New hardware

My Nexus 7 arrived a couple nights ago. The battery life on this thing is great. I gave it a full charge the first night. Then yesterday I watched about 45 minutes of a movie on it, played some games and did some web surfing. I never put it on the charger yesterday, but it was plugged into my computer for a few minutes while I transferred some movies. It says it has been on battery for over 25 hours, and it still has 17% remaining. So I'm very impressed.

But unfortunately it has not improved my VOIP performance very much. There is a setting for the microphone volume in GrooVe IP that somehow I never noticed before. I turned it up on both my Droid Bionic and my N7, and that helps a lot. But wherever I have tried both devices, the performance is the same. I did not get a chance to try it on my friend's Comcast internet yesterday, but here at the office today I only have a 3G connection on my Overdrive Pro, and only a 60% signal at that, and both devices work fine. The sound quality is excellent, with only a slight delay. The delay is comparable to what I usually expect from a cell phone.

Yesterday I was trying them both from my car because I wanted to see how the Bluetooth was working. I believe I was connected to my home WiFi at the time because I was still in my garage. They both worked pretty poorly. I probably need to turn up the volume for the Bluetooth microphone on both devices, because there is a separate setting for that.

I was hoping this new Nexus 7, which is a lot more powerful than my Bionic, would solve all the problems I've had. Unfortunately this does not appear to be the case, because both devices are performing the same as far as VOIP is concerned. It looks like I am going to have to go back to getting a real phone again. Admitting defeat is not an easy thing to do, but I have to be practical and realistic. I'm getting lonely without a phone. I could get a better mobile hotspot, but the service would cost me almost as much a normal cell phone plan. I would also prefer to wait and see what the next generation of phones will bring, but I probably will need to get a phone some time this month.

So now the next question is do I want an HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4, or Galaxy Note 2? Decisions, decision. I'm leaning toward the GS4, but it will all depend on what deals are available for each of them. And if there are any trade-in deals available, it would be nice to get rid of my Bionic that way.