[Epic 4G General] aestil:
Hello XDA.

I figure I'm like many of you, got the Epic4G at launch, and we will have our full upgrade available from Sprint around June or so of 2012.

I'm looking on the horizon and seeing what's coming up in the way of technology, and trying to make a list of checkbox features I'll be looking for in my next phone.

Next generation SoC

Of all the SoC's coming up, the MSM8960 Krait from Qualcomm or the OMAP5 from TI are the only ones that I think I will want. Both manufactured at 28nm, should offer substantial performance and power characteristics over current generation offerings. From what I can gather, the OMAP5 will be the first SoC to use the small.BIG architecture from ARM, which sounds very good. Krait will rely on Qualcomm's use of asynchronous cores for power efficiency. In the end I expect the OMAP5 to be the better overall SoC but it seems like both companies will have competitive offerings. Qualcomm's GPU has generally lagged behind the PowerVR GPU's so it remains to be seen whether or not the higher clocked Adreno GPU will best the PowerVR offering in TI's SoC.

The overall tight integration with modem and GPS into the SoC is one area where Qualcomm will continue to have a large advantage. However the OMAP4 product in the Galaxy Nexus is still overall better to me than the 8x60 SoC in products like the Evo3D CDMA phone.

Like I said before though, either of these SoC's appear to be good bets for making its way into my next phone. The nvidia and Samsung SoC's seem to just be clock speed bumps of current gen tech. Seems like it will be hard for them to compete with the next gen stuff.

Screen size and resolution

I have large hands, so I have no problem using the 4.5" display on the SGSII. I'm positively drooling over the idea of having a 720p display. What I'm hoping becomes available is a 4.5" screen with a 720p display that is NOT pentile. I don't like the Pentile display on our Epic 4G, the difference between my screen and the SGSII screen is night and day. Even though my screen is smaller than the Epic 4G Touch, with the exact same resolution, the Epic 4G Touch appears to have far more resolution. The screen looks much better, even though it's much larger.

If I can't have 720p without pentile, I'll be looking for a qHD display without Pentile.

NFC

I live in LA. More and more places are offering this method of paying, and I would absolutely use it. Long term there are so many interesting ways of using this tech that I hope it becomes a standard feature on all phones in short order. The more people who can use it, will use it, and the more peopling using it will mean more uses and implementations of it.

Plus, that NFC Beam thing on the Galaxy Nexus looks a very cool and more useful than I had imagined it would be when I first heard of it.

Software Version

This is a big one, because I am really tired of the 'overlays' that all these OEM's put on the phones. I understand why they think they need them, but I honestly do not like any of them. The only one that I think is a 'functional' improvement over stock android is SenseUI, but it is so bloated and slow that it makes even fast phones feel dog slow [the Evo4G comes to mind].

So my preference is for a stock android experience out of the box, but unless things change quickly with the OEM's, it doesn't seem like that's the direction we are headed in.

Therefore my concern is that I'm always on a phone which will receive support for the most current CM version. The problem is that it seems as if there is no way to predict which phones will be good to develop for, and which ones won't.

This last point may mean that I'll have to wait quite some time before I upgrade, to wait to see which available phone gets CM9.

What things are important to you guys?