At first it seems really awesome, until you find out a lot of apps ...
593904
This phone is a bit frustrating. I've had it for five or so months. At first it seems really awesome, until you find out a lot of apps aren't supported for windows phones. This phone also has the nasty tendency to duplicate media files ten or so times, making you have to scroll through a bunch of the same photo/song/video/etc to find what you are looking for, and if you try to delete the duplicates you also lose the original!

That being said, the customization is nice, and I like the overall size and feel of the phone, so I will probably stick with it for a while longer.
4025883
There is a lot of good and a lot of bad to this device. I don't have time to list them all, so I'll try to hit the highlights.

On the good side, the GPS works well, and the live traffic through your cell phone is far better than the old style with the antenna in the power cable.

On the bad side, where do I begin? First, to enter your destination, you have to select Near Me of Whole Map. Well, how near is Near Me? I still haven't figured that out, and if you select the wrong one, you waste a full minute before you realize it. Second, entering the address the way you write it (number, street, city, state) sounds practical, but is very time consuming. The old way in reverse worked FAR better. And the old way recognized your state and gave you options you city options you used in the past, recognized cities and gave street options, recognized streets and gave you the street numbers you used in the past. This was extremely quick. The new method requires typing in almost the entire address before it recognizes anything. And now, about 30-40% of the time, the new software wants a different city name than the actual address. It often expects you to enter a city name that is some obscure name that does not appear an any map--paper or digital. So the new software for entering addresses is an enormous fail.

The live traffic requires a smart phone connection. It is never clear whether you are connected or not until you tap several commands on your phone, which is even further time consuming (and dangerous if you're already driving). And I believe that it uses far more data than they sat, though I can't prove that. TomTom has now come up with some additional feature where my phone demands that I sign in to my TomTom account while I am driving--very dangerous and user-hostile on multiple levels. This new feature title implies that you can enter destinations off-line ahead of time and use addresses already in your phone, which would be really useful, but I'll never know because it only offers it to me while I am driving.

Free lifetime maps is a great thing, but this, too, comes with problems. First, you have to get all of North America. I will never drive in Mexico and probably not in Canada, but they are in my GPS taking up lots of valuable memory. I only have 32 GB free, and if I remember correctly, the capacity is around 600 GB. Before the update I did today it had somewhere around 80 GB free, so I expect the next update to max out the memory. I don't know how it will deal with that. Will it explode? Finally, connecting it for the map updates is very problematic. Today I had to call TomTom support. The first guy knew the product well but couldn't help me and the phone connection cut off. Hmm... I called back and the second guy was more knowledgeable. THIS DEVICE IS INCOMPATINLE WITH MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO. I loaded the software onto a different computer, and three hours later I had my update installed. The acknowledge that their map update system is very inefficient.

I bought this device because my last two TomToms were great before they eventually bit the dust. If I lost this Go500  device tomorrow, there is no way I would buy another.
2213126
Let me start off by saying that this is a great tablet. It was very responsive, good size and weight. I had it set up and hooked up to my wifi network within 5 minutes, so that was a major plus. But you have to buy a specific case for it, since it does have odd dimensions for a 9inch tablet, I could have overlooked that, if that was the only issue. Anyway, it doesn't use Google play, I was willing to look past that, but the app. store that is on it is full of adult oriented apps, and the koran, and arabic. There was also the problem with it being recognized as am ipad, but not compatable with anything, even if what you are looking for is under android. On top of that, google play and amazon.com wasn't really compatable with the device. Luckily, I bought mine from Bestbuy and was able to take it back and get another that was more of what I needed. If you don't mind the app store it uses, and use a few of the widgets it has on it, it really is a great device. I would have kept it had it not been for the few issues that I had.
1709085
Got no idea if this is the system but I have to re-authorize the app to download every single time the new numbers; so, instead of download "automagically" i have to go find the mail with the order, find the "subscriber number" [or code or even the address] and enter that data...

The content is cool (no more than the print edition) but the "all access" really dissapointed me in a big big way
4809527
First the good: When .... and when it works its actually a pretty cool product. Walking up to the door with my hands full and being able to hear the sound of it unlocking automatically is pretty cool. When ..... and when the August connect actually works its pretty cool that I can unlock the door remotely.

Its very easy to install and by no means am I a great handy man, but this is a pretty easy product to install, just need a screw driver and a about 10 minutes.

The bad: First, it hardly ever works 100% of the time, which is something you really want from a product that controls access to your door. The geo fencing to auto unlock is still really buggy. The August connect, which allows you to connect the August lock to your wifi is really glitchy.

Really what it comes down to is, if you have one door that you want to put this lock on, it will probably be okay and you most likely get rid of it in a few months. If you have more then one door or if you have more then one person living in the house that might have the app, well get ready for lots of headaches.

I'll Explain:
The August lock works off of blue tooth, so if a couple walks up to the house, both of which that have the app installed on their phone, well you won't know which phone won the blue tooth pairing until you both have to open the app and unlock the door. Same principle, if you have two front doors, maybe you have a security door and a front door, both of which have the August lock, well same thing, the phone that controls the app will only be able to connect to one of those locks. At this point, auto unlock won't totally and who knows which lock your phone will pick up first, then from there its just a battle of trying to disconnect the one lock so you can get to the other lock to unlock that one first.

I'm really shocked the product mangers when developing this application and device didn't think about having more then one person or more then one lock and the headaches that it would cause.
1211534
I really liked it at first, but the more I use it, the more problems I run into.  A bunch of apps updated last week and apparently removed their icons from the menu screens where I'd placed them.  Had to add them all back manually.  This week the voicemail app updated and lost all its settings - when someone called and it went to voicemail, they got a message that voicemail hadn't been set up yet and couldn't leave any messages.

UPDATE: turns out it's apparently the OS on the phone updating that causes these issues.  It updated again this morning and once again, a number of icons are missing from my menu screens.  Is this really the best you guys can do?

Guess you really do get what you pay for.  If I had it to do over again, I'd pay a little more for something with fewer issues.  My old Nokia Lumia running Windows Phone was far superior to this thing.  Of course, it cost a lot more than this did, but I'd gladly pay for a better device.

6 month verdict - this phone is really a lemon.  It won't connect to any of my Bluetooth speakers.  It can see there's something happening because the little Bluetooth icon appears, but it can't find any devices.  I know it's not my speakers because they work fine with my Echo Dots and other sources.  There's no way I'd buy this phone again.  I'm about ready to swear off Amazon-branded technology products - haven't been happy with Kindles lately either.
3476010
I really like it but there are some apps that I can't get on it. I am hoping they will get them soon
3515495
I didn't know you could only use the apps already downloaded by the manufacturer. Make sure you do your research prior to purchasing.
3927464
In a nutshell, I love it.  The device is quick enough to show high end fast moving video with no artifacts.  The sound is excellent.  And soon as you are done, you can bring up a book or app - and it works great for them as well.  I use it for pleasure and work both.

Now the bad.  unfortunately no device is better than the software available for it.  And here, the device drops the ball.  The Camera app included, gives you no control over the resolution and other features - you have to obtain a third party app.  Many apps are also older versions of the Google Play store versions.  Though in it's defense, you can side load many from the google site, if you know how to do it.  Same with keys in many apps.

The device will also accept the Straight Talk tablet kit from Wal-Mart.  This gives you a reasonable cost way to use the 4G.  For those who do not know, the ST service, uses the ATT network, just like Tracfone.  So this device being ready for the ATT network makes it also work fine with the ST Sim.  Data just went from pricy to reasonable.
432878
The tablet itself and the case is great. And Amazon Free Time has been super fun. It's a bit harder to operate than our iPad was. The big problem is the storage! I got the 8G storage option, I didn't notice that almost half of this is taken up by the software. So in reality you have 4G of storage. We got it yesterday evening, and today the storage is already full. It's very frustrating. You can take the time to delete the apps to free up space, but as soon as the kids get into amazon free time and start downloading again you're going to have to start the storage process all over again. If you end up getting this, take it from me and pay for extra storage space. If there was a way to buy more storage I would be a lot happier.

On the plus side, I do really like the parental controls. If only the storage wasn't so frustrating!
391626
It is a great device, with one large problem. I got this with an SD card so I could have 64 GB of storage.  Well after down loading some of the apps I had on my other kindle (which was 16 GB), I was notified that I was low on storage memory!  I had only 3 GB of apps installed!  It turns out that many apps don't give you permission to be stored on the SD card.  Some do, and they work great.  Also when you go to the app store, there is no info that I could find of whether that app could be stored on an SD card or not. So you have to download it first, then go to storage and look it up.  Then if it can't, I erase it. Big disappointment!  All the apps should work on the SD card, and it should be written on the app store if the app can be on the SD card or not!
2803645
I purchased this back in the middle of December when it was selling for $249. Seemed like a deal that was too good to pass up with the fact that it had wi-fi web surfing, ran Android and was able to play just about every music/video format under the sun. I guess it was too good to be true.

Let's start with the positives: The device itself is pretty slick. It's basically an Android phone minus the phone part but with an added 500gb hard drive. You can even install the full Android Marketplace on it with a third party installer (marketplace4archos) and then have access to all the default Google apps like GoogleTalk and a YouTube player. The screen is really high quality and I've had no issues watching episodes of Sons of Anarchy or Burn Notice on it while traveling. The screen is also large enough to surf the web without eye-strain. The battery life is pretty good as well when used as an audio player. Got me through an entire work day on a single charge with maybe 30% left to spare.

Now the negatives. The Archos 5 is really buggy. The wifi antenna in the unit is awful. I've had it tell me that my home wireless network was "out of range" when I was sitting 6' from the router or only get 2 bars of connection strength when I was sitting right next to the router at my PC desk. My biggest gripe, and the one that's ruined my enjoyment of this device, is its penchant for hard locking at random.

I don't use the device while exercising and it spends 99% of its use time sitting on my desk at work playing either mp3s or files from the iTunes store. This means there's no hard drive jostle that could cause disk read skips. Yet the Archos 5 IT that I have tends to crash about every 1-2 hours of use and sometimes far more frequently. These crashes aren't forced reboots or just music player crashes. These crashes are 100% system hard locks that force me to hold the power button in for 15 seconds to shut down the unit and then manually reboot. It has also frozen randomly while playing videos as well.

So far I've tried the following in an attempt to fix the crashing:
1) Turning off screen timeout because the audio player crashes tended to happen not long after the screen timed out
2) Resetting the Archos 5 to default settings with the newest firmware
3) Rolling back the firmware to the version before the current one
4) Formatting the entire device and re-transferring all of my files.

None of the above worked. I'm still waiting on a reply from Archos to see if there's a known solution. From my quick research there isn't one and I'm far from the only person dealing with the endless crashing.

I wanted to like the device (see the Positives paragraph), but the low quality wifi antenna and the crashing make this an impossibility. If you get one without a defective hard drive (most likely the cause in mine), it's a great device and I'd end up giving it 4/5 stars. I, and many others, did not have that sort of luck. It's getting RMA'd tonight.

UPDATE 3/10
I've had the second Archos 5 IT for two months. It is now refusing to charge, rendering the unit useless unless plugged into a power source. This is the second busted unit I've had in two months. Now I get to fight with Amazon about RMAs because this died one month outside their tiny electronics return window.

AVOID THIS PRODUCT AT ALL COSTS
1470777
I felt like there were to many useless app. Fire fly is a cool idea but useless. To many games. I sometimes have difficulty backing out of an app to get to my previous screen. I hang up on people all the time when me cheek bumps the screen. My data will turn on automatically. My data was over greatly and we couldn't figure out why. I was showing my husband that my data was off while watching the screen without touching it my data turned on! The phone doesn't always connect automatically to my home router. After only 1 month my son who is only 4 ft tall dropped his phone and shattered his screen.

I do like the speed of my phone. It takes really good pictures and videos that you can zoom. The size took some getting used to but it is nice for reading. My battery life is pretty good. I think it has decent sound for a phone.
2749017
I purchased 2 of these and absolutely loved then at first, but then they became absolutely non-usable as malware took control of the devices.  Now after a complete factory data reset 5 apps appear with in about 30 minutes that cannot be removed or stopped.  If you remove them, they immediately come back.  If you block them and deny permissions, they continue un-phased.  The apps load as follows: AndroidsUI, ART Amnho, Cleaner, com.android.tools, com.bd.sdk.project.  They are given free reign of every hardware feature you have!
1797998
I am an LED enthusiast, and I love every aspect of home automation. I have 3 Dropcams, a Nest, I use IFTTT and I have about 10 WeMo devices in my house. This was the next natural extension.

First the great part: The bulb is absolutely fantastic. The variety of colors it can produce and speed at which it can adjust to your every wish and need is astounding. You could change the color of your business display, or change the color to meet the mood or season without investing any extra money. I was pleased with the brightness as well.

The apps were iOS app was functional and did not crash, but did require me to first power cycle the bulb before it could connect. The Android App on a Nexus 5 I never could get to connect to the bulb, even though I had turned the bluetooth off on the iPhone.

There are a lot of options and functions in the app-- you can control them all together as a single color, or individually, you can make them strobe, fade from color to color, a variety of functionality. The Apps clearly aren't prime time as far as design, but as far as functionality goes the iOS one was functional.

I would be interested to see how they perform in groups, but otherwise, I was pleased with the bulb.

The app is the primary interface to the bulb. No matter how much I loved the bulb, the app couldn't be hidden. I rated this 3 stars instead of 5 because of the failure to connect with Android and issues on iOS. There were also spelling and Grammar issues in the app.

By a lot of patient hours, days and years of reviewing, I found myself in the top reviewers on Amazon. This wasn't a goal or result of self promotion, but by focused reviewing. I sometimes get contacted by manufacturers or sellers who ask that I provide an unbiased review. This is one of those products. I assure you that I review what I want, when I want, how I want, in order to share what I feel is the most accurate useful information.

If the apps were redone and worked well, this could easily be a 5+ star bulb. It really felt like I was using/trying/doing something new and that was really exciting!
2482305
S***tiest piece of equipment I own, don't expect it it to last. It does good for about a month then you run into problems with not enough storage because the damn OS takes up to much space. They just keep coming out with new versions of IOS and they expect you to update and the phone cant handle it. If you don't update the phone at some point you won't be able to download any apps because your phone's software isn't compatible with any apps on the appstore. So therefore you can throw the "smartphone" categorization out the window. Most of the functions don't even work on my phone, half the time I cant even send messages because almost every app you click on it force closes itself. Everytime you hit send it just deletes everything you typed. So that's pretty much fantastic. Please do not waste your money. I do love the capabilities that apple allows you to do with the software, but just save your money to get a newer version of the phone with hardware that can actually handle the software.
1125084
I really, really wanted to like this tablet- as everyone knows, it has great hardware and to be able to get a 64 gb unit for $300 is a good deal in any book. But at the end of the day, I found myself saying "wow, I wish I could ____ this on this tablet like I could on any other, but I can't." Here's a pros and cons list:

PROS:
-Great OS: I really like the interface, the multitasking is phenomenal (you can watch other applications in the background), it was fast.
-Browser is great, all web sites rendered normally.
-HD display is phenomenal. Really, really good.
-Sound quality: My friend has an iPad2 and this blew the speakers on that unit away. True stereo.
-HDMI out- plugs right into TVs, no problem. Nice.
-Blackberry bridge: I used this with a blackberry phone on a trip (my friend's phone) and it worked perfectly out of the box. No tethering fee and didn't need to pay for wireless.
-Fully accessible file system, unlike iPad.
-Loved the size and the way it fits in your hand.
-Good value for the hardware.
-Has word, excel, etc. on it in mobile form.

now, the OTHER list:

CONS
-NO APPS!!!!! The Blackberry app store is a JOKE. Half of them (literally) don't even work- the developers only made it to get a free playbook as per a deal Blackberry offered. Netflix, etc- nope. Yes, there's an update coming, but not all andriod apps will be available, and there's no indication Netflix/Hulu will be there. Not that this is a dealbreaker on its own, but the selection will be extremely limited, unless you want to sideload. But you shouldn't have to! (Note: the browser will NOT run netflix, don't even try). There's not even a dictionary app that works. DON'T UNDERESTIMATE HOW MUCH THIS SUCKS. I initially said, "I'll just use it to browse the web, no big deal," but other tablets can now browse the web just as well.
-No e-mail client. Will also be fixed with next OS. This was never a big deal to me as GMail worked fine on the browser
-No text autocorrect, and it was difficult to place the cursor in an active text field.
-Some features just didn't work. For example, I should have been able to access my Playbook as a Samba server wirelessly. I couldn't.
-Bluetooth audio doesn't work. Not available with the software. Why they didn't include this is beyond me.

-Last but not least: RIM is a company with a questionable future that is completely tone deaf to the needs and wants of their customers. Their software is consistently delivered late and underwhelming. Contrast this to Google or Apple, two major innovators who are constantly pumping out new products that make life easier. There is just no comparison. Why jump on the sinking ship?

Bottom line: I ended up returning it. If you want a tablet, get one that runs Android. You can just do so much more with it at the end of the day. The only thing that makes this truly unique is the multitasking, but I think Android's multitasking gets you 90% of the way there. Background tasks can run, but you can't actively monitor them all at once. No big deal.

Sorry, RIM- maybe I'll buy another one for $99 WHEN (not if) they have a fire sale, but not for more than that.