[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
Hey, I am glad you spoke up, Decon. I myself got caught up in the mass hysteria induced by Verizon with their "Get it in 3 weeks to save $130 on this phone or else you have to pay regular price", "deal". This morning I never heard of this phone, by tonight, I am frantically thinking on how to get my hands on $100 to get this deal. Does not sound like I had much time to do my homework first. :p

I am not saying the phone is good or bad, just want to "slow down here a moment". Of course it is 3 times better than the Razr. ANY decent smart phone would be that much better than our old Razr phones by now. Computers and devices double in power and speed every 18 months, said in Moor's Law. And for the past couple of decades, that is pretty much true. So, somebody has to play "Devil's Advocate" to get a fair view of this new phone.

Droid Turbo Full Specs Here

The phone

does not

come with a slot for an ext-sdcard. So all we have is the internal sdcard. Cannot pull your sdcard, swap it out, or plug it into a USB card reader. Now we have built in 16Gb sdcards and ½ of it is taken by the system and is not accessible to us. So the new Turbo will also have some of it's internal sdcard taken away. The phone comes with either a 32 or 64GB sdcard. The new Verizon deal does not say it comes with the 64GB card. So we get a single internal 32GB sdcard and maybe up to ½ of it is not accessible and reserved for the phone. I intentionally bought a 64Gb sdcard for a reason. I want plenty of room on the phone and I like to be able to "pull the card".

Droids are nice smartphones, no doubt about it. But so are a LOT of other new smartphones. I have always wanted a Samsung Galaxy phone because of the nice big screen and I have a Samsung tablet. Never had any issues with it, the device is always fast, and it is really nice.

The Verizon offer sounds very appealing. If you buy in the next 3 weeks, you pay only $100 instead of the normal $230 it would cost for contract, device, and activation. That means I have to "hurry up and buy this" if I want the deal. Disability leaves me "as broke as a joke" so even getting the $100 to spend is very difficult, but taking the phone back and changing my mind, paying again would be out of the question. In the next 3 weeks or more, I might find a different phone that I really like a LOT more so I would hate to be "rushed into buying something" unless I thought about it for a while and checked out other phones first.

Yeah, lot of really nice features and much more powerful phone, but not "everything" is the best on this particular phone, but a LOT of it is. Droid phones have always had pretty crappy 3D GPUs and this one may be no different. I don't know if an Adreno 420 is a good video chip or not. If it were nVidia, I would praise it in a second. 3D performance is really something that gamers would appreciate, me for one. I always wished I could play some of the really neat 3D games for Android but the Razr really does not cut it for 3D.

Reading some of the reviews and comments from new Turbo owners I see many complain that the speaker is not very good. Tiny, poorly located, and not sounding very good. I saw this on several comments, not just one. I use speakerphone all the time and if the speaker is poor and difficult to use, that would be a problem.

You know, going over to the Turbo forum and nosing around a bit is a good idea to see what issues they are having with the phone. These are XDA people like us so they want root and rom too. How is it looking on that front? Maybe too early to expect that but by now at least some developers have looked over the root potential of the device. Droids have always needed an exploit to be found in the system in order to root it. They are not "root friendly" by nature. I remember rooting my DX and was so happy. I was warned NOT to take any OTA updates and one day, it happened. And the new update was a rom that had NO exploits to gain root with. The only way out was to rom it with some earlier version, root it again, and then update it with cracked roms. Not a pretty situation nor was it simple, at all. There was no Safe Strap for the Droid X.

I am still thinking about it and want to know more about this Verizon deal like if it will change my plan. I will not give up my unlimited everything. Also this is "happening too fast" for my comfort. Verizon is adding pressure with this limited time offer. Not giving us much time to compare it with other phones or to see what else is coming out that we might like better. Some members do not have much money and the opportunity to upgrade to a much better smartphone for only a single $100 payment is too good to pass up. But they are not getting a choice, it is THIS Droid Turbo or nothing so far as deals go, yes? They are pushing this model very hard on the GP. One possibility is that this phone is much more profitable for Verizon than say, an iPhone or Galaxy. Could that be a contributing factor?

Now I want to hear from some owners of this new Turbo some honest evaluations on it now that they have and use it. No doubt some of it will be negative and much will be a glowing report. I want to hear what is NOT so good about it to see if it is a deal killer and only when real members who own and use this device start reporting in will we really know what it is like. I also know why some members are jumping on this deal. The member and wife both have aging and cruddy phones, money is really tight, and this is their opportunity to get two MUCH better phones for a price they can afford. But the real users now, how is it going with the new phone? I am sure you like a lot about it, but what are the things you do not like? :confused:

Again, I am not "down on the Turbo" nor am I looking for a reason to justify nixing it. Just playing Devil's Advocate in order to make people and myself to think this through before rushing to judgement. :)

OFF TOPIC - Build Report Notes:

On build 11/01 now and my Play Store was broken. All I got was a white box with a blue top search bar. Searching did nothing, nor did anything show on the store page. Not even the menu. I had to restore Play Store from Titanium Backup. Anyone else see this issue or is it just me for downgrading by wiping system, flashing a downgrade version nightly, then updating as usual. Is it just me or is the Play Store really broken in 11/01?

Thanks for throwing cold water on the dogfight, Decon. I too feel "something is not right" because this is happening too fast. It may be a really good phone and I am sure it is, but I bet I could find some I like better that DOES have an sdcard slot. :good:

Lot of things