Ok; someone just brought this up in a new thread, which I've linked over here... so, what was the verdict? Is anyone using these in production service now, and how's that working out for you?
What do the ground-pounders think of them?
It's one hell of a radio! The audio in digital is stunningly clear and sharp, audio in analog is great. The audio out of the main speaker is extremely loud while never distorting even at 100% volume. This is the loudest radio i've ever heard, while also being the clearest audio. However..... the audio from the small speaker on the data side is LAME, basically useless if used by itself. You can select user profiles from the menu and select both speakers, main speaker only, or small speaker only. The audio from the small speaker is very quiet even at 100% volume
Firmware is very important in these APX7000's/7500. Firmware R03 and below is very bad, but with R04 they cleared up many of the DSP's audio problems.
It takes some time to get used to a dual sided radio. I find myself using the small top display more then the main data screen. I'm thinking that this dual sided radio many not be for everyone. Keep in mind that the radio was designed for police/fire/ems, not ham operators.
CPS programming takes some getting used to, and you need a pretty fast computer to run the CPS. On older computers the CPS is very laggy and unresponsive.
There are Development APX's on eBay that have development firmware. These radios are completely worthless as the CPS will not upgrade the firmware in these units. Stay clear of any APX radio with the letter "D" in the firmware or DSP or tuning partition.
As it stands right now, firmware upgrades are free from MOL. There is the option in the CPS for an ibutton for firmware upgrading, but no iButton is needed. It would not surprise me if someday moto may start charging $$ for firmware upgrades.