I gave up about 2 weeks ago and installed the GB update from instructions on another forum. (This is probably the only reason VZW released it; they waited until *I* would have to re-flash back to stock. j/k!)
I wouldn't call it "buttery smooth", but the issues have either been resolved or mitigated a little.
Bluetooth dropouts - this was a big one for me, since I listen to music on the bus and my bluetooth headphones too a long time to connect, button presses on the headphones (play/pause, answer phone) didn't always register on the phone, and the worst was the constant suttering and dropouts of sound even if I didn't touch the phone. This has been resolved!!
Stock browser loading/swiping - The browser loads faster, but sliding the page up or down, while using the bluetooth headphones, is stuttering, and an exercise in frustration. They basically swapped suttering sound for stuttering web browser!
GPS reception - No change, still slow as molasses to lock on, sometimes minutes before it would get a signal. But it works fine once th initial lock is made. I've used this extensively, and only had a fast lock on GPS once out of maybe 8 times.
Screen redraws - Still slow, but not quite as bad as before. Going from the web browser, especially if I've viewed a video on a page, the icons take a few seconds to display. Widgets on the home screen, including clock and weather widgets, are fine, though.
Camera - Extremely fast shot-to-shot times now! No more waiting for 10 seconds to write the picture to memory, it just seems to "blink" the pics to the microsd card now.
Boot up speed - rebooted twice, both times *seem* a little bit faster, not much, nothing that made me go "wow".
Data Connectivity and speed - no real change. I've had 3 times in 2 days where I had to turn off/on the cell data to clear up some sort of hang that sat for about a minute before I got tired of waiting. The 4G indicator was on, the red down and green up arrows blink on and off a bit, but the web pages didn't update. It's happened different times of the day, and a few different web pages, so I tend to think it's a problem with my phone/OS and not the web sites or the cell network.
Battery life - Much improved! I was getting home at 5:00 with about 20% of my battery charge left before I updated. Still experiencing the same usage as I did before, I now have about 50-60% left when I get home, and I'm leaving WiFi, Bluetooth, and Mobile Data on all the time.
In a nutshell, I have to say I'm extremely pleased with this phone now! The upgrade was a definite improvement and makes the phone usable and somewhat "brag-worthy" now. I never ran any benchmarks, but the phone is zippier, more responsive (except when using bluetooth), and does an acceptable job as both a phone and a mobile internet device. At the current prices I've seen on other websites, this phone is one of the best bang-for-the-buck devices I've seen. I have no desire to upgrade to any other phone out there. This one has a screen that makes me think the iPhones have something wrong with them, a great camera, hotspot capability (I've been using this on occassion for a week), great sounding audio, replaceable battery, front-facing camera, etc. etc.
