We already remember the first weeks – the glory of getting the newest phone in the market and praising how wonderful it was to finally have an actual smartphone. That’s how it was when the Triumph came out in Summer of 2011. It was short-lived though as quality control issues came to light through numerous blogs, forums and just about everywhere else. That tarnished my enthusiasm for the phone and I held off from buying it. I had been using my replaced Optimus V from February 2011, and was nearing the practical limits of what it could do, and only by deleting messages, application caches and just about everything to keep it from displaying the dreaded low on spasce notification, was I able to prolong its life.

The build quality problems I knew about were screen flickering issues, super-weak GPS signals and general system instability. If only I had a source for these uncited problems!

My particular handset does not exhibit the GPS problem, the flickering problem is more likely a software bug and even at that, it’s less noticeable overtime as you learn how to avoid it (wait at least four seconds between pressing the power button into sleep and then out of sleep). So my problems at the very least are not the usually reported problems, are at least not among those that were reported at release of the Triumph.

The Big Problem – Wi-Fi

No, my problem is with wifi. Yes, wifi, the very point of having a smartphone is Internet connectivity and through wifi at that. So what does my Motorola Triumph handset do? It crashes and then restarts.

Here’s the deal. At the University of Minnesota, we have a wifi network called “UofM Secure” because you need your “X500” credentials to login, which is simply a username and password. This is technically a 802.1 EAP network, which is all just a fancy authentication system based on WPA and WPA2. It’s secure and wonderful, and definitely beats having to authenticate through an open wifi network login page.

So with the Motorola Triumph, if I’m in an area with wifi, and it is already connected without going into Settings > Wireless & networks > Wi-Fi settings, there’s a low chance of the crash. But if I do have go through settings to select the network (essentially forcing wifi to connect), it will often become unresponsive and then just crash! But then it gets better. It can do this multiple times if the network does not come back on its own without going through settings. The saving grace now is the phone is fast enough to restart in less than 30 seconds, but still. It is ridiculous to have a phone that crashes because it has connected to wifi.

But the problem does not end there, oh no. In fact, wifi problems continue. If I am connected and either downloading a page, podcast or using some sufficient amount of wifi data transfer, there’s a large possibility that I will lose the connection to the network. And you know that means – more chances to restart. Typically, this is rarer than the previous restarting problem, but it certainly does happen in places where the Optimus V (at the university) had no problems on the network. I can be reading in Google Reader and suddenly, bam! no wifi. But here’s the kicker – and a confusing point – it’s not just 802.1 EAP in this case. It happens at home to in my 802.11n network, the connection will suddenly drop out – just like that, in the blink of an eye.

To explain that better, let me contrast with the Optimus V. At home, I never had a wifi drop out, if it had gone to sleep and turned wifi off, it would reconnect seconds after waking up, no problem, and while using the phone itself, it would stay on perfectly for extended periods of time to the point it never actually dropped out while I was watching. Ever. For instance, my favorite podcast player, Listen by Google, would allow me to listen and download podcasts at the same time. The Motorola Triumph cannot do this because it will often drop out, and Listen even insists that when I try to listen/stream while downloading – especially while the download is incomplete, it will state, “An error occurred while playing this episode.” That error never came up on the Optimus V. It may not be related to the wifi, but the staggering amount “Error (file not found)” and “Error (connection timed out)” notices I receive from Listen is surely a sign of the wifi problem – it simply cannot keep up a stable connection for an entire 60MB file.

But it’s not just Listen, it’s something as simple as browsing. I can be checking my bus schedule and be unsurprised that what I thought was just slow Internet on campus was actually due to the phone losing the connection yet again.

There are certainly lesser problems in the phone, but this is the one I demand to be fixed. It absolutely must be solved. Either by software or hardware or magic.

Let’s talk about some other observations. I have had this phone for two weeks; long enough to get a feel for oddities.

Battery Life

Let’s begin with the battery life. In a normal school day, I clock in at 6am and clock out around 3pm (and by clock in and out, I mean take off and put on the phone from the charger). By noon, I usually from down to 55% with light to moderate usage, though with heavier usage it goes to 40%. That’s no a big deal. Now, if for some reason wifi is being insane inane on any given day and it disconnects and reconnects continuously, well, say goodbye to that battery – 40% by 9am! Great. Actually, barring that exception, I’m pleased with the battery life in the phone. I have not had a close call yet, and I feel like I need to keep more battery life for a longer day (like Wednesday with my physics lab through 5pm), I go into Airplane mode with cuts me off from the celluar network (and who needs that during lab?) Since I only read and despise games, this works fine for me. No problems there.

The Keyboard

Now how about that keyboard? Here’s an example of my poor typing with the stock Android keyboard.

Now, how abiut rhat keyboars. This keybaord isbso easyto use becuas it ahs no ictiondarg. Revooutinary right? This is ibsabity.

Why did it come out like this? Because autocomplete does not exist on this phone naturally. Oh no, somehow, there is no dictionary except for your previously imported list of contacts and built-in names. So the words, “about”, “keyboard”, “easy”, “because” and more are unintelligible because it cannot correct them, it doesn’t know them. This demonstrates a lack of … what, I don’t even know? Who decides to sell a phone without an autocorrection dictionary? Who’s fault is this? Motorola’s? Google’s? The World’s? My solution was to install the ICS Keyboard that was simply too slow on the Optimus V (and immature at the time). But do normal people even know they can do this? My father certainly does not and his messages look like they were often written by birds (that may be angry).

Speed & Stability

Speed and stablity are interesting topics. Barring the occasional wifi-restart, the phone is generally stable. I run LauncherPro as the homescreen, and it runs with minimal effects enabled (none of that cubic nonsense) without any problems, the apps drawer scrolls smoothly, webpages, long lists and everything scrolls just fine. Stability wise, I’ve rarely had an app crash on its own and if it did, it was Facebook, and that didn’t work well on the Optimus V anyway. Switching from portrait to landscape works fast and flawlessly, where on the Optimus V, it was quite slow. On the Triumph, the phone is pretty much always responsive to the touch, but a problem is the capacitive menu, home and back buttons are less responsive than the actual screen, so I have to hit them multiple times quite often to know I registered a response. The haptic feedback helps, but it’s minimal.

Comfort

I’ve spoken about comfort before. Comfort is in terms of being able to swipe with one’s thumb from corner to corner of the phone. That is kinda possible but not easy with this Motorola Triumph’s huge 4.1” diagonal screensize. In fact, it almost hurts. Actually, it does hurt to overextend; with two hands the problem is solved, because you can hold with one hand and swipe with the other. So now I know why everyone claims smaller phones are better. The screensize is great and all, but the pixel density is more important for me compared with actually being able to interact with the controls. If you’re holding the Triumph in one hand, it’ll be a tricky maneuver to hit that notifications bar, which apparently is something you do pretty often.

The Network

Initially, I heard various reports of weak 3G reception and that reasoning isn’t condemned by the fact there is visually 4 bars on the Motorola Triump while there are 5 on the Optimus V. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but in my experience, the Motorola Triumph is fine in the University of Minnesota, Saint Paul region. The bars are a bad indicator of 3G service, and as far as I know, I have always been able to send and receive text messages in all but the deepest depths of the great buildings at the university.

The OS – Android 2.2.2

What else is there? How about the operating system itself? Android 2.2.2 isn’t bad; but it has no more to offer than my already year-old phone, the Optimus V, running the same. 2.3.5 I believe is the leading version of Gingerbread but I don’t even remember what it could do; let alone improve performance. It doesn’t matter either way, every app functions perfectly – nobody can drop 2.2 support because, well, there are 96% of all Android phones running that. Oh yeah. That said, after having experienced the glorious Ice Cream Sandwich, well, it’s a shame this phone will never support either an official build or completely a self-installed variant. Hacking the TouchPad to support CM9 was easy enough but on the phone it’s a slightly different story.

Wrap Up

So, how about a numeric score? I like the 1-5 scoring system, but let me explain how I broke the score down all down.

• -1 for the many and consistent wifi connectivity problems
• -0.1 for the outdated version of Android despite being available for more than a year and half, software wise and hardware wise
• -0.1 for the insane screensize and minor discomfort
• -0.2 for a completely broken stock keyboard

Despite those cons, I liked that the phone is suitably fast for a 1GHz processor and modern phone smartphone; it actually feels fast enough to be smart, and that goes for being responsive too. And of course, for having more storage space even after twice as many apps as I had on the Optimus V at the end of its life. So my final score is 3.6 out of 5. So that’s a 72% satisfaction rate, which is considered a B+ in my physics courses; a C- in the curvless world.

Bonus

While writing this, I did a little more testing. Using my favorite Wifi Analyzer and Listen to download an episode of Tech News Today. The episode in question was only 25MB. While it was downloading in the background, I was watching the Analyzer. My office is about 8 feet away from the n-router, and that’s separated by a single wall. In that time, the wifi dropped out from a nearly -30 dbm signal to a mere -80 dbm signal and of course the download was interrupted; my laptop was still receiving wifi perfectly right next to the phone. Wikipedia explains that anything around -10 dbm is the ceiling on wifi signal but anywhere from -30 to -70 are fair game for wifi. A drop from -30 dbm to -80 dbm is definitely unusual as this is a logarithmic scale and that’s like dropping 50 orders of magnitude. So I don’t think I’m making all of this up.

Despite all of this, I consider myself lucky as there were no restarts while writing.

I began my search on the specs-page for the Exhibit. The processor listed as 1GHz, MSM8255, Qualcomm. Right off the bat, that’s definitely better than my Optimus V but is it comparable with the Triumph? The Triumph has 1GHz, MSM8655, Qualcomm. Via Wikipedia on Snapdragon, the Exhibit processor is actually a sub-generation behind the Triumph processor. In terms of graphics, they both share the Adreno 205, and the Triumph is probably underclocked to conserve battery life, but the speeds are the same despite the gap. In general, any thing is an improvement over the 600 MHz in the Optimus V. Still, getting a phone in 2012 with a processor from mid-2010 is kind of dismaying.

The Exhibit has 512MB of memory, which is great, though the Triumph is identical in that respect. The differentiation comes from the screen sizes. The Exhibit has a smaller 3.7-inch screen but with a higher 252 PPI resolution which is nearly iPad-retina display quality, while the 4.1-inch Triumph has slightly lower at 228 PPI. The 3.2-inch Optimus V has the lowest among the all, but it’s fair to read on nonetheless.

The camera is a lackluster feature in the Exhibit II 4G, at 3 megapixels though it is slightly redeeming that it comes with the front-facing VGA standard camera. The Triumph of course beats that with 5 megapixels. Both handsets come with an LED flash. Only the Triumph would provide a definite upgrade over the Optimus V 3 megapixel camera but I question the lens.

The weight of a phone does not really matter to me as long as the build quality does not present itself as huge seams creaking in protest when I hold it. The Exhibit is very light at 113 grams while the Triumph is heavier at 143 grams, probably due to the screen size. And of course with weight, comes battery life. These numbers mean as close to dirt as their provided by manufacturers’ fake testing, but the Exhibit gets a paltry 5.5 hours of usage, while the Triumph gets an even worse 5 hours. I am not making these numbers up: they really do suck this badly. The batteries are rated at 1500 mAh and 1380 mAh respectively, so it’s slightly easier to see the Triumph failing in this respect. In my usage, the Optimus V can perform admirably – as long as the WiFi in the area is actually good enough to connect to without searching for it for six hours. My days usually start around 6am and by 3pm, I am close to 45% with light usage (checking mail, time, listening to podcasts for 45 minutes, etc).

And then there’s the network. Virgin Mobile is a great network here in the Twin Cities, and for everything I am paying – it does well. I can download a podcast that’s 26 megabytes in maybe 15 minutes while I am on the bus (a 25 minute journey). With all that said, it is still slow usually and probably not to be relied on. The 4G speeds offered by the Exhibit are questionable: I have seen numbers from 2 megabits, 4 and even 9 megabits down. T-Mobile coverage for phone, 4G and 3G is great in the University of Minnesota and surrounding Twin Cities area. And for the secret $30/mo 100 minute-unlimited texting and data-plan from T-Mobile’s prepaid division online – matching up quite well with my grandfathered-in $25/mo 300 minute-unlimited texting and data-plan from Virgin Mobile. The 4G is the wild card and switching would mean giving up an entire $10 monthly.

Deriving the opinion of the masses from Amazon, the Triumph gets 3.7 out of 5 stars from 233 reviewers, while the Exhibit gets 4.1 out of 5 stars from 223 reviewers. I am loyal to three things: cost, reliability and the handsets.

So, which phone wins here? The Motorola Triumph is notorious with its build quality issues. I do not know if those issues persist seven months later, but if it does, then a slightly lesser phone would be a better bet. The 4G Exhibit is mildly less high-end but not enough to be a major detractor.

Thoughts?

On Thursday, March 15^th, last week, Virgin Mobile released the Venture. The Venture is from Alcatel and PCD, or maybe ZTE, depending on who you ask. None of them are well known. The key feature of this phone is the pricing: just $100 for an entry level Android handset.

The specifications are not particularly exciting. The screen is the oddest part of the hardware. It’s just 2.8-inches, but it is a touchscreen. It’s quite odd to put such a small screen onto a phone that is going to end up being Android based. Below the screen, you have your array of usual Android-action buttons: home, menu, back and search. Below that, you have the rest of the surface area dedicated to the keyboard in a BlackBerry-esque fashion.

There is a 2 megapixel camera, which is quite lackluster even coming from the Optimus V, but it has an LED flash which usually, only the higher end phones have. The 512 MB of memory is great, but what’s going to end up using it on a screen that small? In another respect, it’s identical to the processor speed with respect to the Optimus V: 600 MHz. That’s not so great but amusing there isn’t too much crapware, it should suffice.

Clearly, this phone is aimed at those BlackBerry users looking for a little refresh in their lives. The keyboard orientation is perfect for that. The screen size is comparable to BlackBerrys, and of course, if you ever handle one while you’re used to touchscreens, you’ll end up touching it a lot with nothing happening – this phone solves the problem of being compelled to touch the screen.

If you’re coming from another Android phone on the Virgin Mobile line up baring the Intercept, you don’t really need to know this exists. If you’re on that horrible Intercept still, jump ship quickly, maybe to this Venture but preferably something more powerful like the Triumph or Optimus Slider.

If you’re on that Virgin Mobile BlackBerry, well, the BlackBerry or yore is not on the Virgin Mobile website anymore, so it is probably prime time for an upgrade.

Pay for what you use. No penalties. No waste.

Select you plans based on how many minutes, text messages and megabytes you think you will use. That’s what we bill you. Next month you will be credited or charged the difference based on your actual usage. Watch a video to see how it works.

These plans are no-contract, so it’s monthly. So for someone who makes very few calls, no data but sends 2000 texts a month, this would be a great deal as it’s only $17. You can click on the price points for the usages and it’ll show you the cost + surcharges (tax). Data is a little expensive, and the irony in this is that some phones sold via Ting are 4G so your data will drain even faster, if your battery doesn’t first. Honestly, my 3G usage isn’t ever above 500 and rarely above 200 megabytes per month. In fact, in the last 30 days, I have used about 30 megabytes. And I’m a heavy user.

But I think the bigger story here is in the actual handsets. These are top-tier phones. Obviously, you have to pay the price of a contract phone so these aren’t exactly cheap. The Motorola Photon, announced last year at the same time as the Triumph, is their crown jewel. The phone is great, it has a nice screen, well reviewed stability, half way decent UI (blur) and probably other goodies. Oh, and it’s fast. So it’s worth it, right? But is it worth $545? Up-front and on the spot? I couldn’t afford a coffee this morning and I will not be able to afford a ~$600 when it’s a year old. Few people buy iPhones at the unlocked price, and this isn’t even an iPhone, it’s just a Photon, and those are bombarding me right now through the Mechanical Engineering windows. Anyway, Ting has less expensive while still impressive phones as well. Excluding the Photon, there are two other 4G options that will range from $300-$400 depending on the screen size and processing power you’re after, or if you prefer HTC to Samsung. For a more reasonable price, you can forgo the 4G, cling to the outdated 3G and embrace your inner WiFi and prepare to wait with a 800 MHz processor in the Samsung Transform. It’s probably fast enough for normal people but I don’t think I could tolerate the speed on that device. And it’s so tiny. Ting has again copied the de-facto standard in low end models, that being the Optimus series, specifically the Sprint-branded Optimus S (lest it be a T, T for Ting, not another Mobile), which is mostly identical to the Optimus V, except more yellow. Finally, they have a $100 Sanyo for those who want Android but don’t want hair.

Ting is offering a couple feature phones that nobody wants and some data-access devices, and I surmise for a relatively good price.

At the bottom of the pages on the Ting website, it has a great disclaimer that I think will answer the question many people are probably asking: “Are you somehow owned by Sprint? Like those other guys?” And the answer would be, “Although Sprint provides access to its network, Ting is entirely responsible for the service.” Or, in short, no. That’s great. Because Sprint needs to compete with Virgin Mobile specifically. Boost is too gangster.

You can tell someone was thinking when they design the Ting website, because I can link to this directly. Let’s say you’re having a huge surge in phone usage one month, and then you stop using it so much. You’re billing is not insane, you’re not overcharged. Instead, you get to pay for more you used than your existing plan, and if you go under your existing plan usage, you can get credited that amount back. So you’re pay for what you used. (Except that $6 automatic fee for being on the service, presumably.) Revolutionary? I think not. Finally? Yes. I never use 500 minutes. I hardly use 100 minutes. It’s a pity there is no in-between to match up to Virgin Mobile’s talking time tier.

So, overall? I like the idea Ting is bringing to the pre-paid no-contract market. The site is full of quips that make me smile, “Paying for extra for tethering? That’s like charging for the soup spoon. We only charge for the soup.” And another good one is, “Select one of the very small computers below. (Most of these can also make phone calls.)” Things like that are very hard to come by in a corporate culture company. It’s refreshing. Don’t think it ends there either, how about their support number? 1-855-TING-FTW Oh yes, for the win, indeed. I want Virgin Mobile to evolve faster too, so perhaps this will encourage the growth I want to see. It’s the oddest thing to see Ting on the network that serves the competition though. Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

So, great job, Ting, on entering the market. I wish you well.

The Optimus Slider is a successor to the original Optimus V for right now (again, the Black is better). It caters to a different type of people though, I suppose. The keyboard will help people transition from regular phones to smartphones. The Android 2.3 system will also be a welcome feature considering its speed bonuses and improvements. In fact, I know a person in my family who probably couldn’t make the jump from a BlackBerry to Android without a physical keyboard. So this solves that issue.

I’ve read about a 600 Mhz processor and a 800 Mhz processor, and I’m leaning towards the latter. It’s been almost a year and a slight bump would be for the best. Save the keyboard and the speed bump and minor cosmetic changes, it might as well be identical to the Optimus V.

The Wildfire S is less appealing. Why release sliding phones together? It seems odd. It adds confusion, which is better?

In fact, looking at the specsheet straight from HTC’s glorious website, you can see it has a 600 Mhz processor which probably slower than a new phone should be. Further, and much more concerning, the lame 1230 mAh battery. My Optimus V has a ~1400 mAh battery and I can hardly get through the day without getting into the critical zone. I’m sure HTC Sense won’t improve battery life either.

I might have other ideas about this release in the middle of no where. Virgin Mobile pushed it’s throttling to next year. Perhaps they had this in the pipe ready to come out at the same time they were planning to begin throttling. What better way to appease the public than to release new stuff? Or maybe a major deal fell through and the reason for the throttling wasn’t needed right now. That’s my bet.

On page 14 of this week’s Target ad, 9/4 to 9/11, the Triumph is offered at $299.99 with a $50 Target gift card.

It’s not as good as other deals Target has run, but it’s decent. From the ad, it appears there is no initial activation catch like that of BestBuy. So that’s something at least. You could buy a phone and, get cake and ice cream to celebrate.

Expect more, pay less.

… the Optimus Black should be the CDMA version of the GSM phone with the NOVA display we saw at CES 2011 … The Optimus Black boasts a slimmer package with a 5-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front camera, and that famous NOVA display with its 700 nits of brightness.

– via CNET

Besides U.S. Cellular, it also appears that the Optimus Black is headed to Sprint, Alltel, and Virgin Mobile at some point. As previously mentioned, the Optimus Black for U.S. Cellular carries the model number “US855.” Several other LG versions of the 855 recently appeared in the FCC, although these products are known as the LS855 (Sprint), AS855 (Alltel), and VM855 (Virgin Mobile).

– via PhoneDog

I don’t really know much about the Optimus Black (OB). The screen is physically smaller than the Triumph but with the same resolution. This should mean that the pixel density is higher and closer to matching that retina display quality. The battery is rated at 1500 mAh which is the same as the Optimus V and probably better than the Triumph. The processor details are eluding me right now but I’m sure they’re right in line with what it needs to be for the time it’s released. The kicker of course will the initial price point because as many people have noted, the Triumph is awesome but too expensive for what it offers despite being prepaid. The full specs match well with the Triumph but are offered in a different way.

We’ll see.

Sadly, it appears that this deal does not extend to current customers. That’s indeed a pity but you can see why Best Buy is offering $50 off – $300 is steep and with the new plans, it’s almost two months of service converted from the phone price.

I trust the build quality of the MacBook Air and besides, if something did go wrong with it, I could fix it easily with Apple Care. The problem is the MacBook Air costs four times more than the phone, nearly $1500. My intention is to get the MacBook Air 13” with the 128GB SSD, so the $1299 model. The price will remain the same over time.

The Motorola Triumph is much cheaper at only $300 but the build quality is questionable and there aren’t enough reviews to sway me in favor of an unknown product. Since it’s cheaper, I could buy it right now, but I’ve had problems with dusty phones before and I don’t need a repeat of that. On the other hand, I do have a couple of trade-in Rumor Touch phones and a 10% discount. Eventually, the phones will almost have no value for trade-in and the discount will expire as well.

I thought this poll might help me decide which to buy first.

After much deliberation and in conjunction with the poll results, I will be buying the MacBook Air first.

Note: I estimated all of these numbers via Best Buy’s web calculator and with the default options; none of the options were altered.

The old LG Rumor Touch can still take the bite of tax off in most areas coming in at an estimated $36.

Gift Card Value: $36.00
Mail Check Value: $24.00

The iky Intercept is still work something after; the trade-in value of $53 – certainly that will pay for a huge chunk.

Gift Card Value: $53.00
Mail Check Value: $35.00

The good ol’ BlackBerry 8530 isn’t too bad either, coming in at just over $60.

Gift Card Value: $63.00
Mail Check Value: $41.00

Finally, although you may not want to part with your precious LG Optimus V, it might just be worth it. Coming in at a value of nearly $70, it’s a huge chunk of that initial Triumph investment.

Gift Card Value: $72.00
Mail Check Value: $47.00

You should be able to trade in your old phone at Best Buy in person, get your card and then promptly turn around and buy an awesome phone. I would lower every estimated price by just 10% or so and keep in mind that I changed no settings in the calculator. You should really try it for yourself.

Happy trading!