[X Style (Pure) General] Bill720:
Final review of 25.200-23

It's been about a week now, so here's my final thoughts on MPHS25.200-23 to supplement the original release notes:

- Performance feels about the same in most areas. Without another phone running side-by-side, it is impossible to say for sure, but it doesn't appear that there will be any surprises here.

- The default messaging app for SMS and MMS has changed to Google's messaging app and the one that was the default previously has been removed, seemingly without a trace. Google's works, but it's definitely not my first choice. On the main list view, there are no borders or anything between the messages, so everything kind of runs together and looks very sloppy. It also feels slower and more bloated to go back and forth between threads; not dramatically so, but just enough to not sit right with me.

- The vibration feedback that occurs when the camera is launched has changed. Before, it was a subtle "ascending" effect. Now, it's just full-blast racket for one second. On many phones, this would not be an issue, but on this one, (thanks to its obnoxiously-loud vibration motor) it's extremely loud. In some situations, it may even be embarrassing to use.

- Pressing "square" to bring up the task-switcher works the same as it did before, but Motorola now wastes approximately one-fifth of the screen with a translucent white rectangle that says "Touch and hold a window, then drag here to use split screen." Originally, I thought that this was just some kind of tutorial feature and that it would go away on its own after some time, but it appears that this will not be the case, despite the fact that I've made good use of the feature already.

- I also have some Android 7-specific notes that have nothing to do with Motorola or their software. For starters, I'm not a huge fan of the new notification center. I appreciate that they want to cram as many buttons up there as possible, but it was nice to be able to just tap anywhere on that bar to fully expand the box. Having to remember to hit that tiny little arrow has been slightly annoying, and the notification rectangles just look bland. On an unrelated note, there's also no nearly-impossible "Flappy Bird" clone on the Android version screen anymore.

With that said, I was simultaneously impressed and depressed by this release. Refreshing was the fact that Motorola pushed out such a substantial software release this late in the device's life-cycle, wisely waiting until it was stable to use and for The Xposed Framework to get its N release instead of rushing it out the door. It was arguably worth the wait for multi-window.

The weak points here were limited: The obnoxious new vibration feedback for using the camera launch gesture punishes the user every single time. Google's SMS app is also far more annoying than whatever this phone's default program was in the Lollipop and Marshmallow releases. Of course, that new startup animation (and accompanying noises) is nothing short of horrifying, but the good news is that the Yeti trick still works just fine.

I cannot comment on battery life at this point other than to say that it has been nothing short of abysmal, but I don't think that this is the fault of the rom. A new thread will be opened in the Q&A area to address this concern. In all likelihood, screen-on runtime will be identical and standby time might be slightly improved.