I bought the Incredible back when it was first released and have been pretty happy overall. I like Sense, not so much for the widgets, but for the efficiency it brings the device. I like the dialer and the home screen launcher. I have the official froyo update and find it to be fast and with good battery life. Wireless hotspot (free) works well without root. GPS location is almost instantaneous. Call quality and reception are OK. Not awful but not great. The biggest thing is that I wish the screen was larger, which brought me to the Fascinate.
Originally I was upset with this whole Bing issue. After reading some initial user reviews though, it seemed like it was overblown, and I went out and bought the device on the day it was released. I've been happy and frustrated with it and will probably return it.
Pros: As everyone else has said, the screen is beautiful
Some of the touchwiz implementation is pretty good. Being able to turn on off wifi/gps/airplane mode from the pull down shade is nice (remember I like efficiency).
The music player is good and again it's nice to be able to control from the shade.
Gaming is excellent on this device. Angry birds looks and plays great!
The movie player is awesome! Nice controls and sound.
The browser reformats text very well when resizing
Video camera is very good
Cons: Unfortunately there's quite a few
There's no way to change what screen pops up when you hit the phone button. I would prefer to have the call log come up rather than the dialer. HTC does this nicely with sense.
The phone can be a little laggy. I see no lag with my Incredible, but there is definately some here at very odd times.
USB mode doesn't work on all computers -- it works on my laptop, not on my desktop
I can't get free wifi hotspot without rooting like I can on the Incredible
GPS takes a long time to locate me. When it does it works well but it can take up to 2 minutes (might not seem like a lot, but if I'm travelling on the freeway someplace I'm not familiar with it can be).
I get a little "feedback" from my own voice when speaking on the phone, I've exchanged phones and still get it, not bad, but enough to be annoying.
WIFI signal is pretty weak
BING integration - I used to use the hard search button all the time on my Incredible. I rarely use it on the fascinate, I don't like bing, and it doesn't work as well for me as Google. I know this can be changed with root but I wish it worked out of the box.
No FFC
Have to make a contact on the phone, not just Google contacts to have a personalized ringtone assigned.
I prefer the abilty to fast scroll through numbers when setting alarms or dates, rather than typing in the numbers or pushing the +/- buttons.
So I'll probably return the fascinate the first week of October and wait to see what comes out in November/December. I'll be going out of town the last week of September so I'll be interested to see how it performs while travelling. It could be that Froyo will add some enhancements and I'll come back to it, but this phone seems like a minor evolutionary step rather than a great new phone as it didn't seem to build on anything the Incredible or X is already doing.
Originally I was upset with this whole Bing issue. After reading some initial user reviews though, it seemed like it was overblown, and I went out and bought the device on the day it was released. I've been happy and frustrated with it and will probably return it.
Pros: As everyone else has said, the screen is beautiful
Some of the touchwiz implementation is pretty good. Being able to turn on off wifi/gps/airplane mode from the pull down shade is nice (remember I like efficiency).
The music player is good and again it's nice to be able to control from the shade.
Gaming is excellent on this device. Angry birds looks and plays great!
The movie player is awesome! Nice controls and sound.
The browser reformats text very well when resizing
Video camera is very good
Cons: Unfortunately there's quite a few
There's no way to change what screen pops up when you hit the phone button. I would prefer to have the call log come up rather than the dialer. HTC does this nicely with sense.
The phone can be a little laggy. I see no lag with my Incredible, but there is definately some here at very odd times.
USB mode doesn't work on all computers -- it works on my laptop, not on my desktop
I can't get free wifi hotspot without rooting like I can on the Incredible
GPS takes a long time to locate me. When it does it works well but it can take up to 2 minutes (might not seem like a lot, but if I'm travelling on the freeway someplace I'm not familiar with it can be).
I get a little "feedback" from my own voice when speaking on the phone, I've exchanged phones and still get it, not bad, but enough to be annoying.
WIFI signal is pretty weak
BING integration - I used to use the hard search button all the time on my Incredible. I rarely use it on the fascinate, I don't like bing, and it doesn't work as well for me as Google. I know this can be changed with root but I wish it worked out of the box.
No FFC
Have to make a contact on the phone, not just Google contacts to have a personalized ringtone assigned.
I prefer the abilty to fast scroll through numbers when setting alarms or dates, rather than typing in the numbers or pushing the +/- buttons.
So I'll probably return the fascinate the first week of October and wait to see what comes out in November/December. I'll be going out of town the last week of September so I'll be interested to see how it performs while travelling. It could be that Froyo will add some enhancements and I'll come back to it, but this phone seems like a minor evolutionary step rather than a great new phone as it didn't seem to build on anything the Incredible or X is already doing.