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If you're considering the X2, this is a must read!!!!

nateohio

Lurker
Jun 19, 2011
9
11
I'm tired of all the negativity surrounding the X2, so I figured I'd put out a review from someone who's had positive experience with it. I started my smartphone journey with a BB, then to a Droid Eris, Droid 2 and a Droid X. Also, I've always hacked/rooted/overclocked and ROMed my phones.

I've had my X2 now for about a week and here is what I've done with it so far.

Before I did anything else:

-Formatted internal memory
-Swapped out Class 4 SD card with a Class 6 card ($15 from amazon)
-Formatted SD card

I have NOT rooted, switched out launchers, or tweaked anything. I wanted to give Motoblur a no kidding chance to grow on me.

I should also mention that I reboot my phone once a day. It's an old practice that I started using on computers years ago and carried it over to every smart phone I've owned.

SCREEN:
I love it!!!!! On a general basis, its the best screen I've had on a phone.

Can you see the pentile grid???? Yes, if the phone is held in unnatural positions or the screen is off. Even then, only under certain lighting conditions.

Pixelation???? Yes, but very slight and an easy trade off for me that pays off in battery consumption and usability in bright sunlight. Doesn't matter to me anyways because I use anti glare screen protectors that pixelize even the sharpest displays.

Is it better than ANY phone I've had when using it outdoors in bright sunlight???? Absolutely!!!!

SPEED / RESPONSIVENESS
I have experienced ONE instance of Lag on this badboy. Its entirely able to be replicated also. This one instance of lag is when using the Car Dock App and only happens when scrolling to the second screen. I believe this is a software glitch and not the fault of the hardware in the phone at all.

With the exception of the above mentioned instance, this phone screams!!!! I really can't wait until we get some developer roms for this thing, because this thing will fly with a vanilla gingerbread on it!!!!!

The one negative I need to mention is the fact that the phone does seem to take about a second longer to wake up from sleep. I think that developer roms will fix this but it's mildly aggravating to me.

CALL QUALITY / NETWORK PERFORMANCE
Very simply put, the BEST of all the phones I've had experience with. Full signal at my work where my Droid 2/X was lucky to get 1/2-3/4 signal, and crystal clear calling.

CAMERA / CAMCORDER PERFORMACE
The camera is the best quality I've dealt with, and performs superbly. It may be exact same camera that the X shipped with, but I guarantee you that moto rewrote the software that controls it. Which can make a HUGE difference.

The camcorder is decent, I wouldn't say its great. It takes watchable videos and seems to adjust easily to varying conditions. That being said, I think that expecting HD Camcorder performance from a cell phone is utterly ridiculous!!!!

SOUND / MUSIC / VIDEO PLAYBACK
I've tested all of these using the phone speaker, head phones, bluetooth, and also the Aux cable that came with my car dock. The bluetooth and aux cable were connected and controlled by my ford explorers sync system.

I've played music/video from both the internal memory and sd card, and I have experiences ZERO playback issues. No loud pops, no cutouts, NOTHING!!!! This also includes making/answering phone calls while connected to my vehicles sync system.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I don't know if there is a bad batch of phones out there or if people screw things up with apps, rooting, freezing/removing apps, or any number of other things. But my experience is almost 100% positive with the X2

In case you didn't catch it earlier, my phone is completely 100% unmodified stock software. I haven't done anything except throw some widgets on my home screens and install my normal apps.

In my opinion, the X2, at least my sample, is the best 3G phone available on Verizon currently.

If you guys have any questions, please feel free to ask. I'm pretty good at checking things out at least once a day and will get back to you. You can also PM me if you'd like.
 
Its great to hear something positive about the device....Whatever the case may be,I had the phone,i didnt root,i formatted just like you before using it...i did use the orignal SD card though...i know my issues were real,and I did factory resets,spent hours on the phone with verizon,trying to get to the bottom of it,and for whatever reason,my experience was the 180 of yours...I ran back to my droid X,is it a touch slower,yes at times,the disiplay isnt as great in the sun,but it works....plain and simple,the x2 couldnt get me to a destination,or take a trip thru my gallery without freezing,requiring a reboot,there were just so many things...I wanted to love the phone,I have 3 car docks,one in each vehicle,3 ext life batteries,stand alone chargers,desktop mounts,phone holders on my bicycles,golf carts,and at least 10 chargers,wherever i work,or play.I have hundreds in accessories,when i seen the X2 fit everything the original X did,I was extatic....the thought of being able to re use all my stuff,I bought it instantly,trust me I didnt want to return the device,it was however useless as delivered,and verizon stated that they spoke with motorola tech,and they acknowledged most of the issues,and said that a software update "should be coming in 1-2 months"....not good enough,and Im not buying a standalone GPS in the meantime........BTW IM happy you are pleased with yours,I hope it continues to perform as it is now.
 
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I wanted to love this phone so badly...I kept it until the last possible minute I could return it. I'm glad you are having a much better experience with it. My problems all happened before I even rooted. I'm not expecting brilliant recording with HD, but every other phone I've played around with on HD recording is seamless, there is a problem with the X2.
 
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Thanks for the review. I placed my DX2 order today and I look forward to dumping the Eris I've been using for almost 2 years now! My new F150 comes in next week and I'll be Sync'ing it up. How does it work with Sync?I'll have to read up on formatting the memory and sd card, is this required or just really needed? And how about the class 6 sd card, 8GB, 16GB? Depends on how much video and music I got and I guess it's needed to shoot 720p video?
Coming from the Eris I won't be hard to impress. :D
 
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Thanks for the review. I'd have to say that, so far, my experience with the X2 matches yours. I've had mine for just over a week and it's performing extremely well. Very fast and smooth. Although I will say that I did a lot of work to it. Rooted it. Ran V6 Supercharger and put Go Launcher on.

I wouldn't say that I had to do all of that because it ran pretty well out of the box, but I wanted to squeeze every last bit of performance out of it as I could. I'm hoping that Gingerbread will make it even better.
 
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I will agree with the OP, my experience has been very pleasant. However, I would consider myself a light user. I use it to check updates on many things and calls mostly with occasional shoutcast radio in car and some gaming. I really hope gingerbread comes out soon, that was my main disappointment that it didn't come with it.
 
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I have had mine for about a week now and while there are a few "bugs" , I am happy with it. My 1st,2nd,3rd,4th and 5th X all had MAJOR issues so this good for me so far. I took some pics and video this weekend and was very happy with them. The video was similar to the X but you can ZOOM!! The pics are much better I think because of the better software or whatever they did.. I used the maps the other day while driving and it was great.. Zoomed in and out and used the satellite layer and it was flawless.. I have LPP installed and that really sped it up. Signal also seems improved to me in some spots where it was weak with the X. Love the screen resolution!
 
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My DX2 results were not as good, but I kept it until the last day, hoping some miracle fix would happen.

1. Random reboots
2. Lag that appeared to correlate with low operational memory
3. Pops during MP3 playback

Everything else rocked with the DX2. Still, I have yet to see an Android device that does not lag, due to Android (even the GS2 lags at times), seems "no lag" may be a tad of an overstatement- Android lags by default due to the arbitrary app loading in the background. Also, the pops happen on the store demo units as well. Tried two store units and mine did it AFTER resetting to stock for return. Does not matter if microsd or internal storage. The audio pops and gets real bad when multi-tasking. Easily worse of any Android device I have used as far as audio issues (and have tested over a dozen Android devices for audio quality). The Tegra 2 is GREAT for audio quality, but the DX2 pops and clicks during playback. Even VZW store employees admit this.

Based on Motorola feedback from techs, there will not be an update except for Gingerbread and that is with GB 2.3.4- whenever it releases and Moto/VZW push their FW version of it. Seems August will be best case scenario.
 
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To format the storage devices you have to:

Go to Settings-->SD Card and Phone Storage-->Format Internal Storage

For the SD card, you'll have to hit the unmount option, once its unmounted, the option to format will become highlighted. Hit Format SD Card

For those of you wondering what card I'm running:

Transcend 8GB Class 6 MicroSD card

Can be found here:
Amazon.com: Transcend 8 GB microSDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS8GUSDHC6E: Electronics
 
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I have to agree with nate...I might be having a few small issues that he is not, but overall I love my phone. I was using "Zombiebooth" (really fun app). A bunch of my friends downloaded it. The time to process the image took forever on their phones, but on mine just a few seconds! Now they are all "My phone sucks. I need a dual core phone"...lol
 
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I have been on the fence after reading about all of the trouble people are having with the x2. I even bought the accessory bundle before the phone because I was set on it. it's good to hear that not everyone is having trouble...I'm still on my OG Droid and ready for something different....and even though I'm a techy kind of guy who has played with many different roms, I really just need the device to be reliable and fast. I've even considered an iphone just because they plain work like they are supposed to. I was on the fence between the x2 or the charge, but I don't even know when I will see LTE in northern NJ...so I was leaning toward the x2....now I don't know if should wait it out the iphone5...I know...I know this androidville...I just like a device that works like it's supposed to...I don't care if it's apple, peach, droid...just work!
 
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I have been on the fence after reading about all of the trouble people are having with the x2. I even bought the accessory bundle before the phone because I was set on it. it's good to hear that not everyone is having trouble...I'm still on my OG Droid and ready for something different....and even though I'm a techy kind of guy who has played with many different roms, I really just need the device to be reliable and fast. I've even considered an iphone just because they plain work like they are supposed to. I was on the fence between the x2 or the charge, but I don't even know when I will see LTE in northern NJ...so I was leaning toward the x2....now I don't know if should wait it out the iphone5...I know...I know this androidville...I just like a device that works like it's supposed to...I don't care if it's apple, peach, droid...just work!

DX2 has a lot of good things going for it (as mentioned already). A lot of the gnashing of teeth about some key issues would be placed at ease if Moto would mention intent on when the GB update is coming. Not a peep so far, so could be a few months. By then, the Bionic should be out.

Hard going back to my Incredible, but it does not randomly reboot, have audio pops or low ram issues. Still, cool for all folks that are not having the issues.
 
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Well I've had the X2 for about a month now and I wanted to write back and give an update.

Since I wrote the original post in this thread I've done a few things:

-Rooted with Gingerbreak
-Installed Titanium Backup
-Froze a few a of the bloatware programs that I didn't like

Other than that, I have still NOT run any supercharger scripts, SD speed increase or anything else along those lines. I've considered doing these, but honestly the phone runs just fine for me without them.

I've still not encountered any audio popping, lag, video stutter, multiple SMS messages, etc....

The one thing I have noticed that aggravates me is how long it takes for the Gallery to load, and also the fact that I gotta bypass the social networking pics to actually get to my photos. I think that Moto completely wasted R&D time on this stupid feature. I think that when most people click on the Gallery app they are looking to access their photos that they have taken, not the facebook pics of everyone of their friends.

I still think that the X2 is one of the best 3G phones that Verizon has to offer and honestly the only thing that could make me consider switching is if the Moto Bionic actually lives up to all the hype. (Which it won't, there will as many haters of the Bionic as there are of the X2, even if it is a great phone)

So there you have it, almost a month later and I'm still a VERY satisfied X2 owner. I really cant wait until P3Droid and the other big name Devs get to working on this thing. The SBF is available, clockwork recovery is in the works, and P3Droid is going to be receiving a donated X2 here in the next couple of days. Good things are definitely on the horizon for the X2, so stay tuned!!!!
 
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The one thing I have noticed that aggravates me is how long it takes for the Gallery to load, and also the fact that I gotta bypass the social networking pics to actually get to my photos. I think that Moto completely wasted R&D time on this stupid feature. I think that when most people click on the Gallery app they are looking to access their photos that they have taken, not the facebook pics of everyone of their friends.

There is a work around the automatic loading of FB pics in the gallery. I had the same problem and eliminated it. I can't tell you exactly how I did this, but it was something like this. Delete FB account from my accounts, the blur account. In my accounts also was two gmail accounts. Delete the FB android app. Change your FB password on your home pc. Re-install FB app on DX2, then sign back on using that app only, not adding it to your "blur" social accounts. This worked somehow. Sorry, I can't tell you exactly, but this general procedure eliminated the loading of FB pics into the gallery, thus slowing gallery down.
 
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I did have some trouble with my X2, mostly the audio issues, but I've done quite a bit of work to it. Rooted with Gingerbreak, froze a bunch of apps and did the V6 Supercharger, which didn't seem to work but I finally realized that I didn't have it set to run at boot.

I also installed a class 6 SD card and SD speed increase.

I'm also using Go Launcher.

After all of that, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the phone. It's performing very well, very fast. The audio issues are almost entirely gone. They still happen but are so infrequent that I don't really notice them -- nothing like when I first got the phone. The only thing I wish is that I could get an Android device with a 4.3 screen that's equal to (or better) than the retina display. Seems like a next-gen device should beat something that was released over a year ago.

I'll second the vote for Quick Pic. The stock gallery can't compare in speed to QP.

If Gingerbread can make this phone better, I may stick with it until my 2-year contract is up.

I do want to check out the D3 when it comes out just to see the performance difference with the OMAP processor and Gingerbread.
 
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