev base. So it'll probably be the phone to get in the next couple of months.

 

Yeah. I managed to boot into Safestrap again via the M trick which I forgot about for like a minute after i posted that. I switched Safe System back on and rebooted...all is well.

I knew about the SBF but I was unsure about whether the thing would stay stable enough to accept it.

Either the new One or GS 4. Both will have strong dev communities. Thesamsung may be slightly better in that regard but there's already plenty of buzz on the One over at XDA.

 

One X vs. S III.... HAHAHAHAH.

Samsung >>>>>>> HTC in the dev arena because of their ludacris bootloader mess. I don't expect that to change with the new One. At all.

 

You can't get both the subsidized price and unlimited data on Verizon any more as far as I know. If you want to keep your unlimited data, you'll have to pay full price for the phones.

 

I've never had any success negotiating any type of price with verizon wireless. There prices are what they charge and if you want it that is what you pay....at least in my experience.

I'd watch the whole 'grandfathered' unlimited data as well, a lot of people here that and jump on it only to get a bill a month later showing they really didn't get to keep it after buying subsidized phones.

Also on the activation fee verizon seems to be taking a harder stance on it and I believe its actually considered $30 upgrade fee that is billed directly from verizon now so no one can make it go away.

These are just my observations from a few months ago when I 'upgraded' but YMMV as the old saying goes, sometimes it really depends on who you talk to.

 

Yikes. I forgot about this but you're right. He won't get unlimited data unless he buys unsubsidized. Otherwise he can either use a "share everything" shared data plan that applies to all his lines or pick individual metered data plans per line.

Sent from my DROID3 using Tapatalk 2

 

Luckily AT&T is still grandfathering my unlimited data.

Good thing too... I'm using much more data with the Note II than I did with the iPhone 4S... LTE tends to do that to you.

 

And I'm done with my JB experiment and have returned back to Gingerbread. While the ROM is solid enough..there's a inexplicable lag throughout the device that happens and drives me insane. Sometimes it's fine...sometimes it lags. And, all the time, it takes a little too long to wake when the power button is depressed

It's especially maddening because I can taste the potential...when it runs smooth its great but bam..lag and waiting....ugh. That and, despite the GB custom ROM dev using Holo Launcher and ICS/JB Iconography, GB still feels well past it's use by date.

 

There's a bias towards HTC on XDA that doesn't reflect reality.
They're held in a high regard by people who seem determined to ignore their recent failings and who assume they're the same company they were back in the WinMo days.

I saw it a lot within the Mod section around the time the One X and the S3 were launched, you could list of a dozen or more objective advantages the S3 had but certain individuals would just stick their fingers in their ears and insist the One X was the better device.

 

So I'm finally to the point where I think I want to start flashing nightlies on on my Samsung Captivate. I, very flashes the CyanogenMod 10.1 (Android 4.2.2) and it's running smooth. I just want to make sure I have the steps down. I ran Titanium backup, and then I wiped user/system data and cached. Flashed the new Rom, installed gapps, and then restored apps and settings with Titanium backup. Is there anything else I'm missing? Just thought I'd check. So fa for a 3 year old droid, this systems is running butter smooth.

Also is there any advantage/disadvantage to moving apps to the SD card?

Sent from my Samsung Captivate/ICS CM10 via Tapatalk.

 

back when my phone still worked, I noticed a severe drop in performance when using titanium backup at all. doing a clean install and just installing my apps fresh was the best thing I ever did. Kinda sucks if you have saved games you want to keep though.

 

I'm not an expert on flashing ROMs, but I had serious issues as well with flashing and then restoring apps from Titanium Backup, ranging from being unable to connect to Google Services to softbricking. Maybe I just sucked at it, but I decided that if I was going to flash ROMs I would just have to bite the bullet and reinstall everything.

 

If you're going to be flashing nightlies that are all 10.1, then TIB is completely unnecessary. To upgrade between 10.0 and 10.1, I really wouldn't advise backing anything up with TIB, except maybe 3rd party apps/settings. System settings should start fresh with each successive version of the OS, or you have serious problems 99% of the time.

If you're on CM 10.1 now, then this should be your order of flashing...

• Download nightly
• Download updated Gapps if there's an update
• Reboot into CWM
• Make a backup of your system if you want (CWM 6 will make a differential backup)
• Flash the nightly
• Flash the Gapps
• Wipe cache/dalvik cache only
• Reboot

 

The ZL is listed on U.S. Sony's web store under Unlocked Phones section, available in black, red and white. No pricing yet.

Sony Xperia Smartphone | Xperia ZL | XZLC6506RD | Sony USA



Dat red. :thumbsup:

 

After weighing my options I think I'm going with an unlocked phone, but the problem is that AT&T doesn't offer a discounted bring your own phone plan and the various MVNOs on their network are kind of sketchy. I don't want to be on T-Mo, though.

 

What's wrong with T-Mobile? AT&T is way more expensive around here (DC Metro area) than T-Mobile and they don't even have unlimited data anymore. Where in Boston are you located, seems to have good coverage on T-Mobile.