What phone? Time to stop being a ------ and living a life of disappointment and root the phone.

Epic Touch 4G.

I have no interest in rooting the phone. I'm not nerdy enough to understand the greek, don't have time to learn all this shit, and just want a phone that works and does what i want. It did all of those things before. I don't see the point of paying a shitload monthly and having to spend all this time trying to modify the shit to make it work right.

Would rooting it really enhance my Pandora, Google Navigation, Picasa picture uploads, calls, and GOSMS messaging experience? Because that's all i use the phone for, and that's not gong to change anytime soon.

If you would like it to do all those things faster while getting better battery life and having better reception, then yes.

I'd like it to do all those things exactly like it did on Gingerbread. That's what i'd like. I'd also like to take exactly zero chances of bricking the phone since i found out the hard way last month that these damn phones still go for $250+ when SWMBO dropped hers on some tile.

that's the phone i have concealer. yeah I could run ICS and JB but i'm running gingerbread on it. cm7 + nexus modem driver. all the things you hate, i hated. i'm ok now. i can liberally use my phone and the battery lasts for a day. nav works and syncs up very fast (it used to take forever!) and anything having to do with making a call responds a bit quicker now as well as my download speeds doubling. It took me ~30 min to root and flash my phone it wasn't bad at all but I am quite "tech savy".

I wish phones came without carrier BS from the factory too, but they don't. The beautiful thing about Android is how you can change that, if you spend and hour reading and pick a ROM to do it. It's the only solution aside from buying a new phone every 9 months.

Shit is bauce:
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1345858382
BlazerROM, Jelly Bomb skin, Nova-launcher.

Jelly Bomb is fucking awesome. It has Apex, Nova, and TW pre-installed and TW is modified so it's not annoying.

one problem i've found with aftermarket roms: crappy exchange and sms clients. handcent? ugh.

Thats weird. I've always gotten either the android or the samsung sms dialer and the android exchange client.

My One X has been pretty bauce so far, still stock rom, not even rooted. I ran all sorts of different roms on my Captivate. With this one, I haven't felt the need.

I think I feel the need now. ATT sucks in the suburbs of Houston. We have LTE towers around that work great when you're close enough. Now the problem is primarily at work. With the phone sitting still on the desk, I'll toggle airplane mode. Once connection restablishes, I'll have 3-4 bars of LTE goodness. Websites will load instantly. After a few minutes, it will drop to 4G and internet will basically stop functioning. I'm guessing because it deems the LTE signal is not strong enough, it gives up, even though it was working great. If I toggle airplane mode again, the process repeats itself.

Any of you bros have good results from flashing different modems?

I think you're missing the problem here...

The phone was great as it was from factory.

Now it's been totally fucked with the ICS update.

We're both having freezing issues and horrible slow response now a well. Going to Sprint store tomorrow to request new phones with 2.3 loaded. Not putting up with this shit. If they can't help me, then i'll revisit the idea of rooting, and will be looking for you guys for halpz. :party:

lol, no carrier will give you an old OS release because there a courtroom decisions required in each of these updates. It's not going to happen.

Already documented quite a few times that it's happening on Sprint and Androidforums.

They aren't backdating the phone... they're just replacing the phone with a new phone. The phones aren't coming from factory with ICS on them. They give you a new phone since the old one isn't performing well, and it has 2.3 on it. Then you just refuse updates to ICS.

Good luck leaving the store with the old software.

Again... It hasn't been uncommon with this phone, this carrier. In addition it took 3 months for ICS to get to my phone from the point of the first updates. SWMBO got it over a month before i did.

I bought china tablet.

Its a Gemei G9T, 9.7" screen, dual core processor, Im picking it up tomorrow, it will be my first android product, I think it comes with Ice Cream Sandwich.

Bought it because Im not sure about tablets so I didnt want to invest too much in one, If I end up liking it maybe Ill upgrade to a legit one.

Any recommendations?

If it runs like shit. I would put good money on a root and custom rom fixing most issues with it. But read up on it on xda-developers forums anyways.

don't buy shitty hardware. Seriously don't waste your money and cancel the order. I have a Fire running CM10 and it is a total PoS, it's slow, has touch screen issues, lacks things like bluetooth and volume buttons. It plays music in the garage and makes for a decent platform to look up how to not break my car when "fixing" things. I'd sell it but they're all over ebay/craigslist for <$100. Go buy a Nexus 7 with it's quad core goodness and win with life. Only complaint is the lack of a SD slot.

Seriously, listen to midpack.

Did you just buy a cheap knockoff tablet for THE SAME PRICE AS A NEXUS 7?

https://play.google.com/store/device...id=nexus_7_8gb

The Nexus 7 is better in every way than that POS. It will not likely have any developer support (in english at least) and so you WILL be stuck running the factory ICS (4.0) rather than the N7 which is already on JellyBean (4.1).

Well I wanted a 10 inch tablet. I really don't like the size of the seven inch ones. I've been messin with this one a little bit and it is plenty fast with the processor on normal I can still step it up to the performance setting and then overclock it if I need even more.

If I decide to root it the info and roms are already out there, but I don't know enough about te benefits to go through with it just yet.

You can root it, but there are no roms for it, nor will there ever be any, unless you build them yourself.

Which is only one of the many reasons not to buy a knockoff.

If you really wanted a 10" tablet for $200, you should've gotten this:

Toshiba Thrive 10.1in Tablet with 16GB and Tegra2 CPU - CowBoom.com

There are roms available for the g9 so I am assuming there will be some for g9t but it hasn't been out long

Is the Samsung Galaxy S3 $100 more phone than the Nexus? I'm considering my first smartphone purchase via Verizon. Other recommendations? Wait a few months for new Android stuff to arrive? I'm not much of a phone hacker obviously.

If you don't plan on messing with the phone a lot, I would recommend the Nexus, as it will receive more timely updates than the S3.

If you were going to root/custom rom it, the S3 undoubtedly has better hardware. But the software the Nexus is running should be faster and more stable.

This. I have one and so does the wife. Works great now that the update to the OS is out. I not gonna root though. I f up enough things and I use it for school and garage PDF stuff. Fyi it will still work wrapped in Saran wrap. Keeps greasy fingers of it and clean up is easy as hell. Expandable memory with a 32gig I fun and pissing of the people with I pads because of features is hilarious.

Typed on my thrive.

I was tempted by the Thrive because of the awesome connectivity, but ultimately decided a 10" tablet was bigger than I wanted. Ended up with a Galaxy Tab 8.9 which is the perfect size (for my uses).

Awesome idea. I have been bringing my Transformer Prime out with me to work on my car (it sucks having to work on the street) but I am always trying to navigate pages with the knuckle of my pinky finger. Now I won't have to worry about that anymore. Thanks.

S3 has sexy quad-core goodness and a slightly bigger screen. It's also saddled with Touchwiz. Go play with both in the store and see which interface you like better, both are great choices. With either one I would highly recommend rooting it so you can install (AdAway) ad blocker and remove the Verizon bloatware. It's an easy and safe process on both phones, although it will make future OS updates a manual process.

Here's a pretty good comparison between the two phones:
Samsung Galaxy S III vs Samsung Galaxy Nexus

One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article is the curved screen on the Nexus. Barely noticeable but is a neat feature to show off. I don't know the point of it, but if you set your phone glass side down the screen is somewhat protected by the concave glass.

Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) is already out for the Nexus but S3 should be getting it soon. How soon really depends on Verizon...they are a bunch of bastards.

You can also get* a kick ass car dock for the Nexus. It charges and sends audio out through 3 pins on the side of the phone, just pop it in the dock whenever you get in the car and have musical bliss without connecting obnoxious wires every time. It takes 2 minutes and a razor blade to modify the GSM dock to fit the LTE phone.
* if Samsung ever decides to make more

not in the usa

shit you're right. wtf is up with that nonsense. Get a Nexus, save some cash and enjoy Jelly Bean. Don't forget to install Google Music and stream all your MP3s from teh cloud just like the miata gods intended

If you are willing to root your GS3, then its superior due to:
awesomely huge screen
double the RAM
8MP camera
front cam for videoconference masturbation

Rooting the phone was the best thing I've done. It fixed all the compromises and shortcomings that made the Nexus more attractive in some considerations. There are lots of good ROMs out there for this phone.

...or get a GS3 and run CM10, Jellybomb, Nova, Apex, or any of the other multitudes of great ROMS, skinds, and launchers. Blazer ROM with Jellybomb/Nova is a better/faster/cleaner experience than the Nexus pure JB interface. The phone is also better in every way. The GS3 will have a lot of support for a long time, especially considering what the courts are doing to Samsung. Liberating yourself from consumerist cell-phone provider bloating and taxing is the beauty of AOSP. I don't have to deal with stupid rules set-up by my phone provider so I buy more shit, I don't have to worry about things getting taken away because of the court system, and I get to tether for free. :)

Tim doesn't want nightly builds. He wants a phone that works so he can continue building kick ass shit for us to drool over.

CM10 is awesome, even more so than CM9...except for all the weird issues that come with a brand new build. I've been running the nightlies since mid July. For ROMs/development Nexus One/S/Galaxy/7 > *. Trebuchet > Nova. Check out the Cobalt themes, they look fantastic (unless you install on a tablet and then they are broken) and are free.

CM10 will be final soon.

Jellybomb is an awesome theme and has all three launchers.

Hmm. I need to investigate what radio is in the Euro GS3. I'm on t-mobile so I have sim card goodness, so as long as they can broadcast on the correct frequencies...

I had the nexus s. Now the wife uses it. She is technology dumb and uses a lot more of it than I expected. I synced it to the thrive and her laptop. I know it isn't much for for her it is great. She can cook at school, take pics of her stuff, and then share it with the thrive and the big screen. I also load her homework and power points to the thrive and she just plugs it directly into the projector at class. USB ports let her share easily. Mine is more for garage stuff, too lazy to bring the laptop to the porch, and its small so I bring it to classes for power points. I just load all the professors stuff and always have it.

The curve of the screen on the nexus is actually really nice. It fits better in the pocket and feels better on the face. Plus it doesn't seem to glare as bad as my iPhone. See other posts for rants about that. It was free and I still hate it.

Yeah using the thrive wrapped in Saran wrap is awesome. Just have to be carefully to get it smooth on the screen side. Haven't had any issues yet. Just one layer. I think if it was in a case it would just fill with grime. I can almost use it in my garage on the wifi. Any suggestions on a free tether app that isn't too complicated and doesn't make the cell carrier charge me up the ass?

Just root it and use the one built into a custom ROM. Even then if you use it too much big brother will catch you. Any of the apps that arent integrated either suck to use or get you caught instantly.

If you don't unreasonably abuse it, you should be fine according to the internet.

Wifi Teather is a free teather app and probably the only one that actually works well. However, it requires root access.

Never had a problem with T-Mobile or Verizon tethering my rooted phones. I pay per GB with vz so they can suck a dick. Well that and they violated an agreement with FCC and have to permit it anyway.

With ATT, I have tethered with flashed roms, Barnacle, Foxfi. Never went over a gig of tethered usage in a month. Never got in trouble.

I just switched to Verizon from ATT. With their "share everything" plan, tethering is included for free. It is more expensive than sprint, and most others, but they're the only people who have decent signal at my work, home, and school.

It sure is nice to have LTE wherever I go. Oh and to send/receive calls.

Got the SGS3. This pentile matrix crap has me pretty disappointed in the display sharpness coming from the HTC One X. I also noticed it is much less visible in direct sunlight. I still have the ATT line so I'm doing some side-by-side comparisons just for fun. Also, there are a few nice things about the interface on the One X I like, that I wish were on the sgs3. I will see what I can do about adding this features once I start flashing roms and stuff, but I see no point in doing so right now.

Final judgement after day one with both phones side-by-side, They're both damn good devices.

Oh the SGS3 doesnt have the screen with basically 4 brightness settings like the SGS1? Completely off, back light off (bright), back light middle (really bright), back light all the way on (blind you and the people in the house next to you).

AMOLEDs don't have backlights BTW. The pixels themselves are what light up. VS LCD's where the pixels block certain colors from the backlight.

There is very little difference in brightness from my Captivate (SGS1) to the SGS3. Neither are very readable in direct sunlight. The 3 is a marginal improvement.

The one thing I don't like about AMOLED technology across the board, is the white balance. Hold one next to ANY LCD-based phone, and you'll notice the whites are very blue compared to the LCD. The reason for this is the blue pixels on AMOLED displays wear out faster than green and red.

I'm gonna fire up my Xrite Eyeone Display Pro and give you guys a lumen reading for One X vs SGS3.

Weird. Maybe the vibrant got a better screen and I just forget. Its hard to read the thing at night its so fucking bright with the brightness turned all the way down. I've been putting a 20% screen filter on it for a while. With it cranked I can read the thing on the beach.

Hahah. Yes. Screen Filter is required if you don't want to be blinded in a dark room. The reason they have the minimum brightness so high is the colors will screw up beyond the minimum brightness setting they normally allow you. Captivate, Fascinate, Vibrant, all came with the same display.

I have done a test. I set my Eyone Display Pro to continuous measurement in HCFR. I then set each phone to full brightness and displayed a 100% white picture on each display. First at ~50% coverage window, then at 100% coverage window. I record the resultant ftLumen reading for each coverage percent. I also record the color error percentage, with the current target being that of HDTV Rec709 as defined by the International Telecommunication Union. The color temperature target is ~6500 Kelvin. Generally, this is what you will calibrate a display to nowadays. I threw in a couple phones I had laying around for comparison. The R, G, and B stand for Red, Green, and Blue, respectively. The percentage represent how much over or under the target that color is, with 100% being correct. Generally, this software will keep green at 100%, and adjustments will be made to R and B. I have omitted the RGB data for the 50% window, because it remained constant at 50% coverage and 100% coverage for all phones.

SGS3
50% Window: 70 ftL 83%R 103%G 112%B
100% Window: 43 ftL

One X
100%Window: 126 ftL 98%R 99%G 105%B

Iphone 4
100% Window: 129ftL 92%R 100%G 117%B

Captivate (SGS1)
50% Window: 91ftL 66%R 108%G 116%B
100% Window: 85ftL

Keep in mind: The Captivate display has many, many hours on it. It is almost 2 years old and has spent many nights with the display stuck on. It has surely decreased from maximum output since new.

This is far from comprehensive. To do more thorough testing would require going through a grey scale and color gamut test for each phone. I may do that in the future. It would be entertaining.

Wait a second, you're telling me the SGS3 is dimmer than the old captivate? Even when displaying a smaller window than the captivate? Yup.

As you can see from the results, and as I may have stated earlier in this thread, the screen on the HTC One X is very accurate, and brighter than the SGS3. In order of highest to lowest, disregarding size, I would prefer: One X, Iphone 4, SGS3, Captivate. The white balance of the Captivate is very cold, rendering it unacceptable to me.

I have always likened the AMOLED as the plasma display of phones. This has been proven even more true after measuring decreased output at 100% coverage windows. Most plasmas also utilize this method of power management as a way to meet EPA requirements. On a phone, power limiting is to save battery life. While watching a typical movie, rarely will the display need to display anywhere near the output of a 100% white 100%Coverage window, but while browsing the web on your phone, a white background is very common.

I did not measure black levels because these devices will display at levels far lower than my spectrophotometer is capable of reading reliably. Knowing the two technologies, I will say that AMOLED is also akin to plasma, and is capable of extremely low output, whereas LCDs will always have to deal with the light bleeding through pixels from the backlight.

Ok, too drunk to continue on now. Bye bye.

Just got a Nexus 7, its awesome.

Also, NO FLASH SUPPORT! ZOMG I THOUGHT STEVE JOBS NAZI RAPE MACHINE FUCK FLASH HATE INTERNET STUPID

No biggie, I was able to manually install it. Just thought it was interesting that Google is also trying to throw its weight behind HTML 5 just like Apple has, the difference being that Apple is evil when they do it.

It's Adobe that pulled support/updates rather than Google no longer supporting it.

I went ahead and flashed the sgs3. Running the monthly build of CM10. Flashing seems easier, more straightforward, and faster than it was with the captivate. I'm keeping my Att line alive and carrying around the one x still. Its funny how many places I go that att has terrible reception, while this verizon phone keeps chugging along happily.

Battery life is substantially better than the one x. I can go through a day with a few hours of screen on and have ~50% battery left when I go to sleep. At the same time, the one x can sit idle, barely used and die before sleep rime. Poor signal seems to have a major effect on battery life. Cell standby ranked 30% in battery usage on the one x.

Yes, it does. I have a femtocell in my house, and all of my phones gained a 25% battery life.

The SGS3 continues to be awesome.

As a side note, I pulled this off the other day during lunch with my One X. I really wish I could have speeds like this for my home internet. LTE FTW!
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1349061122

Waiting for my new 1080p 5" Nexus phone, so I can drink the sweet sweet tears of retina-owning iSheep.

Just flashed Jelly Bean to my SGS1. Runs amazing, killing the battery. Hopefully that will clear up like it tends to, else I'll do a battery re-learn. At worst I'll just go back to ICS.

480 ppi... b-bb-bb-ballin!

Leafy, be careful testing JB. I did, and now I am stuck.

Google Now is so cool, that I can't go back to a much more stable CM9 build. I NEED to stay at this laggy, slow CM10 because the NOW cards are so worth it.

What is this google now you speak of? I'm running slim Bean so its super cut down and smoother than ICS from the same Dev. Also, better 3g reception.

Work just upgraded me from a BlackBerry Torch 9800 to an HTC OneX. This 4G LTE Android device is like Gee Whiz himself walked in and started doing coke with my cell phone. Makes my BlackBerry look like a sad retarded child. RIM is DONE. I've missed out on Android for so long... so much to learn...

Bryce: You are right about the battery, that's not super impressive. Everything else is tits though. I'm interested in your findings if you keep playing with the OneX.

Looks like Slim Bean took Google Now out. FYI here is how to put it back: Samsung Galaxy S2 Jelly Bean: Install Very Light SlimBean Custom ROM [Android 4.1]

Google Now is sort of like Google's answer for Siri. But instead of asking it questions, it just gives you the info you need without you asking. For example, thanks to latitude, Google knows I leave work around 5:30. So at 5:15, I get a notification of the traffic between work and home (and how long it will take). It will also alert you when you need to leave for your meeting based on real-time traffic stuff. Lots of cool shit.

Oh, sounds like something I'd never use and would just drain the battery.

Slim Bean is awesome. I wish we had that for the GS3.