So. I got a new phone. But...

I wanted to go to Costco to get a new phone because they have the best deals but not always the best choices in phones. I opted for the Ballistic Nylon 32gb Droid Turbo.  It comes in red or black metallic Kevlar and a Ballistic Nylon 64gb version but none of these are available at Costco.  My other choices were the Samsung Galaxys5 or Note4.  Initially I wanted the LGG3 but since it's Costco they stopped carrying it a week before I got there.  The Note4 was tempting but I really don't care for Samsung's Touchwiz user interface.

I've had the Turbo for just over a week. It's a beast on paper. The specs are out of control. The turbo charging and battery life are the best I've ever seen. Many of the Moto features built into this phone are really cool too but overall, this phone is not all that spectacular. First of all, and this is kind of nitpicky but,  I can't stand the ballistic nylon backing.  It catches on lint in my pocket and it's fraying around the edges. It feels weird on my fingers too. I can feel the fabric catching my dry rough fingertips. I know a case can fix this but it's a problem not mentioned much in the reviews of this phone.  It's been only days, I can't imagine how it would hold up after 2 years.

 I'm coming from a two year old Droid RazrM  and since the Turbo is essentially the same Motorola/KitKat operating system and user interface it's just like a bigger, more stable version of my old phone but with incredible battery life.  There's nothing necessarily wrong with this but I was hoping for the newest version of Android, Lollipop to have been updated on this already.  It's also kind of a bummer that since the Turbo doesn't have an SD memory card slot,  I couldn't just put my old SD card in and have all my stuff. I find that I'm worried about filling the internal 32gb with music and pictures. Also I've noticed the screen is really dim and hard to see in bright daylight outside. The camera is clearly better than I've had before but I don't really have an opinion on it since I'm not printing out hi-res photography or anything. So It's got me considering the Note4. It's on par specs wise and is the next best thing Costco has to offer.

But the rub is, as I mentioned before I hate hate hate hate hate Touchwiz. Thankfully I run Nova Prime Launcher on everything and it will virtually get rid of Touchwiz.  I also hate the buttons on Samsung. It's like Touchwiz is part of the fucking hardware. Thanks guys. This you cannot fix. Despite these downfalls, I think for what I use my phone for I might bite the bullet and trade in the Turbo for The note4.

Turbo
Pros: 
Battery/Turbo Charge (Note4 has similar tech)
Active Display
Moto Voice Control
Front Speaker

Cons:
Crappy Ballistic Nylon quality/feel
No SD card
As of mid/late Feb 2015 no sign of Lollipop.
No onscreen nav buttons
Bad screen brightness
No Lollipop

Note4

Pros:
Quick Charge/Battery
S-Pen
Multi Window/Multitasking
Screen brightness
SD card
Giant screen
Samsung has loaded this with a ton of stuff which I may find useful

Cons:
Being lumped in with mindless samsung sheeple.
Touchwiz
Physical nav buttons
Iffy rear speaker
Back and recent apps buttons switched
Still no lollipop
Giant screen
Samsung has loaded this with a ton of stuff which will probably be useless to me and take up space.


I'm going to go take a closer look at the Note4 today and weigh my hatred of samsung against the features it offers me. Anyone with either phone feel free to chime in on your experiences.

#firstworldproblems