Second impressions are rarely as good as the first impression. Neither is this one.
As a phone, this Android phone sounds good. As everything else, it’s frustrating to use. Reasons: short battery life, user-hostile touchscreen interface, confusing windowing, LCD washes out in sunlight.
Yesterday I thought that I’d listen to an interview with an astronomer while I walked a couple of miles, so I logged unto Michio Kaku’s Explorations in Science link on tunein.com, got the MP3 stream going, and stuck the phone in my pocket. Things went fine for a few minutes, until the audio stopped. I examined the phone (carefully trying to avoid pressing on the case, which is a good trick) and discovered that the screen had blanked. I unblanked the screen, and suddenly the Android browser decided that I’d like to see the latest trash news, so I got a page full of Brad and Angelina nonsense. Then I tried to return to Michio Kaku’s page, and when I did, I was forced to restart the entire interview. I did, and maybe five minutes later, it halted again. It went downhill from there.
I suspect that some of this misbehavior is caused by the crapware that T-Mobile has installed on this phone. My next step is to gain root access to the phone, delete the crapware, install Dropbox and Keepass on it, and give it another try.
Russ' space 
I’m not wild about my iPhone 4S either, more hype than excellence. However, it’s OK and I’ll live with it a while.
Try some apps — they make the user experience a little better. I searched for “50 Best Apps” or whatever. I don’t use most, but a few are good. The ones I’ve used don’t have much in the way of advertising — that’s a problem for all these companies, they can’t figure out how to make money on mobil apps. Facebook hasn’t got it figured out yet either, and they’ve been pretty good at making $$ off their site otherwise.
To save on battery life, there are some apps but also look at turning off some built-in apps and GPS etc. to meet your needs. You probably will be happier after rooting. Good luck!
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Thanks for the ideas. I just installed IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase), Tunein, Wikipedia, and WordPress apps.
I had resisted installing apps because their Raison d’être is to display ads, and the LCD on this phone has precious little real estate to waste. I also dislike the fact that Google is tracking my app usage.
I’ve read that Facebook et al were accustomed to first displaying two ads on a standard web page, then they bumped it up to six or eight. They can’t do that with smartphone apps.
We’ll see how these four apps behave. The Tunein app is much nicer than the web interface: I’m listening to an older interview about black holes with Michio Kaku. For most podcasts, it presents me with a large choice of podcast dates — something that their web interface doesn’t do. Anything will be an improvement over trying to use Tunein.com’s web interface on this phone!
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I should add that I only got the best FREE apps! Weather, GPSPlus, MapMyRide, OperaMini, LoseIt, Shopping, Amazon, AmazonPriceCheck, MapMyHike, MapMyWalk, DropBox, Altimeter, SpringPad Kindle, PhotoFind, GoogleEarth, FindIPhone, ShopSavvy, BBCNews, GateGuru, OpenTable, PBS, MyFitnessPal, AppShopper — I’ve got a lot more but only used a few so far. Most of these should be available for your phone also.
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oh yeah, get whatever the Android equivalent is for Siri! There’s supposed to be two decent ones. Great for using with the Bluetooth car radio — “Call Russ” and it asks which number and does it! Hands free, no need to look, safer! and legal!
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