I don't usually spend 630 bucks on a phone, but I just got mine for full retail yesterday. I was bored the night before and posted my blunderbolt for sale on craigslist. Literally the next day, I had an offer for 350 with all the stuff I had with it. I met him sold it for cash and went straight to the big red store next door. I used to be a Sense fan...
Well no longer. I cannot believe the poor finish I had to put with on the thunderbolt. Crap reception, crap signal period, crap battery life(with the extended too), lag, messages being sent to the wrong person out of nowhere from my phone, more lag, random losses of data, dropped calls out the as*. It wasnt the worst phone I ever had, but it was close.
The bionic is almost perfect. The pentile screen is not "pixelated" or at least that is not what I would call it. It is very fine, almost so fine its cartoonish. The screen under bright sunlight is hands down better than the blunderbolt. Battery life on my binonic is sadly enough 90% of what the thunderbolt with an extended battery was - yes it is that much better. It is light, slim, the camera takes FANTASTIC pictures - it also zooms in on pics closer too and the flash is 2x as bright, it is more stable, the reception is WAY BETTER THAN THE THUNDERBOLT, and most important, the UI is much lighter than Sense.
I do miss the app scroller, and nice widgets of sense but overall MOTO's UI is just... less - as in less intrusive, and way easier on memory. It is a little clunkier, and not quite as intuitive, but the sacrifice is worth it for the sake of stablility and speed.
I am extremely impressed with my new bionic. I should have just got a moto phone when I switched to verizon in the spring. If the PHONE part of a smartphone is the most important to you(aka reception, signal strength, retention, battery life) are the most important to you kick any doubts aside. I dont care if the next HTC device on big red has a quad core processor, 2 gigs of ram and a 1080p SLCD... This is a phone. Yes, I want a 5" moto phone, but its just not gonna happen anytime soon - but seriously it gets better reception than ANY smartphone I have owned.
It is quick, stable, reliable, and lightweight(and I just put a ext batt on it too). Until I see a 5" successor to this, I am saving my coveted upgrade. Making the switch from HTC was the best(if not the most expensive) phone purchase Ive made all year, and I dont regret it.
Metal construction, the best quality control and radio tech in the industry combined with dual core OMAP and 1gig of ram and LTE make this the phone to have until its successor comes out.