I have had this phone for about six months. Straight out of the box, the thing is unbelievable. The screen, camera, processing power, and design are all excellent. In the settings are some developer options, which allow you adjust animation speeds for the menus, control background processes, see what the phone is doing with CPU, touch screen, and general operation feedback. However, in the end this is just flash.
Like any phone this thing has issues. I know several people who have had to get it replaced because it won't receive texts, fails to notify you when something happens, the speaker dies, yatta yatta. There is a lot that can go wrong with a phone that is this complex. Maybe I'm just lucky and my friends got lemons, or maybe I'm better with it. Either way, I have had an OVERALL GOOD EXPERIENCE WITH THIS PRODUCT.
BATTERY:
People complain about the battery life. People, if you play with the settings, it will last longer. Mine usually lasts about four days. Turn off wifi, mobile data when you don't need it, and disable all the automatic syncing. That alone more than tripled my battery life.
BUGS:
This thing is undeniably a bit buggy. Play with the settings, reset it, uninstall things you don't use. The thing with this phone is if you have a lot of things on it using processing power, the opearting system makes mistakes. I have plenty of apps and 15 GB of music, lots of pictures, videos, and apps on my phone, but it could only handle it all after uninstalling and stopping the things that were taking up valuable space. THIS PHONE HAS LIMITS.
This is my first smartphone. It's not bad, though I have heard of a few models that are superior, such as the HTC OneX. This one turned out to be perfect for you, and if you give it a little bit of time and TLC, it will work out.