Droid Maxx?

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Sun Dec 15, 2013 2:09 pm

Any experience with the new Droid Maxx? Thinking of replacing my 2 year old Galaxy Nexus in order to get significantly longer battery life and, hopefully, a more visible display in daylight. Not changing from Verizon.

FYI, even though it isn't relevant to us, it appears that the "Global Ready" Verizon phones like the Droid Maxx, S4, etc. will work with locally purchased SIM cards when travelling.

Thanks,

Dick

Jordan Normark · **Posted:** Sun Dec 15, 2013 9:03 pm

I have no experience with the Droid Maxx, but last week, my wife and I got our first smart phones. Both of us got a Galaxy S4. One of the selling points for me is that the battery is easily replaceable. The screen is always easy to read, in fact I turned down the intensity thinking it might help with battery usage. I am short on patience when it comes learning new technical computer things, but I have been pleasantly surprised how intuitive this phone is. One complaint is that I have difficulty operating it one handed. The screen is huge and I have trouble stretching my stumpy thumb to the far side of it

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 9:14 am

Jordan Normark wrote:

The screen is always easy to read, in fact I turned down the intensity thinking it might help with battery usage.

Go to the Google Play store and download the "Juice Defender" app. You'll be surprised at how much battery life it can save and screen brightness is one of the things it can control.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:05 am

Dick this is clearly my opinion but going from any phone that has the word "Samsung", "Galaxy", "Nexus" or "S.+" in the name to a Motorola made phone is a baaaaaaadddddd idea. When you have the best already, you don't want to step down off the podium.

With Verizon, my suggestion is either the HTC One and Galaxy S4. I went through this same thing with the aforementioned phones myself and end up going with the HTC One because Jeremy twisted my arm but both are really good phones. My wife's Galaxy Nexus is rock solid and still as performant as the day we got it (and super easy to root

).

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:53 am

JamesShort wrote:

Dick this is clearly my opinion but going from any phone that has the word "Samsung", "Galaxy", "Nexus" or "S.+" in the name to a Motorola made phone is a baaaaaaadddddd idea. When you have the best already, you don't want to step down off the podium.

With Verizon, my suggestion is either the HTC One and Galaxy S4. I went through this same thing with the aforementioned phones myself and end up going with the HTC One because Jeremy twisted my arm but both are really good phones. My wife's Galaxy Nexus is rock solid and still as performant as the day we got it (and super easy to root

).

James,

What is the concern with Motorola's?

Edit to add. If it wasn't for battery life I probably would not be considering a change.

Thanks!

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:03 am

I got my Motorola Razr Maxx mainly due to it's extended battery life, which is excellent just as advertised. No issues after one year of ownership.

JohnByers · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:29 am

Vincent Keene wrote:

I got my Motorola Razr Maxx mainly due to it's extended battery life, which is excellent just as advertised. No issues after one year of ownership.

My Maxx is 18 months old and I have to reboot it 2-3 times a week as it slows to a crawl and is basically useless. When new thru a year old my battery would last all day long. Then it has gotten worse. Now I can make it till 3-4 and need to "top off". I will admit my classroom and shop is a block building and makes it mighty hard to get a good signal so that is a lot of the issue.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:39 am

JohnByers wrote:

When new thru a year old my battery would last all day long.

Only one day when it was new? Mine is now one year old and I can make it two days with heavy use and three with less useage. I generally charge mine every other day, but never daily.

JamesShort · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:03 pm

DickRasmussen wrote:

James,

What is the concern with Motorola's?

Edit to add. If it wasn't for battery life I probably would not be considering a change.

Thanks!

Motorola phones have been flakey for me and my family for years. I'm not sure if this has changed as of late, but I'm not willing to take a chance. Also Motorola seems to be the worst in terms of bloatware to Android....like really bad. The Maxx comes with a non-removable/changeable 3500mAh battery. With your Galaxy Nexus or almost all Samsung phones, you can buy a 3900mAh extended battery for a very reasonable price.

With the pervasiveness of portable battery chargers (I got a 14000mAh...yes 3 zeroes charger with a 1A and 2A output for $39 on amazon) I think it's not a great idea to shop for a device purely on battery life. That thing can charge my HTC One like 6 times on a single charge.

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:06 pm

JohnByers wrote:

Vincent Keene wrote:

I got my Motorola Razr Maxx mainly due to it's extended battery life, which is excellent just as advertised. No issues after one year of ownership.

My Maxx is 18 months old and I have to reboot it 2-3 times a week as it slows to a crawl and is basically useless. When new thru a year old my battery would last all day long. Then it has gotten worse. Now I can make it till 3-4 and need to "top off". I will admit my classroom and shop is a block building and makes it mighty hard to get a good signal so that is a lot of the issue.

Hmmm.

I almost always turn my cell phone off at night, except when traveling, so rebooting isn't an issue.

Regarding battery life, the biggest issue with Li-ion batteries in phones, tablets, and laptops is the limited number of charging cycles and the crappy shelf life, especially if stored fully charged ready to use.

This link has some good info which is consistent with info I've read from Li-ion manufactures.

http://www.batteryuniversity.com/learn/ ... _batteries

Basically for the battery you are using, the less you discharge it the total recharge cycles increase much more than the simple math would suggest (see table 2). Conversely, storing at full charge shortens maximum capacity at full charge drastically.

The hard part with buying a new cell phone (or laptop) battery is that there is no way to determine how fresh it is even assuming it has been at 40% charge. Due to short product life cycles I suspect that it is likely that replacement oem branded batteries you buy 2 years later were made at the same time your phone was made and then stored in various warehouses around the world at whatever temperature.

However, I can buy a lot of replacement batteries for the $200 price of a new phone even if they don't last as long as the original.

Les Davis · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 2:04 pm **Posts:** 2059

JohnByers wrote:

Vincent Keene wrote:

I got my Motorola Razr Maxx mainly due to it's extended battery life, which is excellent just as advertised. No issues after one year of ownership.

My Maxx is 18 months old and I have to reboot it 2-3 times a week as it slows to a crawl and is basically useless. When new thru a year old my battery would last all day long. Then it has gotten worse. Now I can make it till 3-4 and need to "top off". I will admit my classroom and shop is a block building and makes it mighty hard to get a good signal so that is a lot of the issue.

This shop thing might be more of an issue than you realize. I've had two Maxx phones now, the original and now the HD and battery life is generally outstanding, two days of regular use is the norm on a charge. If you read any of the tests done by CNET or others, the Maxx outlasts all contenders hands down in empirical/independent tests which makes sense since it comes be a much larger capacity battery than anyone else. I did have an issue once recently when I was in Raleigh working in a particular corner of the office building, my phone kept getting hot in my pocket and my battery mysteriously died in a matter of hours. I noticed that the phone was having a hard time keeping a 4G data connection there and the next day I logged onto the office WiFi instead and no more issues, back to 78% of my battery at 6pm the next day. Obviously this is something wrong with the phone, it shouldn't be killing the battery searching for 4G all day long, and if I had to deal with this every day, I would be pretty pissed. Perhaps this is what is going on in your shop?

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:11 pm

If you want long battery life, I highly recommend the Galaxy Note II (and probably the Note III, but I don't have any experience with it).

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:17 pm

JamesShort wrote:

Motorola phones have been flakey for me and my family for years. I'm not sure if this has changed as of late, but I'm not willing to take a chance. Also Motorola seems to be the worst in terms of bloatware to Android....like really bad. The Maxx comes with a non-removable/changeable 3500mAh battery. With your Galaxy Nexus or almost all Samsung phones, you can buy a 3900mAh extended battery for a very reasonable price.

With the pervasiveness of portable battery chargers (I got a 14000mAh...yes 3 zeroes charger with a 1A and 2A output for $39 on amazon) I think it's not a great idea to shop for a device purely on battery life. That thing can charge my HTC One like 6 times on a single charge.[/quote]

The large extended battery for the Nexus looks like it almost doubles the thickness of the phone.

Interesting on the bloatware. The recent reviews of Samsung S4 or Note 3 versus the Droids seem to indicate less bloatware or maybe "custom ware" on the Motorolas than the Samsungs.

Portable chargers, spare batteries and separate chargers, etc. are an option but the goal is to keep it simple. Battery lasts a looooong full day with tons of use and gets charged every night with no worry until end of contract when the battery may be "end of life". Keeping in mind that the battery in the portable chargers are going to wimp out after 2 or 3 years even if they are rarely used. Darn batteries are like people . . . they get old and frail. :lol:

DickRasmussen · **Posted:** Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:23 pm

Les Davis wrote:

JohnByers wrote:

Vincent Keene wrote:

I got my Motorola Razr Maxx mainly due to it's extended battery life, which is excellent just as advertised. No issues after one year of ownership.

My Maxx is 18 months old and I have to reboot it 2-3 times a week as it slows to a crawl and is basically useless. When new thru a year old my battery would last all day long. Then it has gotten worse. Now I can make it till 3-4 and need to "top off". I will admit my classroom and shop is a block building and makes it mighty hard to get a good signal so that is a lot of the issue.

This shop thing might be more of an issue than you realize. I've had two Maxx phones now, the original and now the HD and battery life is generally outstanding, two days of regular use is the norm on a charge. If you read any of the tests done by CNET or others, the Maxx outlasts all contenders hands down in empirical/independent tests which makes sense since it comes be a much larger capacity battery than anyone else. I did have an issue once recently when I was in Raleigh working in a particular corner of the office building, my phone kept getting hot in my pocket and my battery mysteriously died in a matter of hours. I noticed that the phone was having a hard time keeping a 4G data connection there and the next day I logged onto the office WiFi instead and no more issues, back to 78% of my battery at 6pm the next day. Obviously this is something wrong with the phone, it shouldn't be killing the battery searching for 4G all day long, and if I had to deal with this every day, I would be pretty pissed. Perhaps this is what is going on in your shop?

I've noticed that it appears that if location services especially and to some degree gps are enabled on apps like the weather channel will use lots of battery when they are constantly trying to update location in a moving vehicle on long trips. I suspect that deep inside a big building with poor reception will do the same thing. I do know that turning off the location stuff helps but, of course, doesn't help "navigation" :lol:

Hence, constant connection to the car charger in those situations.

Edit to add: My phone with 2 year old extended (2100 ahr or so) battery has used 6% in 3 hours 20 minutes of just sitting on my desk. Essentially no use except just now to check battery. I'm pretty sure that if I was moving around the neighborhood, let alone driving, that usage would be higher. Wifi on, bluetooth on, gps on, location services set for gps only. 4G on. No calls. A couple of email notifications. Don't know if this is good or bad but obviously not typical use. Normally it would be on the charger at home.

Les Davis · **Joined:** Fri Aug 29, 2003 2:04 pm **Posts:** 2059

JamesShort wrote:

DickRasmussen wrote:

James,

What is the concern with Motorola's?

Edit to add. If it wasn't for battery life I probably would not be considering a change.

Thanks!

Motorola phones have been flakey for me and my family for years. I'm not sure if this has changed as of late, but I'm not willing to take a chance. Also Motorola seems to be the worst in terms of bloatware to Android....like really bad. The Maxx comes with a non-removable/changeable 3500mAh battery. With your Galaxy Nexus or almost all Samsung phones, you can buy a 3900mAh extended battery for a very reasonable price.

With the pervasiveness of portable battery chargers (I got a 14000mAh...yes 3 zeroes charger with a 1A and 2A output for $39 on amazon) I think it's not a great idea to shop for a device purely on battery life. That thing can charge my HTC One like 6 times on a single charge.

The fact that you can't remove the battery is one of my biggest gripes with the Maxx phones, but it lasts so long I've learned to live with that fact and having a big battery that doesn't cause the phone to have some weird bulge in in like most of the aftermarket extended batteries in my experience have, is nice.

I've got no qualms with the Nexus phones, if I were planning to leave Verizon a Nexus phone would certainly be on my list of contenders. However, I think your opinion of Motorola phones is perhaps a bit outdated, particularly the latest line. Keep in mind also that Google bought Motorola Mobility over 2 years ago, so a Droid Maxx is a Google phone. My current phone, the Doid Razr Maxx HD was the first phone that was co-developed with Google and sold officially as a Google phone. Much of the bloatware has been eliminated, a Droid Maxx is mostly a stock Android phone now. I think the "Smart Actions" are pretty much all that remain of the Motorola "bloatware" and the smart actions are pretty cool, certainly worth keeping around. My early Motorola phones were pretty flaky, as was my one and only Samsung phone. They aren't perfect, but they are pretty darn good with the latest versions of Android. The Motorola phones have always worked pretty darn well as phones though, even if they were a bit flaky on the smart phone side of things. And I personally like the solid feel that the Motorola phones have when compared to the Samsung phones that feel kinda flimsy, a couple extra ounces in my pocket is okay with me too. I like the Kevlar used in the Motorola phones too compared to the cheap feeling regular plastic on the Samsung phones.

Just in case you haven't looked lately, the Nexus is considered by CNET to be an excellent phone: http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phones/goo ... 28372.html

But the Driod Maxx is outstanding: http://reviews.cnet.com/motorola-droid-maxx/ - it was pricey, but prices are coming down and will continue to do so.

Of course the Galaxy S4 is as well: http://reviews.cnet.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/

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