*Incoming wall of text. First half will be a rant. Second half will be talking about new device and carrier*
I hate Verizon.
That pretty much embodies everything about this post. When I first joined the cell phone world back in 2003, I was on Voicestream. I liked them. Then they were bought by T-Mobile. I had no problem with them. Then I met a woman who I became very serious with (and would eventually become my wife) and wanted to talk to me as much as possible via phone without using minutes, so she convinced me to switch to Verizon. Ultimately, I was put on a 700 minute plan (verizon to verizon doesn't use minutes), 250 texts, and unlimited data.
It wasn't until I got a smart phone as well as a job that requires me to utilize my phone more (both data and minutes) where I began to dislike them. Verizon reeeeeeally hated me being on a grandfathered unlimited plan. They tried extremely hard to get me to sign a new contract any chance they could to get me off that plan. Even to the point of trying to re-neg on an offered deal my wife had with the S3 (get it at a certain timeframe, no contract re-signing) and with us verbally fighting them (along with another pissed off S3 owner next to us). On top of all this, their coverage in my area sucks. And I live and work in the greater Salt Lake area.
Most of my data comes from streaming music via google play. And I can't do that on my drive to and from work (on major highways and streets), because it's all full of 3G holes, and Verizon treats their 3G like a redheaded stepson. I would get 0.2 Mbps, if I was lucky. My wife was no different. She couldn't even connect to the internet on her lunchbreaks at her work. She began conspiracy theorying that her place must have some sort of faraday cage cell phone blocker around the building.
I got the Galaxy Nexus, and was super excited about a Nexus phone coming to Verizon. I wanted a phone that was the "pure Android experience" since Nexus phones do not come with bloatware. They get immediate updates from Google. Well, almost. Verizon still forced two of their apps on the device, but you could at least disable them yourself (but you the customer had to do it manually). The "immediate updates" part never happened. It took my phone 6 months after the release of 4.2 to get updated to that. And I believe it's still waiting on 4.3. Why? Because Verizon has a bunch of red tape and testing it wanted to do for their own CDMA/LTE network and only when Verizon themselves gave the thumbs up, then the software was released. They could cockblock future versions indefinitely if they so wanted to (and it seems like they do).
When the Nexus 4 came out about a year ago, the first thing that was mentioned was that it was not going to be coming out on Verizon. I was not surprised at this at all. I think Verizon pisssed Google off (in fact, I know they did, because Google made available one release for the GNex when they got tired of waiting for Verizon to make it available). I was already pissed off in general, so I began looking to the GSM networks that the Nexus 4 worked on. Nexus 4 wasn't 4G compatible, but 3G isn't terrible... unless your'e Verizon. Some networks can get upwards of 40 Mbps+ on optimized 3G. And for me, as long as I could stream HQ music in my car to and from work, super blazing speeds weren't necessary.
T-Mobile is the one that I felt was going to be the one I was going to jump ship to. I liked their unlimited talk, text, and data. But I just had to wait until both mine and my wife's contracts were up. Mine was up last August. My wife's wasn't up until this coming July. Then the Nexus 5 came out. 4G compatible. Oooh. Shiny. But damn it, still on contract and I didn't want to pay any contract termination fees.
Then T-Mobile recently offered to pay your termination fees if you switched over to them and got new phones. I was already planning on switching. I was already planning on getting a new phone with them (which you'd have to, coming from a CDMA carrier).
Sold.
I have never seen so many angry Verizon customers in one place, outside of that T-Mobile store. It was a brilliant marketing move and one that was obviously working for them. Now, owners of a Nexus 5 and a Samsung S4, here we are on the new network.
What's the difference, in terms of data usage? Well, I get nothing but 10 - 22+ Mbps on my whole drive to and from work. More than plenty for music. Hell, more than plenty for movies. No more 30 second bufferings every 3 seconds. My wife and her faraday caged work? She sent me a pic of a speedtest she ran from her break room: 20 Mbps.
Those two things along were worth the switch. But I am also very happy with my new hardware.
Ahhhh. Pure Android! How I've wanted you, outside of rooting and ROMing. And the speed on this sucker is mind blowing. I have a hard time slowing it down, even when purposefully trying to do so. Apps open exactly when you want. Switching to other apps is instant. I rarely had the desire to ever look up something on the Web when I owned the GNex on Verizon, because it was just so painfully slow (even when on a wireless network). Now I find myself working hard to retrain my brain, and look up stuff all the time.
I even began wanting to play around with the newer Android features. The first thing I did was decide to take a "before" picture of my baby room before completing the painting. But I decided to do it a little differently. It's not perfect, but not bad for a first try. I hope to have a better one on completion. (And if you're wondering, it's going to be a girl's room and the wall color is the upper-right one of the choices you see on the wall, which we'll accent with pink here and there).
The battery life isn't as great as some other devices out there, but I installed an app called BatteryGuru for Snapdragon CPUs and between and enabling ART, my battery is doing much better. I'm sitting at a 70% charge with 7h48m on my battery, and 1h25 minutes of screen time.
But, battery isn't what I wanted out of a phone. I wanted a Nexus, and I got it. So I'm quite happy. I'm quite happy with my new carrier.
Verizon, you tried so very hard to push me off of your unlimited data plan. Well, I guess you eventually got what you wanted.
TLDR: Verizon can suck my ***. T-Mobile is great (for me and my wfe). Nexus 5 is awesome.
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Ive had Sprint for 10+ years and never had a problem with them except for about 6 months they were REALLY pushy with trying to sell me an extra line...
