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Can't decide between 4S on Verizon or Droid Razr Maxx
- Thread starter ObsidianBlade
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Oh crap, I didn't even think of the either/or situation. I can only think of a handful of times I've actually used both though but it would've been nice to be able to do both. Damn CDMA.
Razr Maxx is impressive. Consistently get dl speeds of 20 to 25 Mbs and UL speeds near 10Mbs. Voice quality is great, something moto excels in. Plus with the app FoxFi you can turn the MAXX into a free 4G wifi hotspot. Get it now, because verizon is slapping on another $30 upgrade fee very soon. And the battery life will easily get you 2 days between charge.
Actually. OP should wait for upcoming
Droid Razr HD.
That's the new razr. Some idiot engineer posted a photo from camera of upcoming razr HD phone. People are just stupid not to realize beta phones they test will have electronic fingerprints from camera pictures taken.
Droid Razr HD.
That's the new razr. Some idiot engineer posted a photo from camera of upcoming razr HD phone. People are just stupid not to realize beta phones they test will have electronic fingerprints from camera pictures taken.
You can't go by that. My Android phones running on 3G always got a better speed test than my 4s. They are different devices.
I moved to a Verizon from AT&T and stayed with iPhone. I gladly traded the rock-solid voice quality of Verizon for AT&T's voice+data simultaneously. However, I'm really hoping the iPhone 5 (whenever that happens) supports LTE on Verizon along with simultaneous voice+data.
For that reason, I'd say just get what you want for now but hold your upgrade for the iPhone 5.
I was unaware of that. Could you put up some speed tests from a 4S then if you have one?
In other news, apparently Verizon wouldn't be able to give me their oldest iPhones in stock as they supposedly don't know when they received them which might be a dealbreaker for me because I was kind of thinking "Go jailbreak or go home"
I switched from the iPhone 4 to the razor maxx. The difference between 4G and 3G is like night and day. That alone makes the maxx better. As far as syncing with my mac, no problem. Streaming iTunes music and video from my iMac to maxx, no problem. I do miss airplay. That is one thing apple really is excelling at. Total integration. Battery life is amazing. When the iPhone 5 comes out, I may switch back. Right now, I wanted to make sure I could keep my unlimited data with 4G. Who knows what verizon will do with grandfathering the 4G data deals with the iPhone 5, or if they will start to throttle the top 5% like they do with 3G. My guess is they will start doing that, or eliminate unlimited data when one upgrades.
Here is a speedtest from the 4s and one from the Maxx, night and day difference.
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I wouldn't consider a CDMA phone myself, if I was on Verizon, it'd have to be an LTE device, no matter how much I like some things about the iPhone, CDMA is just too dang slow. Of course, that's why I'm NOT on Verizon (and there's no LTE whatsoever in my area).
P.S. Decided to attach a screenshot from my iPhone 4S so you can compare to the CDMA one above me (though Sprint CDMA tends to be a little worse than Verizon, both are really bad). This is a fairly typical late night speed test, 2-6 being more common in the daytime. I JUST did this test now so you could see real world numbers. Yes, the ping time stinks, but you must realize even fixed line ping times around my area are terrible. I used the same Speedtest.net server and got 65ms ping on my cable line, and that's the LOWEST PING server I can find. Even on my cable 150ms or so is a common ping time. That's just rural Montana. This is not an IP-backhaul ("Enhanced Backhaul") area on AT&T.
P.S. Decided to attach a screenshot from my iPhone 4S so you can compare to the CDMA one above me (though Sprint CDMA tends to be a little worse than Verizon, both are really bad). This is a fairly typical late night speed test, 2-6 being more common in the daytime. I JUST did this test now so you could see real world numbers. Yes, the ping time stinks, but you must realize even fixed line ping times around my area are terrible. I used the same Speedtest.net server and got 65ms ping on my cable line, and that's the LOWEST PING server I can find. Even on my cable 150ms or so is a common ping time. That's just rural Montana. This is not an IP-backhaul ("Enhanced Backhaul") area on AT&T.
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So this is in Montana? Of course your speed tests will be much better than one from LA with a ton of people using the towers. This is something that will vary greatly depending on your area, time of day and load on the network.
That's a fluke or he's in a bad market, but it's not unreasonable to say an AT&T iPhone 4S will be five times faster than a Verizon iPhone 4S. I did a mid-day speed test today, and got 5.9mbps down. So AT&T's definitely improving capacity more in my market since in that location 2-5 was typical in the day.
Around here, Verizon seems to run 500-1500kbps. so let's give Verizon a 1mbps average, and AT&T a 4mbps average - just for the sake of argument. Four times the speed on an AT&T iPhone. Theoretical max data rates for the networks are 3.1mbps for Verizon EVDO, and 21mbps for AT&T HSPA+ (iPhone is 16QAM, not 64QAM though limiting the iPhone 4S to 14mbps, or just under five times the speed of the Verizon model).
More important than raw speed, however, is what I'd call the "magic speed" - the speed where everything you want to do is possible. This is around 1.5mbps. The point where high quality SD (good 480p) video will not pause to buffer frequently. AT&T UMTS/HSPA+ stays above this point most of the time. Verizon EVDO doesn't.
Nope, it's real. You are right, Sprints 3G for the iPhone is pathetic. My Android phones got better speeds though.m
I recently tried out and returned a galaxy note, switched to Verizon getting the gnex and have since canceled service and gone back to AT&T (solely for unlimited Data).
My observations:
- >4.0 Android Sucks. Having to root your phone for ICS blows and wasn't that stable on my galaxy note. This is one of the fatal flaws android has in that new updates don't roll out quickly.
- All the additional bloat ware that comes with Android phones really ruin almost all devices. using the Gnex was night and day from using the Note.
- Google maps rocks.
- Google needs to be more involved in the QA process of apps. Some of these Apps look like **** from 10 years ago.
- ICS keyboard is pretty good. I feel like the iPhone shines where ICS lacks and vice versa.
With that said, ICS on a Google device is pretty awesome. If I could have somehow found a way to get unlimited data with Verizon, I would have kept my Gnex. You keep mentioning how a JB iPhone is comparable to Android. But that's the thing, JB's aren't readily available. A lot of the customization you want to do to your iPhone can be done out of the box with an Android phone. In a sense, every android device comes jail broken from the factory.
Here are the things you will lose:
- apple ecosystem and support
- The fine tuned OS that has a distinct level of polish that no android phone has been able to replicate just yet.
- amazing screen. Once you go retina, it's hard to go back.
- Rockstar stability. Although ICS does a good job on memory management, it still needs to be monitored. Not so much with the iPhone. App crashes on the iPhone are irritating, app crashes on an android device are a pain in the ass.
I think the LTE comparison really is a null argument. The reality is, in the next couple years we will all be laughing about how this ancient technology called 3G was considered amazing. By the end of 2013, both carriers will have pretty good LTE networks. Keep in mind though that where LTE won't be available, AT&T will definitely outshine Verizon as far as speed goes.
My observations:
- >4.0 Android Sucks. Having to root your phone for ICS blows and wasn't that stable on my galaxy note. This is one of the fatal flaws android has in that new updates don't roll out quickly.
- All the additional bloat ware that comes with Android phones really ruin almost all devices. using the Gnex was night and day from using the Note.
- Google maps rocks.
- Google needs to be more involved in the QA process of apps. Some of these Apps look like **** from 10 years ago.
- ICS keyboard is pretty good. I feel like the iPhone shines where ICS lacks and vice versa.
With that said, ICS on a Google device is pretty awesome. If I could have somehow found a way to get unlimited data with Verizon, I would have kept my Gnex. You keep mentioning how a JB iPhone is comparable to Android. But that's the thing, JB's aren't readily available. A lot of the customization you want to do to your iPhone can be done out of the box with an Android phone. In a sense, every android device comes jail broken from the factory.
Here are the things you will lose:
- apple ecosystem and support
- The fine tuned OS that has a distinct level of polish that no android phone has been able to replicate just yet.
- amazing screen. Once you go retina, it's hard to go back.
- Rockstar stability. Although ICS does a good job on memory management, it still needs to be monitored. Not so much with the iPhone. App crashes on the iPhone are irritating, app crashes on an android device are a pain in the ass.
I think the LTE comparison really is a null argument. The reality is, in the next couple years we will all be laughing about how this ancient technology called 3G was considered amazing. By the end of 2013, both carriers will have pretty good LTE networks. Keep in mind though that where LTE won't be available, AT&T will definitely outshine Verizon as far as speed goes.
Verizon LTE already covers 2/3 of the nation's population. Tomorrow they are turning on LTE in markets with as few as 10,000 people. By the end of 2013 they will have 4G everywhere there is currently 3G, and will likely be already starting to upgrade major markets to LTE Advanced.
AT&T will not be catching up to Verizon on this front any time soon.
They might have LTE everywhere there is 3G, at some point, but it seems they spread their towers too thin around here. I get 1-3 bars on LTE and sometimes up to 4 on 3G but have never seen a full signal.
What I'm getting at is that they might put LTE everywhere, but it might not be a....dense signal.
I'm going in to Verizon today to talk to someone about taking a leap of faith and going back to the iPhone in the hopes of landing one that's on 5.0.1 although my chances seem quite slim unfortunately and there's like no jailbreak in sight either it would appear
I don't get why this is a negative. If all your devices are a single platform, you don't have to buy your apps twice, and you don't have to worry about multiple configurations. Your iPhone apps will work fine on your iPad, especially if they're universal apps.
Well it's not necessarily just a negative. It is indeed a positive too, for the very reasons you mentioned. The negative aspect of it was that the OS would get kind of redundant. I do enjoy having a different operating system.
I've been to both camps, I used a Nexus One before getting the 4S and here's what I think about android:
I used both stock vanilla 2.3 android and Cyanogen7 (http://www.cyanogenmod.com/). With Android, especially if you root, you get so much more options - easily accessible options - than you do with iOS. Want to turn GPS off but leave location from cell towers turned on? Done. No more of that all in one "Location Services" business.
Themes - You can download so many themes for android, if you spend the time to look and tweak them, you can get your phone to look exactly and do exactly what you do want.
Opera Mobile - On iOS we have Opera Mini, but O Mobile is such a good browser, I consider it a killer app. Pinch-to-zoom word wrap? That's nice to have.
Overall I think android is very much a tinkerer's OS if you want to dive a little bit into it. If you're into that, you won't regret it.
And forget Flash, you don't need it, and I almost always keep it turned off in the browser.
I used both stock vanilla 2.3 android and Cyanogen7 (http://www.cyanogenmod.com/). With Android, especially if you root, you get so much more options - easily accessible options - than you do with iOS. Want to turn GPS off but leave location from cell towers turned on? Done. No more of that all in one "Location Services" business.
Themes - You can download so many themes for android, if you spend the time to look and tweak them, you can get your phone to look exactly and do exactly what you do want.
Opera Mobile - On iOS we have Opera Mini, but O Mobile is such a good browser, I consider it a killer app. Pinch-to-zoom word wrap? That's nice to have.
Overall I think android is very much a tinkerer's OS if you want to dive a little bit into it. If you're into that, you won't regret it.
And forget Flash, you don't need it, and I almost always keep it turned off in the browser.
I'm about 35 miles (as the crow flys) from where I was at yesterday.
Still terrible. USUALLY it's not THIS bad. But I'm just testing where I'm at when I read this thread. Like I've said once I got 2.4 mbs down switch works just fine.
I'll post a better test when I can.
Just because Verizon has LTE available doesn't mean it always provides a strong connection.
We are in the same phase as when we transitioned from Edge to 3G. Sure you may pick up a signal, but it's not going to give you those spectacular speeds you see posted here. And when the LTE connection is to weak and 3G takes over, it's pretty slow on Verizon.
I also noticed when I had my gnex that there is a huge lag time when the switches from 4G to 3G.
Verizon's call quality/stability does blow ATTs out of the water though.
We are in the same phase as when we transitioned from Edge to 3G. Sure you may pick up a signal, but it's not going to give you those spectacular speeds you see posted here. And when the LTE connection is to weak and 3G takes over, it's pretty slow on Verizon.
I also noticed when I had my gnex that there is a huge lag time when the switches from 4G to 3G.
Verizon's call quality/stability does blow ATTs out of the water though.