Upgrading from an Ascend 2?

[reokie]

I have an rooted, custom ROM's, overclocked (to 786 MHZ) Ascend 2 and I plan to use my android phone as my main gaming handheld as well (planning to get a bluetooth controller). You can say I'm a power user. Most of the apps I run eat up most of the Ascend 2's ram and the 600 (stock) MHZ processor leaves much to wish for compared to the Mercury, mainly media (Anime mostly, movies), and 3D games that would require more processing power. I would also like to run "heavier" launchers such as GO launcher, but is it worth paying the 250$ (from the cricket store) to upgrade, or should I just bite the bullet and get a tablet?

 

[Gmash]

I have an rooted, custom ROM's, overclocked (to 786 MHZ) Ascend 2 and I plan to use my android phone as my main gaming handheld as well (planning to get a bluetooth controller). You can say I'm a power user. Most of the apps I run eat up most of the Ascend 2's ram and the 600 (stock) MHZ processor leaves much to wish for compared to the Mercury, mainly media (Anime mostly, movies), and 3D games that would require more processing power. I would also like to run "heavier" launchers such as GO launcher, but is it worth paying the 250$ (from the cricket store) to upgrade, or should I just bite the bullet and get a tablet?

First, welcome to the forums! Whether it is "worth it" is something only you can decide, but I can say that a friend of mine at work has the Ascend 2, and I've played around with it quite a bit setting it up for her and such, and the Mercury is far, far superior. Granted, hers is stock, but still. For a primary gaming system, though, you might prefer the extra screen real estate of a tablet, as well as the option of dual or even quad core processors in some of the newer tablets which are tailor made for gaming.

Btw, Go Launcher runs smooth as silk on the Mercury. Its the first app I installed on mine.

 

[nimoxp]

I second that. I run go launcher e and it's smooth. All the transition effects run great to. I even have 11 pages, which is way over board, but I really love widgets, and the phone has no problem sliding through each page with no lag. It's the only phone I've had in which I though was worth buying a 16 gb memory card for.

Cant go wrong with this phone. I feel it's way underated.

 

[reokie]

Thanks! The Mercury is the highest end phone offered by my carrier "Cricket". As I also wanted to run emulators/games/launchers as smooth as possible while still being able to make calls (unless tablets can also make calls ) and having the size of a phone. So I'll definitively get the mercury this week, thanks! I may get a ZeeMote for the controller as well .

 

[mathesar]

The mercury is decent for gaming but when it comes to emulators keep in mind it only acknowledges 2 simultaneous finger presses at a time which can be an issue when using onscreen controls (depending on game), but not an issue if you use a ZeeMote of course.

 

[Gmash]

I second that. I run go launcher e and it's smooth. All the transition effects run great to. I even have 11 pages, which is way over board, but I really love widgets, and the phone has no problem sliding through each page with no lag. It's the only phone I've had in which I though was worth buying a 16 gb memory card for.

Cant go wrong with this phone. I feel it's way underated.

Every time I mess around with my friends Ascend 2, I'm like "damn, I'm not used to a slow phone anymore" lol.

 

[Gmash]

The mercury is decent for gaming but when it comes to emulators keep in mind it only acknowledges 2 simultaneous finger presses at a time which can be an issue when using onscreen controls (depending on game), but not an issue if you use a ZeeMote of course.

Good point about the two point multi touch. I'm not a huge phone gamer so I had completely forgotten about that.