[Onetouch Idol 3 General] sjs87:
A little late to the party here but I just ordered my Idol 3 5.5" on the 17th from Amazon and received it today (19th) and thought I'd give a small first day review. Just a little background on me first though, I've been an xda member for a long while now but I cant remember the last time I posted anything and in fact, this is probably the first time I've even logged in since my last post.

Anyways, my views on this device is mostly based on me recently coming from an LG G2 which I was completely satisfied with until it started having touch screen issues and later took a hard fall which shattered the screen and digitizer. Moved on to a note 3 which despite the usual faults of the TW UI, I also was very happy with the note and the functions of the s-pen. My only complaint was that I had the AT&T version which had the locked bootloader. Either way, I ended up shattering that screen and digitizer also. So for the past few months I've been suffering with my old S2 skyrocket with Slimkat rom while I waited for the Note 5 to see if it was worth picking up. Long story short, S2 skyrocket stopped reading my sim recently, note 5 was announced, which was when I decided $250 outright for the idol3 is a better deal than the note 5 which I could have done monthly installments for through AT&T...

Design

I can't really complain about its looks. I prefer a more mature looking device which doesn't mean that it has to be aluminum and glass or whatever. It has a minimalist design but it also feels very sturdy. I see what others say about the grip. It's easy to slip out of your hands but it's mainly because of it being a phablet that's fairly thin. Not so much because of the texture. I was 100% comfortable with my note but after using the much smaller S2 for a while I might have to just get used to the size again. Overall, I'm happy with the looks and feel. I work as a security officer in a corporate office building and even though I'm not the type to want to keep up with the Jones', it definitely fits in with the abundance of iPhone 6's and galaxy's the EVERYONE has while still standing out as something different.

Screen

From what I remember from the note 3 and the G2, it's pretty much comparable which is to be expected with them all being 1080p. It seems to get brighter than the note did. Possibly the same if not a tad brighter than the G2, but this is just from memory of course. A 2k display was what I really wanted but after playing around with the standard s6 edge, I honestly don't see it as a big of an improvement as 720 vs 1080. Most content we view on a phone is usually maxed out at 1080 anyways. One complaint I have though is that in landscape mode with my sunglasses on, the screen looks very dim. Almost like the backlight is off completely. I expected this because the same thing happened with my G2 but not with the note so I'm just coming to the logical conclusion that its just the way LCD vs LED works. Just a minor issue that's remedied by simply taking my glasses off.

Performance

Less than a day in so far but performance seems more than good enough for everyday use. I haven't experienced any lags in the UI as of yet. Everything is smooth so far. It's actually smoother than my note 3 was from what I remember but that was with TW. I don't play games much on my phones so I cant comment too much on that, but for phone functions, messaging , web browsing and general UI navigation it's been all smooth for me so far. Not a stutter. I did notice it get hot to the touch once it booted after the OTA update. Only for a couple minutes though and it seemed to cool off. But again, it's just the first day.

Camera

I'm not the type to snap pictures of everything or selfies so I haven't even snapped a picture on this thing yet. But I did open the camera app and things do look great through the view finder. Either way even if the camera is not Note 4/5 quality it wont bother me much. I mainly use the camera to snap shots of incidents at work and my S2 was good enough for the time being so i'm pretty sure this will suffice.

Battery

Again, I haven't even had this phone in my position for a full 24hrs yet but when I turned on the phone and around 3:45pm it was at about 40%-50% or so. It's now 9:30 and I'm at 24%. Considering I haven't plugged this thing in yet and I've pretty much been downloading all my apps, transferring files through various means (BT, WIFI, etc.), calling, texting, testing screen and sound quality etc. non stop i'm pretty sure it'll take me through an entire day no problem.

Sound

I can pretty much sum this up in 4 words. More than loud enough! To expand on that though, I was also considering the HTC ONE M9 despite the overheating issues of the SD810 because I love those speakers and the design. Me being a musician for more than half my life, sometimes I want to hear music at a time when I don't have headphones, no aux cord, etc. These JBL speakers do the job. I'm not saying it's a perfect sound but honestly how much more volume and quality can you ask for from a $250 device which also has such a slim profile. The few times I've heard the M9's speakers I honestly don't remember them being much better than these if any at all.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with this thing even without factoring in the price. I really don't miss my note 3 other than the Spen which I only used every once in a while. I've always carried a pocket sized notepad and a pen with me everywhere I go regardless so that takes care of my note taking. I'm a terrible artist so I never drew anything with it either. I mainly used the pen to crop pictures and screenshots which I can just find an app for anyways. A close friend of mine has a zenfone 2 which I like also and I know has better specs technically but the sound and screen quality alone makes me lean towards the idol3.

I guess this review was longer than I expected it to be

Cliff notes:

1st day impressions... Absolutely love it.