JasonPurp

Up until today, I had 5 Droids; Droid 1, Droid X, Droid Charge, Droid Incredible 2, and Droid 2. I just sent 4 of them in the mail for a trade-in, and I'm left with the Incredible 2 and HOPEFULLY $426 in my pocket if all goes well (God I hope it does).

I'm saving that money for the Nexus Prime, assuming it comes to Verizon. Which leads me to some questions. Obviously nobody knows the answers for sure, but I would feel better just hearing what others think.

1. How much do you think the phone will cost? Around $500, maybe $550? Hopefully nowhere near $600.
2. Do you think it will actually come to Verizon, and if so, do you think it'll be bloat-free, unlocked, and pure Android? Verizon always pisses me off so much because they normally screw us over with things like bloatware and the amount of locked features. Hell, the Incredible 2 doesn't even have HTC Hub.

The_Chief

To answer your question (the best I can ):

* No one knows the full retail price of the phone. Considering the specs, my best SWAG would be in the $500-$600 range*.
* I think it WILL come to Verizon, but not as the Nexus Prime. It will likely come as the Droid Prime: therefore it will not be pure vanilla Android. It would have bloatware, but with 1GB of RAM, you'll still have a lot of memory to play with. It would likely NOT have a locked bootloader, meaning that it would be relatively easy to root & remove the bloatware and put pure Android on it.

Verizon makes good money on installing bloatware, so they are counting on most people not bothering to remove it. Many of us in this forum, anyway, will be among the first to do it.

*EDIT- Boy did I guess low! What was I thinking? See new estimate below.

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Last edited by The_Chief; September 4th, 2011 at 03:26 PM.

HanSolo

My $.02:

1. I'm a little more pessimistic in this area. Droid Bionic is selling (retail) for about $600 - $700, depending on where you buy it. I'm expecting that Droid Prime will be the same. 4G LTE chipsets are supposed to come down in cost next year by about 50%, and that will hopefully be passed on to consumers, but that's next year. This year I think we'll be paying through the nose.

2. I agree with Chief on this. It will be more bloated than Rosie O'Donnell after Thanksgiving, but I expect it to be unlocked and rooted before it even releases, provided that Sammy sends one to CyanogenMod team beforehand. (Now that the CyanogenMod founder actually works for Samsung, I'm almost 100% sure it will be rooted before it releases.) You probably won't want to flash custom ROMS on a beautiful Android phone like the Prime, but you will at least be able to freeze or eliminate any and all bloatware or unnecessary programs you want.

And if for some terrible reason we get TouchWiz on it, I'm sure there will quickly be a way to get rid of it.

Last edited by HanSolo; September 3rd, 2011 at 11:31 AM.

The_Chief

Now that I've had time to think about it, I think Bluefire's estimate may even be low.

We should start a Prime Retail Pool!

My entry would be Droid Prime full retail = $765. We'll find out soon enough.

Steven58

I bought titanium backup pro, which means I can freeze bloat and other unused programs with it, thereby freeing up resources. I prefer this using this method to bloat deletion or renaming. It's easier and I can unfreeze if I want to accept an OTA update. Bottom line is that bloat is a non-issue for root users.

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JasonPurp

The Bionic is $589, not $700 lol.

Really the entire point of me wanting this device is pure Android without rooting. And if those price estimates and the opinions on the software are correct, I just sold 4 of my phones for nothing.

HanSolo

Best Buy is selling it for $700.

Droid Bionic Pricing Again Confirmed

And some idiots will actually pay it. Verizon might be selling it for $589 off contract, although that's not confirmed yet.

The $589 figure comes from the Droid Does Terms and Conditions page, which says that if you win the Bionic, it will be a $589 value. That could mean the value that they will sell it for off-contract, or the cost of the phone to other retailers, who will then stick on another $100 for profits.

Last edited by HanSolo; September 3rd, 2011 at 11:56 AM.

The_Chief

Remember this is all pure speculation, so all hope is not lost

JasonPurp

Yet.

I'm really gonna be upset if the phone does have bloatware/TouchWiz. Honestly.

JasonPurp

Also, looking at Verizon's site, the Droid Charge without a contract is around $560, I think. Is that a good or bad thing for the Prime?

The_Chief

Bloatware, like Steven said, can be frozen easily with TiBU. LauncherPro or any other home replacement can replace TouchWiz. With 1GB of memory, I'll have more room than my poor OG Droid could possibly imagine. It won't bother me at all. Much.

HanSolo

Neither. They hardly ever reduce the price until release of the next big thing in that line is imminent, like 15 days or less away.

The Revolution, which will soon be replaced by Revolution 2, is selling for $559.

Thunderbolt, which will soon be replaced by Vigor (and is a POS), is $569.

Droid X2, which as a dual-core, qHD screen, 1 GHz RAM phone has just essentially been replaced by the Bionic (I know not in a strict way, but who the heck is going to buy that now?) is selling for $449.

And the iPhone 4, even though everyone knows the 5 is coming in October, is still selling for $649 off contract for the smallest, 16 GB option.

Price points don't mean much, like I said, until a device has already been earmarked for a definite, imminent drop.

Last edited by HanSolo; September 3rd, 2011 at 12:18 PM.

JasonPurp

I'm not really into freezing/removing bloatware. I usually just hide it from the app drawer in a replacement launcher to fix the problem. It gives me peace of mind at least.

But I was hoping that I didn't need to use a third party launcher on the Prime.

charlie310

FYI, the main purpose of rooting your phone is to get superuser access. Regardless, it only takes like 5 minutes to root your phone. So, I really don't see what the big deal is: spend 5 minutes to root your phone and uninstall. BAM! vanilla ice cream sandwich (mmmmm.....yummmy!).

I would bet all my money that it will come with TouchWiz and bloatware. What would make you think otherwise? Seriously, how many phones don't come with bloatware?

What are you referring to when you say "peace of mind"? Peace of mind that the apps are intalled on your phone and taking up memory, but you can't see them? I thought the "problem" with bloatware was resource hogging and memory. I didn't know people were actually concerned about bloatware "being visible" in their app drawers. Seems like a non-issue to me. Especially, since most of us rarely open the app drawer (we have 7 home screens for crying out loud!!!). Maybe, I'm missing something.

My general questions are regarding the actual phone specs and release date. Hopefully it comes out early October with LTE and a 1.5Ghz processor.

JasonPurp

P3 just told me that it will most likely be STOCK, and no TouchWiz. He might have been saying it for bloatware too, but I can't be sure about that one. He also said that people are stupid for assuming that it will have TouchWiz.

And now that I think about it, why WOULD it have TouchWiz? Whenever Verizon gets a new device that showcases a new Android firmware before others, it's always stock. The Droid 1, the Xoom, etc. The Nexus should be no different.

The_Chief

Wow, Jason, I don't even have DREAMS that good. Prime, unlocked, with no bloatware? That would make my life for awhile

Now bring it with a car and desk dock and I'll be in seventh heaven!

radiocures

Doesn't rooting your phone void the warranty? I'd be concerned about that plus accidentally jacking up my phone since I wouldn't know what I was doing.

JasonPurp

I never said unlocked, nor did I say for sure that it wouldn't have bloatware...

HanSolo

Rooting your phone does void the warranty, but you only have to worry about that if you brick your device, which is very, very hard to do nowadays, if you follow the instructions CAREFULLY.

If you ever need to return your phone for a replacement, it's easy to "unroot" and flash back to the stock ROM. I had to do this once with my OG Droid early on.

The_Chief

Okay, Okay... so I extrapolated a little. STOCK with no TouchWiz is good enough for me, and Samsung has never locked their bootloader (to my knowledge). I could get rid of any bloatware easily enough - or just freeze it all with TiBU.

mikepic

I don't think anyone answered this question.

Titanium Backup allows you to completely freeze an app. Not only remove it from being visible in your app drawer but also make it not function or use any resources in your phone. Basically the only downside to that is the application is still technically installed in your phone (but not functioning). Not much of a downside imo.

For those of us who modded their Droid X and couldn't receive an OTA update - we know exactly the benefits to freezing vs uninstalling. Some manufacturers look to see if any applications were removed from stock and if not all are accounted for they will deny you the most recent OTA.

charlie310

You can always unroot. Hell, you can flash a completely different ROM and then flash back to stock. And no one would know you rooted your phone.

Thanks for the info. But, I was merely referring to JasonPurp's desire to make the bloatware invisible in the app drawer, which seems irrelevant to me. To me, bloatware is bad because it takes up system resources and memory. I could care less how my app drawer looks. Hell, I probably open my app drawer once a year (7 home screens=112 shortcut icons!).

kyler13

I think Honeycomb is a different story, being for a tablet (and one not ready, at that). So really, you have the Droid, and one case does not really make for much of a trend. So, really, why WOULDN'T it have Touchwiz? I mean, it's not unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination to think it might have a manufacturer skinned UI.

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus (i515), Samsung Droid Charge[/COLOR] (6/11 - 1/12), HTC Incredible (4/10 - 6/11)
Blackberry Torch, Blackberry Curve (11/11 - 6/12), Blackberry Storm (9/09 - 10/11)

JasonPurp

Why is a tablet special? There are OEM Skins for Honeycomb. If Google wants Verizon to have the first Android firmware in increments of 1.0, they will make sure it's Vanilla or nothing.

HanSolo

I know the first thing I'm doing is freezing all my bloatware. I wouldn't want to completely delete them, as that might mess with things if you ever want to download an update directly.

I use my app drawer all the time. I love the minimalist look and giving all the attention to cool wallpapers. I have very few icons. I even made them invisible with sweeterhome.

The_Chief

Will that really help, Han? I thought Verizon looked at root/non-root to determine whether or not to push an OTA update to the phone, not an app inventory. Or maybe it's the presence of a custom ROM that blocks OTA?

HanSolo

You're right on the second one. Most ROMS (at least the ones I've tried) have disabled OTA updating.

However, if you suddenly want to go to stock and receive an official update, and you have some apps missing that the update affects, it will screw it up. I don't know if it will brick, but nothing good can happen.

Now, this is all theoretical. In the almost-2 years that I've had my rooted OG, I haven't once downloaded an update.

The_Chief

Neither have I

I bought the Droid on Launch Day, November 6, 2009 and rooted in December. Loaded Bugless Beast (king of the ROMs back then, of course ROMs were pretty scant) that same month and have been modding ever since.

With 1GB of RAM, I'm not sure that bloatware will really affect the Prime's performance enough to warrant rooting and freezing... but time will tell, I guess. I'll give it 30 days pure stock before doing anything fancy to it, anyway.

jinwons

I doubt performance will be affected negatively with 1Gb RAM even if they load some bloatwares. Even 512Mb RAM won't be bogged down if memory is mapped, utilized properly.