The picture above is of a confusing conversation I had with a buddy tonight after canceling Super Bowl plans earlier in the day. My myTouch 4G randomly decided to resend an SMS at 6:14pm from approximately 1 week prior where I was making plans with this same friend.
My issue was easy enough to rectify, albeit my friend was probably annoyed, but you combine this totally unpredictable behavior with the previously reported (and raged over) bug of Android actually sending your SMSs to the random people and it is safe to say that I am not impressed with this device.
I have been holding off on a review since I got the myTouch 4G at launch because every week I wait, there is something new that happens that bothers me. Had I reviewed this phone the first 11 mins of owning it, I would have given it a 9 out of 10 like everyone else.
After having the phone for months, I am stuck between booting my old Jailbroken iPhone 2G back up or just waiting until something less shitty comes out.
To be fair to Android, I have no idea if the behaviors I’m seeing on the myTouch 4G that drive me so crazy are related to HTC/T-Mobile customization or related to Android itself.
Some of the highlights of why I would replace this device:
- Battery life is below average. If you leave WiFi on, look at cutting your battery life in half. If you plan on video games and full screen video, again, you will cut it in half. With moderate use of all varying functions with most all features turned on, you are looking at about 6hrs after the honeymoon phase.
- NOTE: You can “condition” as many times as you want, it will eventually fall back down into this range.
- UI Performance: Even though the hardware inside the myTouch 4G is beefier than damn near most phones on the market, you’d never know it. Scrolling apps is sluggish, about 125ms behind where your finger points. Flipping the keyboard from landscape to portrait re-renders after about a 1 second wait. Flipping between apps (like Email > Browser > SMS) results in plenty of laggy loadtimes while you stare at white screens until the UI renders in.
- NOTE: Yes I have factory reset… that was the first thing I did to correct the total UI failure glitch.
- Speaker phone is right between “awful” and “below average”. The reviews did say it was tinny and distorts easily and they have it exactly right. It is WORKABLE if you infrequently need a speaker phone, but if that is a primary use you are interested in, the myTouch 4G is awful.
After my last fiasco with HTC and the Nexus One I promised that I would never get another HTC device, unfortunately the excitement around a high-powered Android device on T-Mobile (And replacing my 100 year old iPhone 2G with a cracked screen) talked me into it and I am again… regretting my decision.
All that being said, while I have plenty of reasons to dislike my myTouch 4G, there are plenty of very happy customers in the T-Mobile forums with them, so your mileage will vary as it tends to do with these types of things.
Ha, that sounds terrible. I’ve got a Vibrant that I am (usually) absurdly happy with. But the battery life could be better. I’d also like for it to stop inexplicably turning the brightness up from the 30%-40% I usually leave it on (which is plenty bright for an AMOLED). Random taps seem to cause it even though the ambient sensor is off. I’ve never had it randomly send SMS, however. It did recently send a very old e-mail from my phone to a professor (we’re talking a draft that I’d originally tried to send in October). The Gmail app is absolutely useless for sending e-mail, even over Wifi, unless you turn on auto-sync (which sucks battery life).
My biggest beef with Android is that a ton of installed apps will randomly turn themselves on in the background. Presumably they are checking for updates and the like, but there’s no way to stop most of them from doing it, and regardless of what Google and its fanboys say, they *do* consume battery and processor. I know, because when I force-kill 20 silent apps, I’m suddenly able to switch between programs without that UI lag. Or just flip it to a horizontal keyboard without the 30-second white screen. I also know they suck up battery life because when they turn themselves on at night, I wake up with a depleted battery. That said, without a ton of apps silently open in the background, I have quicker response than on my (pathetic) 2.2ghz laptop most of the time. [Light use of my phone, wifi off, no gaming = two days without a charge.]
I recently manually installed Froyo on my Vibrant. It now gives me the option of one-click, no-reset for turning off data (which I shall be using when the battery is low). But it broke the ability to upload to Picasa from the gallery. I’m going to root my phone now so I can hard reset and restore to fix the bug. Maybe then I can figure out how to prevent programs from opening on their own (including a dozen ‘stock’ programs I never use).
Good luck finding an acceptable replacement! If you keep your HTC, you could try a RAM. Best thing about Android, though, is Google Voice. Saves me $20/month on texting, and most people end up calling it and getting through just fine. And the speaker phone on it seems okay (I’ve even used it to play music at a small party). Using the phone for calls WITHOUT speaker or headset, however, is problematic sometimes.
Overquoted – a lot of great info in there.
How tightened down do you have your phone to get 2 days out of it? I can do this if I stay on GSM-only, no WiFi and minimal brightness; but I’m usually so annoyed at the experience of using the phone I eventually dial features back on and battery life goes back out the window.
As for background apps, I agree. There is that whole “you don’t have to worry about closing anymore since Android 2.2″ chatter, but at the same time I noticed performance and battery life differences.
If you do end up rooting the phone, I’m not totally clear on how that process works or what the state/situation with custom Android builds are. I would *love* a totally stock/vanilla Android build (like what is on the G2) but what I’ve read about them is that most are in beta or there are weird issues like certain native features not working right (Camera/GPS) and things not working would make me want to throw this phone into the pavement.
Is Cyanogen Mod still the preferred custom Android build? I saw 7.0 is in it’s pre release stages but saw a few complaints about battery life and just decided to wait.
I know the hardware in this device is impressive, but whatever this HTC version of Android is doing with it, I sure don’t feel it.
Honestly, not very. I normally only charge it once every 24-hours unless I’ve been playing games on it. I listen to music off of it in the car, turn on wifi when I’m at school or home and texting. I wouldn’t say I watch my use carefully, but the two or three times it turned itself completely off, it was either 2-4 days without a charge, or I’d used it heavily then forgot to plug it in before going to bed. But I don’t have a ton of phone calls or text messages either. With the brightness on 0% (which is still brighter than my old Sony Ericsson at 50%), wifi turned off except during use, and killing silent apps 1-3 times a day (which I do just so I can don’t have UI lag when using it), I get 36-48 hours without a charge most of the time. I don’t think I’ve ever had it die on me in six hours, even with the Wifi turned on (which automatically turns itself off after the phone has been idle for a long time).
AMOLED does make a difference, in my opinion. It’s simply brighter even at low settings. That 30%-40% is actually what my eyes are comfortable at. 100% is practically searing unless you’re in broad daylight.
I haven’t checked out ROMs too much because I’m largely happy with the stock OS (save for that silent app problem). The only change I’ve done is switched from TouchWiz to ADW for the home screen. You can root your phone without installing a custom ROM. There’s usually multiple tutorials on it, but according to what I’ve read, it doesn’t do anything but hand you total control over your device. No deletion of the stock OS or your personal data/settings. A friend of mine who has rooted more than one Android device (including a Nexus One) swears it will give me the control necessary to remove the stock apps I don’t require without having to install a ROM. But that’s kind of a word-of-mouth issue there.
Since the manual update to Froyo, I’m satisfied (except for that one Picasa bug) so I haven’t been looking at mods for the Vibrant. They upgraded the camera features so you can zoom (previously you couldn’t), and the camcorder on the Vibrant adjusts to light levels automatically pretty well. With the HTC, I just couldn’t tell you. But I’ll ask my friend tomorrow and see if he knows anything about it.
Try keeping background apps killed for a few days, see if it improves your battery. If they’re not just consuming processor power but also sending and receiving data (such as anonymous usage data and syncing), that would eat up your battery quickly.
I am going to try the screen brightness settings as well — I have it on “auto” but at night that is so bright it damn near hurts my eyes… can’t figure out if “auto” does anything other than just setting the screen on High most the time.
I switched to GO EZ Launcher and like it quite a bit more than the default shitty HTC launcher. It seems snappier. I might try ADW.
Thanks for the tips!