Google Pixel then eh? 4th October announcement. I know nothing about it. May be I should Google it.

Further to HTC10, same size as z3, hard to tell if it's lighter, as my z3 has a case and a tempered glass cover, but I still think it's lighter.

back, Home, Recent buttons are off screen though, so a touch more screen visible. 

Seems to be a noticible bump in sound quality and pure volume too, when it comes to music playback.

Also, massive credit for at no stage during set up forcing a single HTC app or anything on me. As vanilla as, and I simply transferred my last phone back up and last nova launcher back up and was 95% set up. 

obviously had to re login to a lot of apps, but outside of the physical time it took to download apps, I reckon everything took less than 30 minutes.

32g storage out of the box too.

So far, so good.

Facewon wrote:

Also, massive credit for at no stage during set up forcing a single HTC app or anything on me.  As vanilla as [...]

Quick look on Google image search suggests it's more that they've just integrated their shit better, rather than using all stock apps. Still, that's a massive improvement on the crap they used to do.

Bloatware probably.

I like Samsung. If they made a top end phone with a removable battery I'd probably buy it.

My gripes are based on my 2 years with an s3. So take them with a grain of salt given we're up to s7.

My smartphone history: htc desire, s3, z3, htc 10.

Loved the desire. Lasted most of 2 year contract, and was fine as home streaming/Bluetooth music player for another 18 months.

S3: bloatware out the wazoo. Took me a month to set it up and find third party apps to do what I want. From keyboard on down. Battery life was average at first and got worse. Only third party options helped. And for the last 8-12 months of a 2 year contract it just ran like fucking turd.

Z3: battery life is a+. Far less bloatware. Ran nearly everything how I wanted it straight up.

(in fairness, part of this will be my experience with andriod and knowing what I could just export and save etc.)

Z3, apart from touch screen not working any time I got any cracks (screen protector solved this) is still running like a boss.

It just works. Always.

HTC 10: so far, so good. Great transfer process, and everything is working like z3. Seems faster, better camera and better sound. Battery TBA.

S3 experience so bad I have vowed never Samsung on phones.

(I have gone Samsung TV twice. And they've been fine for the price.)

All reviews of the s7 I've seen so far have been pretty positive, not many complaints regarding bloatware. My Z3c has had a fair bit of slowdown and weird issues, culminating in the camera and OS button failures (I did a full firmware reset/repair (twice) which fixed the bottom row buttons for all of five minutes before they stopped working again, I think it's related to the camera being broken). And the bloatware stuff is rather annoying too.

I think these sort of issues are very much 'YMMV' in nature..

Only concern I can see atm about the S7 is the apparently quiet headphone output level, as long as it's not worse than the Z3c I don't care though.

GurtTractor wrote:

I think these sort of issues are very much 'YMMV' in nature..

.

I don't know what that means, but still feel like it's accurate somehow.

As well as numbers, it's got extra buttons

a. Weird noughts and crosses grid, '#', I guess it's to play noughts and crosses when you're bored on hold to a big firm

b. Some star thing ,'*', I guess it's to call famous people, I imagine most use it to phone Gary Lineker and tell him he shit himself 20 years back

Facewon wrote:

I think these sort of issues are very much 'YMMV' in nature..

.

I don't know what that means, but still feel like it's accurate somehow.

Haha, yeah I was a bit overtired when I posted that, it doesn't make sense but I think you can get what I mean. Your Z3 experience was stellar whereas mine was less-than. I have really enjoyed the Sony over the last two years but sadly it has let me down.

I think I'm pretty set on the S7 atm, seems to do everything pretty well and isn't humongous. Wish there were more water resistant options though.

But yes, very good point.

Hmmmmmmm. Not sold on this htc battery life. Doesn't have a stamina mode, or at least one that works at any battery %. Juice defender used to be my go to third party app, doesn't look like it's been updated since 2013 though.

Suggestions?

Not too hardcore, just says everything is already optimised. Trying the boost thing. Htc thing apparently designed for games. Let's you add pretty much anything though, so we'll see.

I assume it just does what other power saver options do, but it doesn't force a battery percentage before it kicks in. So you have a fully charged phone, and stamina is already on, it just shuts shit down when idle. Cocko, please confirm.

Yeah, vanilla Marshmallow included a feature very similar to Sony's stamina mode, and that does seem to have screwed with Stamina. I think it now only kicks in at 30% and 15%, whereas before if I knew I was away from a charger I'd turn it on whenever. All it really does is stop background functions from your apps, so unless it's on the screen it's not doing anything, which means that it runs a bit slower when you switch between tasks, but that's a fair tradeoff imo

Just a shame that with Marshmallow, Google have tightened up a fair few things including preventing Stamina Mode from stopping apps running

Not really sure that it's in Sony's hands. Google also pinned down a minimum graphics capability fro Marshmallow, which is why the z1 cannot be upgraded to Marshmallow, despite being more than capable of running it, just won't run some of the games that are available for it