This is an upgrade from the LG L9, which I've had for almost 2 years. The L9 served me well. Fortunately it had a thriving forum section and there was an easy one click root for it so I was able to app to SD (the L9's internal space is terribly small) I am moderately keen on how to get the most out of device resources by cutting out the b.s. so I could have easily dealt without the upgrade to a newer phone. However, after talking with my lady friend (she works at MetroPCS) I just had to jump on the special holiday deal they had where the Avant was only 99 dollars after instant rebates.
Holy Mary! Am I thankful I bought this! Definitely the fastest phone I've ever owned. (It's funny, all my smart phones to date have been 100 dollar jobbers, nothing great compared to the hot items out at the time, but still impressive to me...anyway each 100 dollar phone I've bought over the years seems to get exponentially better)
Anyway I'll start with the cons of the Avant. The back speaker volume does sound like it lacks volume when jacked to the max. (Haven't checked yet if there's a working volume maximizer for it)
I have seen comments about the dimness of the screen... that may be true, but for me I can't tell. I usually keep screens on the dim side anyway because I'm weird about battery power.
I've seen comments about the battery life not being all that great. This might be true too. It does seem to drain faster than my L9, although it could be that the battery life indicator on this version of Android (KitKat) also puts a numbered percentage next to the icon so as I check I'm seeing the numbers decreasing more often than the battery icon changing to show the amount of power left. So I'm not sure. Regardless, I'd easily drain it within the day of heavy usage.
The pros are it's fast! Fast in processing and also fast in mobile data. It's my first LTE phone and I was blown away when I speed tested at 51 Mbits dl and 22 Mbits ul
Granted not all the areas I'll be in will be that fast, but I'm sure it'll always be fast enough.
KitKat (although somewhat masked by Samsung) is very impressive. I'm coming up from jellybean, so this is definitely a pro for me.
The sound quality (music through headphone jack) is fine. Nice and clear.
Call quality is nice and clear.
1.5 Gigs of ram have kept things nice and stable so far. No apps shutting down sudden because of the memory running out...used to have this issue all the time on my older phones especially if I use chrome
16gb internal space. Perfect! Even with the 11gb after Samsung and Metro bloat, I still have plenty of space. I'll still eventually put an external mini SD card in, but I have plenty of time.
Here are some of the changes I've made to my phone so far...
Disabled mostly all of the bloat (except flipboard) also disabled the certain Google Apps I don't use (plus, movies, books etc.)
Disabled Chrome too (uses a lot of battery and it tends to get high on RAM) Installed CM Browser to use as the default browser.
Changed default launcher to Nova Prime, though I may switch to using Smart Launcher Pro again (I'm a launcher junkie.. I found out early on that there's plenty of lite fast and beautiful launchers out there that can make the user experience smoother and prettier) Though with the power of the Avant the default launcher would probably run smooth with no lag.
Installed dock4droid and docked my favorite apps along with the last 5 recent apps. (Makes navigating through android feel more progressive rather than always going back to the home screen or going back to recent apps to switch to the next app.)
Installed greenify to keep a tighter lid on apps that like to run themselves
Installed All in One toolbox for cleaning junk
Installed Fo file browser to manage files
Yeah things are running smoothly. I doubt I'll even feel the need to root this phone.
tl;dr: I'm loving my Samsung Galaxy Avant
Holy Mary! Am I thankful I bought this! Definitely the fastest phone I've ever owned. (It's funny, all my smart phones to date have been 100 dollar jobbers, nothing great compared to the hot items out at the time, but still impressive to me...anyway each 100 dollar phone I've bought over the years seems to get exponentially better)
Anyway I'll start with the cons of the Avant. The back speaker volume does sound like it lacks volume when jacked to the max. (Haven't checked yet if there's a working volume maximizer for it)
I have seen comments about the dimness of the screen... that may be true, but for me I can't tell. I usually keep screens on the dim side anyway because I'm weird about battery power.
I've seen comments about the battery life not being all that great. This might be true too. It does seem to drain faster than my L9, although it could be that the battery life indicator on this version of Android (KitKat) also puts a numbered percentage next to the icon so as I check I'm seeing the numbers decreasing more often than the battery icon changing to show the amount of power left. So I'm not sure. Regardless, I'd easily drain it within the day of heavy usage.
The pros are it's fast! Fast in processing and also fast in mobile data. It's my first LTE phone and I was blown away when I speed tested at 51 Mbits dl and 22 Mbits ul
Granted not all the areas I'll be in will be that fast, but I'm sure it'll always be fast enough.
KitKat (although somewhat masked by Samsung) is very impressive. I'm coming up from jellybean, so this is definitely a pro for me.
The sound quality (music through headphone jack) is fine. Nice and clear.
Call quality is nice and clear.
1.5 Gigs of ram have kept things nice and stable so far. No apps shutting down sudden because of the memory running out...used to have this issue all the time on my older phones especially if I use chrome
16gb internal space. Perfect! Even with the 11gb after Samsung and Metro bloat, I still have plenty of space. I'll still eventually put an external mini SD card in, but I have plenty of time.
Here are some of the changes I've made to my phone so far...
Disabled mostly all of the bloat (except flipboard) also disabled the certain Google Apps I don't use (plus, movies, books etc.)
Disabled Chrome too (uses a lot of battery and it tends to get high on RAM) Installed CM Browser to use as the default browser.
Changed default launcher to Nova Prime, though I may switch to using Smart Launcher Pro again (I'm a launcher junkie.. I found out early on that there's plenty of lite fast and beautiful launchers out there that can make the user experience smoother and prettier) Though with the power of the Avant the default launcher would probably run smooth with no lag.
Installed dock4droid and docked my favorite apps along with the last 5 recent apps. (Makes navigating through android feel more progressive rather than always going back to the home screen or going back to recent apps to switch to the next app.)
Installed greenify to keep a tighter lid on apps that like to run themselves
Installed All in One toolbox for cleaning junk
Installed Fo file browser to manage files
Yeah things are running smoothly. I doubt I'll even feel the need to root this phone.
tl;dr: I'm loving my Samsung Galaxy Avant
