Hello! I just wanted to share my experience with Motorola Atrix 4G.
I bought one at the end of February, and was using it until yesterday morning (Mar 17). Yesterday I returned it (was still within my 30-day return window) and got HTC Thunderbolt - and am very happy I did.
I had two main reasons for switching:
(1) ATT "4G" vs Verizon 4G. Using a speedtest app (from ookla), I was occasionally seeing about 1Mbps download speeds with the Atrix in Manhattan, but more often less than 100kbps download speeds in NYC. In NJ it was always 400kbps - 700kbps, never higher. And sometimes no connection on the train. Thunderbolt, so far, only in the tunnel showed 3G speeds (~1Mbps), but everywhere else (Manhattan & NJ) its been LTE 4G download and upload speeds (10+Mbps download speed; upload speed so high it seems there is an error in the app - like 33Mbps upload speeds, for example). And upload speeds are capped on Atrix (never saw more than 300kbps).
(2) Music quality: Atrix's music quality is extremely bad - even flac files with premium phones sounded like through a thick pillow. HTC's sound quality, though not great, is tolerable.
Because I use a lot of browsing and inet-enabled apps (e.g. Yelp, Maps, Navigation, etc.), and because I don't want to carry a dedicated music player with me, the above two issues were really important for me.
Other observations that might be of interest to somebody:
(1) the Atrix (dual core) does feel speedier (UI) - the Thunderbolt (single core) has occasional scrolling pauses for a fraction of a second, for example, while the Atrix was always smooth
(2) the Atrix feels much better in the hand (and I have relatively large hands) - the Thunderbolt is kind of a brick. Much less important for me than data speeds and sound quality, but for some people the physical feeling of the phone might be something they base their buying decisions on
(3) it IS noticeable that the Atrix has much higher DPI (~screen resolution), although usability as it is (reading, browsing, navigation) is better with the Thunderbolt, because the screen is larger (4.3" vs 4.0")
(4) the Thunderbolt seems to be taking much longer to find its position vis GPS: with the Atrix it was almost instant, like 2-3 seconds, while the Thunderbolt was looking for satellites for like a minute yesterday when I tested it in the open; maybe this was only the first time, I'm not sure - I think GPS devices need to download some data before their first use. Did not have much time to test Thunderbolt's GPS yet - so this might be a bogus difference. Atrix's GPS worked great in NJ, only had issues in Manhattan.
(5) skype is unusable for talk on Atrix (there are threads here about this). It sounds perfectly on HTC (the "stock" android skype - the specially built verizon skype does not work - says something like "wait for an update to enable video calls").
That's all that comes to me now. Feel free to shoot any questions.
A.
I bought one at the end of February, and was using it until yesterday morning (Mar 17). Yesterday I returned it (was still within my 30-day return window) and got HTC Thunderbolt - and am very happy I did.
I had two main reasons for switching:
(1) ATT "4G" vs Verizon 4G. Using a speedtest app (from ookla), I was occasionally seeing about 1Mbps download speeds with the Atrix in Manhattan, but more often less than 100kbps download speeds in NYC. In NJ it was always 400kbps - 700kbps, never higher. And sometimes no connection on the train. Thunderbolt, so far, only in the tunnel showed 3G speeds (~1Mbps), but everywhere else (Manhattan & NJ) its been LTE 4G download and upload speeds (10+Mbps download speed; upload speed so high it seems there is an error in the app - like 33Mbps upload speeds, for example). And upload speeds are capped on Atrix (never saw more than 300kbps).
(2) Music quality: Atrix's music quality is extremely bad - even flac files with premium phones sounded like through a thick pillow. HTC's sound quality, though not great, is tolerable.
Because I use a lot of browsing and inet-enabled apps (e.g. Yelp, Maps, Navigation, etc.), and because I don't want to carry a dedicated music player with me, the above two issues were really important for me.
Other observations that might be of interest to somebody:
(1) the Atrix (dual core) does feel speedier (UI) - the Thunderbolt (single core) has occasional scrolling pauses for a fraction of a second, for example, while the Atrix was always smooth
(2) the Atrix feels much better in the hand (and I have relatively large hands) - the Thunderbolt is kind of a brick. Much less important for me than data speeds and sound quality, but for some people the physical feeling of the phone might be something they base their buying decisions on
(3) it IS noticeable that the Atrix has much higher DPI (~screen resolution), although usability as it is (reading, browsing, navigation) is better with the Thunderbolt, because the screen is larger (4.3" vs 4.0")
(4) the Thunderbolt seems to be taking much longer to find its position vis GPS: with the Atrix it was almost instant, like 2-3 seconds, while the Thunderbolt was looking for satellites for like a minute yesterday when I tested it in the open; maybe this was only the first time, I'm not sure - I think GPS devices need to download some data before their first use. Did not have much time to test Thunderbolt's GPS yet - so this might be a bogus difference. Atrix's GPS worked great in NJ, only had issues in Manhattan.
(5) skype is unusable for talk on Atrix (there are threads here about this). It sounds perfectly on HTC (the "stock" android skype - the specially built verizon skype does not work - says something like "wait for an update to enable video calls").
That's all that comes to me now. Feel free to shoot any questions.
A.
