Thanks, looks good.

Can anyone recommend an affordable-but-still-high-end replacement for a 2013 Verizon Droid Maxx?

Just lost mine (don't know how I became that guy), not eligible for an upgrade with Verizon until December 2015, and would like to replace it in the next week or two. I still have a work iPhone 5s and a Nexus 7 tablet, so I can afford to wait a bit for it if needed. Really will only be using this on nights and weekends. Have a family plan, so wouldn't really benefit from getting out of my contract (if that's possible).

Ideally I'd like to not give up any of the features or functionality I had with the droid, but willing to be flexible within reason. I was leaning towards getting a used version of the exact same thing on eBay for $200, but thought you guys might have some advice for a better phone or a better price.

Thanks!

lg g3 off contract is ok in france 350€ that mean usually 350$ in usa

Meh, I'm not sure I want to pay that much (especially for a used phone), although I did see that the G3 was one of the best android phones.

If I want to spend $200, is the droid maxx via ebay the way to go?

I ended up getting the Shield tablet. I love the form factor, though just like the Nexus 7 the volume buttons are kind of a pain to use. The front facing speakers are awesome and much better than the 7. The stylus is nice, but probably not something I'll end up using much.. the EverNote software that comes with it doesn't make taking handwritten notes very efficient, and I'm too lazy to look around for something that does. I can't really tell any difference between the screen of the two, both are excellent. I've only tried a few games, and they seem to run a bit better than they did on the 7, and a $3 usb->micro usb adapter I got lets me plug my 360 controller in with no hassle. Browsing also seems to be noticeably faster in Chrome, with media heavy pages loading a lot faster. The cameras seem a lot better than the 7, though I've read that's mostly a result of the Nexus having ****ty software.

My big complaint is the game streaming. I can't get the GameStream software to recognize my PC connected on the same wifi network, even though GeForce Experience says my PC is GameStream ready. There isn't a lot of stuff out there on this, but a forum thread on the geforce site had a lot of people in a similar situation, some of whom had solved it by downgrading their Shield firmware to an older version. nvidia seems to only be focusing on a few approved routers, and not offering any support for others, so it's probably a case of limited development resources for testing and developing for a wider range.

I'd still recommend it to people looking for an upgrade to the Nexus 7 but don't want to shell out the extra money for the new 9. The Shield is faster than the 7, has a larger screen, better speakers, a micro-usb slot, and a stylus. Hopefully they can sort out the GameStream thing and continue to keep up with fast system updates.

I guess. There aren't many options for highish end, off contact for less than $500; especially for Verizon. Maybe the original Moto X or LG G2.

There should be a keyboard and text editor combo that allows you to press a button and swipe your finger over an area of text to select it all, and then an automatic on-screen menu should appear with standard options like copy, paste, delete. Is there?

Using Hacker's Keyboard and TED text editor accomplishing the above is awkward.

It seems I can't have 2 text files open at once. Bizarre.

Is there an app to randomly mix up the keypad for unlocking the screen?

Android basically has this functionality built in. Just long press the first word and move the blue highlight cursor to select the rest.

Thank you so much. I did try but couldn't get it to work but after your reply I'm getting the hang of it and see the short cuts above.

My first phone so thanks for the help.

edit: wow, I see the problem was I was trying to work with a large text file and it was laggy as heck. working in a small text file it's very responsive.(using TED text editor)

£60 off Moto X on UK moto maker of anyone's thinking about one.

Does anyone have a firm opinion on Touchwiz? It's really all I know (GS3) and it seems like really the only compelling reason to go Nexus 6 > Note 4 right now is that people hate Touchwiz.

I don't know what there is to hate. I don't even know what's touchwiz and what's android though tbh. From what I've heard, it's not as in your face as it used to be?

Unrelated question: if I root, can I get rid of the ****ing annoying "don't listen to music too loudly or you're gonna die!" message that Android thinks I need to see every day when I blast my music at the gym?

I expect the note 4 to be significantly cheaper at christmas and in the following months than the nexus 6. while nexus 6 price is unlikely to drop.
When i had a samsung device i used to flash often and tbh not having touchwiz was not that great since samsung allways have some cool feature you dont have with pure android. I would rather have touchwiz and the option to remove it if i want instead of not beeing able to have it at all.
People complaining about touchwiz are in my opinion judging touchwiz with memory of older version when it was way worse than it became
So i guess you didnt save your S3 ?

Haha, well I've been looking for a new phone anyway, but short answer no... basically I took it to the VZW store and they said 99% of the time charging issues are software related, and I uhhhh definitely tried to force CM on this thing a while ago before I realized Verizon locked down the boot loader with their most recent updates. And that's when my phone started getting funky. So live and learn I guess. (And no, can't connect it to a PC to try Odin). I was going to cash in the warranty but pretty sure that's once or twice a year and I'm not gonna waste it on a GS3 since I plan to upgrade anyway.

So for now I bought an extra battery and an external battery charger and I just swap em out once or twice a day as an extremely temporary bridge until I can find a new phone.

And yea this makes sense, I was reading some Note 4 vs N6 stuff and a lot of N6 people said that Touchwiz was laggy and bloated and the N6 would run faster, but every review I've seen of the Note 4 says it's an incredible phone and Touchwiz doesn't suck at all. I don't care really about getting updates slower, I can live without L for a few months. I guess battery life is TBD but the specs seem almost identical and the Note 4 has a slightly better camera, S Pen, fingerprint, removable battery, expandable storage, more compact, cheaper, etc.

Which makes me think I'm missing something about the N6?

Touchwiz is laggy IMO. It may not be when you first get your device but over time it lags noticeably in my experience. I've got the nexus 5 but my mom has the s5 and the lag drives me crazy.

People who say you can get rid of touch wiz usually don't realize either a) changing to nova launcher isn't the same thing as getting rid of touch wiz, or b) aosp ROMs never run that great on Samsung phones.

Nexus development community is always better than Samsung IMO. That, and the front facing speakers are my deciding factors for going for the nexus 6.

I m pretty sure phones that sell a ton get a huge development community and it s non issue, samsung phone have a tons of roms and options allways.

Rooting to replace touchwhiz is not always possible. After a certain note 2 vzw update last December it became unrootable. (towelroot didn't work)

Vanilla android is still copying touchwiz features, in many ways lollipop is the rest of android catching up to some of the Samsung ideas that didn't flop. Not that I think this is bad at all.

A future release will include multiscreen functionality (it's at early testing level) and if the n6 doesn't have the one handed screen gesture function, where you quickly swipe into the middle and back off the screen to shrink the screen by about 20%, it will do eventually.

The only decent arguments against touchwiz is it's pretty ugly still and some things like quick settings and the toggle bar in the notification shade (both Samsung ideas that Google took) should have more user control.

yes, you can disable the volume warning with xposed framework

NOW WHO'S JUDGING

Sweet. I might do it just for that. But also some other annoying crap I'd like to nix.

Lel. I bow to you, my good man.

I have not searched... but does anyone that has a LG G3 have the annoying issue of the phone resetting to factory spec's/layout after a firmware update?

Mine has done this several times already and while I do not loose any applications or information, I have to go back and set up the phone to my personal liking again. It also has the added annoyance of load factory bloatware AGAIN!

So pissed off...

I don't even know what you mean by firmware update, from your provider? I'm on AT&T, have no idea how many carrier updates have come out, but have zero issues. I'm rooted and xPosed.