I upgraded from a Hero and this phone is a huge step up for me in pretty much every way. I do miss a couple things with Sense but with a quick market search you can usually find an equivalent (like for syncing facebook pics, widgets, noLED) and I had the text problem until I found the setting I needed to change. I have noticed that my service might not be quite as good as it was with my Hero but certainly nothing to make me want to go back. I think any newly released phone gets a couple updates before the quirks are ironed out, and luckily this one gets those updates straight from Google. But with everything that I have gained with this phone I am very happy. Its super fast in terms of responsiveness and has a lot more memory than my old Hero.

 

GOOD LUCK! Every modern smart phone that I have considered in the past couple years has had some kind of show-stopper problem that slammed the brakes on me getting it. The carriers are rushing these things to market without much testing in an effort to recoup development costs and start making revenue. They figure they can update them over the air later, assuming it's not a hardware fault. It really takes the bloom off the rose.

I might just get the simplest, cheapest voice phone they offer and be happy that I can make calls.

"The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the pipes." - Captain Montgomery Scott

 

While there's a few minor gripes I have with it, (Google Voice holding me hostage right now being the main one. For some reason I can't get MMS with GV, so I'm trying to uninstall it and it won't let me. No microSD being a "wth why not? Oh well".) this phone is a HUGE step up in every possible way from my Blackberry Curve 8530. I absolutely love this phone. I don't know if I'm having the signal issues as I don't have another sprint phone to compare it with, but if I do, as I've said before, my mind will be blown if it gets fixed in a software update. I get what I consider to be incredible speeds from this phone. With my blackberry, I'd be waiting at google so long I'd forget what I was doing. Tethering through PDANet was an entirely different version of slooooowwww. It was painfully slow. With this phone, I was shocked and amazed at how fast it was. I tried out tethering using USB on my laptop and Wifi on my iPod Touch. The thought "Okay, I must be connected to my wireless router... No? :O" Crossed my mind multiple times. In short, outside of the few minor gripes I do have, this phone has blown me away. Well worth the $310 I paid for it in every way imaginable.

To comment on what you use your phone for, here are my experiences:

Browsing: Works GREAT for me. My only complaint here is that I haven't yet figured out how to integrate lastpass into my default browser, but they offer their own browser, so I can deal with it. (EDIT: Figured out a workaround. Dolphin HD seems to be a great Android browser and it's official supported by LastPass with a plugin. Going to use Dolphin HD as my default browser now.)

E-mail: I'm not sure how well it works with other services, but gmail works great for me.

Socializing: There's an app for most major social websites. The only one I've used is facebook, and while I haven't REALLY dug into it yet, it seems to work for the basics. (Updating statuses, reading/commenting on/liking others' statuses, chat, etc.) If you're talking about IM, I recommend IM+, it works well and has the ability to add every account I have and more.

Texting - As I said earlier, right now google voice has me captive. It works well for SMS, but I can't recieve MMS. I'm trying to disable GV and use Handcent or Chomp instead. Yesterday I was texting my uncle on Chomp(before I enabled GV) and he got a message that was just a bunch of random garbled text. I texted him just about the same message from the stock SMS client, and he got it just fine. So yeah, texting isn't GREAT for me yet, but I'm sure once I figure this out it'll be just as good as new. I liked the stock SMS client, but I wanted to send a mass text so I needed Chomp.

Calls - One major complaint I always heard the last time I looked into touch screen phones was "When I'm in a call, I ALWAYS hang up on the person with my face!!!" The Nexus S 4G remedied this by adding a proximity sensor. When it gets near your face and you're in a standard call, the screen shuts off. Not much to the calls other than that, it's a phone call...

Sorry for the very long message. >_<

 

If you access GV on a computer you can disable sprint integration and then it only uses GV for voicemail which is what I did. I also use Handcent. I also really think just going to Facebook thru the browser is better than the app but I also have the app for uploading pics.

 

Actually I have not experienced any of the issues listed. My 4g signal is strong, battery great, call quality on top. Everything is working flawlessly for me. But don't tell the internet that. It will become angry.

 

And I would highly recommend it to anyone. Especially someone with a moment.

 

My first android as well...and I love it....getting 12+ hours out of the battery, using it as a hot spot, turning on wi-fi when I get home cuz my cell signal isn't so good....

I'm using Handcent.....and touchdown to get my exchange email...I love this phone.

I too, was like you, searching the internet over and over and over and reading all the negative comments....thankfully I forgot all about the negative comments while I stood at the sprint store handling this awesome phone...and I bought it.

No issues whatsoever....I haven't had to do a battery pull yet!

 

Coming from the Hero this has been an upgrade. Like what the post above, there are some issues with this phone at the moment, and I'm still debating on taking it back for something else.

Pros:

Fast
Great screen
Great size easily fit in pocket and hand.
No Bloatware.
Awesome camera and Video quality

Cons:
Stock keyboard sucks!
Heats up pretty quick.
Slow network even with 4g connected (Youtube in HQ lags)
Screen not always very responsive to touch.

 

Yeah I miss the compact QWERTY keyboard with the Hero and I was going to look in the market for one but I'm getting used to this one now. The only time I've experienced unresponsiveness is in the browser with scrolling. I've had to force close it, not sure if the problem is the browser or some other app.

 

Came from a Hero... No issues with signal strength or connectivity. 4G works great while I'm at work... good speeds when tested... watched netflix flawlessly on break.

No messaging problems.

Vanilla (naked) android is great... HTC sense is pretty, but I prefer being able to add what I want and starting from scratch. I do wish I still had a free version of quickoffice, but I'll figure something out.

Speed of browsing, calling, etc is great.

Ringer could be just a touch louder, but sound quality is good, speakerphone not to bad either.

Screen looks great. Makes me hate to add some protection.

noLED is fixing my one issue, but I would still rather have had the light built in.

I am using google voice for VM service, and just using the stock text for mms... and no issues so far.

Battery life is solid, much better than Evo and I can pretty easily get through a day with moderate use.

No SD card is lame, but I don't need more than 16gb anyway... so no big deal.

camera seems decent so far, it has a flash and did well in low light the other day, but I haven't taken a lot of photos yet, better shutter than Hero or Pixi for sure... much less blur.

Picked wife up the Evo Shift and got the Nexus S for me... so far I am VERY happy with both. I was debating going with this or the EVO or even waiting for the EVO 3D, but I think this phone will be better suited for me than the others.

Will try the wifi teather soon and update more as I use it... only had it a few days so far

 

^this

this phone was created for consumers EXACTLY like this. Its designed to be FAST, and it is. Love this device, glad I made the switch from my evo.

 

Do you mind giving more details as to how you did this? Thanks.

 

I posted in a different thread the steps that worked for me, I'll post them here as well.

1. Get to the settings of Google Voice (top right gear here, then click edit on your phone, or just click this link)
2. Tick the box next to receive SMS on this phone.
3. Save

 

Thanks so much. I did exactly that, but now I get duplicate texts. One in google voice, and one in the SMS app thatbcame with the phone. Any ideas?

 

In the GV app on the phone, go into settings, sync and notifications and disable notifications. If you use the GV integration you will always get texts in the GV app even if you enable to send them as text messages to the phone in your SMS app.

 

But then if I do that, won't I stop getting notified of voice mail messages?

 

Correct, until they update the GV app to selectively chose what notifications you get, that is really the only way. You could in the interim select the option to be notified of voicemail via text and then at least you'll get some type of VM notification.

 

By clicking under settings to disable sprint integration I still get a voicemail notification (not a text) without getting duplicate text notifications

 

I have no idea what I did, but I managed to set it up "right"... I clicked upgrade account on google voice the other day, and I tried to put in my cell phone number to use, and it wouldn't let me. Instead it gave me a new google voice number that forwards to my cellphone. I can now get my voice mail through google and my sms through anything else. I wish I could be of more help with how I did it, but to be honest, I don't even know. What I do know is that it has something to do with not having my google voice number the same as my sprint number.

 

I called and asked if I could still upgrade and they let me do it