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Is the cappy crappy?

jasonsmith

Newbie
Aug 2, 2010
28
2
I've had the iPhone since day one and personally I am sick of Apple and sick of the iPhone. I've had enough and it's killing me as the days tick away until I can get my hands on a decent android phone here in Canada.

It appears that the Desire and the Captivate are the only higher end devices coming this way so I thought that the Captivate was the better choice but I must say that this forum is starting to freak me out.

With the GPS issues, lack of FM, hacks to get sideloading active and all the other things that users are concerned about it's making think that I'm walking into a world of hurt.

Is this phone any good? Is there anyone here actually using it all happy like without any issues?

I know this phone is still in it's infancy and the bugs still need to be worked out but honestly there is no proof or track record from Samsung that the bugs will be fixed.

help...
 
Personally I love it. That being said, I bought it expecting it to do some basic things, like phone, messaging, email, and google apps. I wasn't disappointed. I did not see the need for FM radio, and honestly, I didn't even realize it HAD a GPS until after I bought it. That wasn't the reason for the purchase. :) Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones, my GPS works with the default settings.

The screen is beautiful, TouchWiz is snappy and responsive for me (assuming I disable most active widgets, which I don't care for) and I no longer drop calls like I did with Verizon. My wife, the Apple-lover, is very jealous of the Captivate.
 
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I say go with the Captivate. Personally, I don't consider the lack of a FM radio a deal breaker, although it would be nice to have. As for the GPS, mine didn't work originally, but the fix you can find at the top of the Captivate section worked for me. (The fact that it is a software glitch rather than hardware makes a difference when saying the GPS is broken.)

Before the Captivate I had an iPhone, and like you, I was sick of Apple lording over me. I do not regret my choice, and am eagerly anticipating the froyo upgrade coming in September.
 
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i never listen to radio, why would i when i have all my own music in 5.1 surround sound built in? i havent tested out my gps, i can get 5 to lock onto me in a pretty small part of alabama though so i guess i dont have the problem most seem to. the only thing mine has ever done is a few browser crashed, 2 or 3 since the day it came out, and alittle lag from time to time but maybe once every few days. i love the phone though, much better than iphone imo
 
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Personally, I love my Captivate. Rooting it and enabling side-loading are very easy (so long as you take your time and follow the directions!), and god forbid you mess up, there's a program called Odin that lets you restore back to scratch. Battery life is fine (especially if you grab apps like Juice Defender and Advanced Task Killer), and the GPS, while not perfect, is usually good enough for me.

There's posts out there that indicate the GPS and FM radio are part of the same chip (?)...so I'd presume that if a GPS fix comes out, the FM might be usable as well. I could be mistaken there, but regardless, it's still a great little smartphone.
 
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I love mine too. This is my first Android phone, coming from WinMo and I have to say that I am impressed. Yes ATT locks the crap out of it but then again so is the Iphone. I bought the cappy knowing that I wanted to flash ROMs and make it my own from the ground up, that is beauty of MOST of the android phones. It's totally hackable. Would I trade my cappy in for anything else? Hells no! This is the nicest piece of hardware I have ever owned. I am happy with my purchase and intend on using it for a long time.
 
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I'm very happy with the hardware, less the captive buttons, but Samsung's lack of support is unacceptable. I've already ordered a DroidX, and if it meets my expectations, I will be returning my Captivate before the 30-day grace period expires.

phone has been out less than a month and you are bitching about a "lack of support"?

Samsung has already officially announced a GPS fix is on the way and they are aware of it, and FroYo is coming in September. So where exactly is this "lack of support"
 
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I like my Cappy. GPS works fine when Im outside. Battery life is dependent on your use. I went like 9+ hours today with moderate use. Very fast. 720p video recording. The camera is nice, i know theres no flash but im ok with it. TouchWiz is cool, I really dont mind it. I had a G1 with all kinds of different ROMs on it so this is new and not so bad. The Super AMOLED screen really looks nice. Other than not being able to find a nice hard case for it, Im very happy. I was waiting for the Dell Streak... but that whole thing is a fiasco. I would suggest it.
 
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I actually just returned my captivate today. I loved the hardware, but the software bugs were just too much for me. Specifically the web browser and music player crashed frequently, the built in email client wouldn't notify me about new emails even though it was set to check for new emails every 15 minutes, also the phone would sometimes be unbearably slow. As for the gps the navigation worked fine, but recording tracks (runs or bike rides) didn't work at all. Also, the lack of HSUPA was a problem for me. I realize these things may get fixed in the future, officially or unofficially, but I wasn't going to risk getting stuck with the phone by letting my 30 day window expire, or damaging it, and not being able to return. These are just my opinions and experiences, and they seem to vary widely from person to person. If the software problems get fixed I may repurchase it in the future.
 
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I like mine, and I can see why a lot of people would like it, but it's not for me. Tinkering with widgets and home screens is fun, won't lie there, but once the joy of that is over, the Android market is very bare bones. The purpose of any GUI is to access applications and the applications that are available to the Android market are inferior to the Apple App Store at the moment. Not to mention Android still has core problems in the field of software updates (going through manufacturer and cell providers to do things as simple as bug fixes. Should be fixed with Gingerbread though).

That's not to say that this phone is bad however. The folks over at XDA love this thing and are working to get custom ROMs on it. The Captivate, and usually the Android community, is very nice and friendly and almost the entire reason to keep this phone. It displays movies PERFECTLY! It's a sweet little phone.


To each his own, pick what you like :)
 
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Another former iPhone user here! I've had the Captivate since the day it was released and I have had great success with it. The issue I've experienced was with GPS. My GPS wasn't the best, but I followed the instructions at the top of the forum and the GPS works great now.

My battery took a week or so to really shine, but hell, the thing is very solid now. It's been unplugged since 1pm (it's 1:30am now) and had a fair bit of usage, and I still have 72% battery life remaining.

The thing that most people who gripe overlook is how awesome the display on this phone is. I have a few hd movies on it and they look fantastic.

The phone is only going to get better too, Froyo (android OS 2.2) is only a month or so away!
 
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while reading these forums its important to keep in mind that the people on here would really only account for a small portion of captivate owners.I'm sure there are lots of other captivate owners who love their phones. The reason you find so much negativity on here is just because its a new product and we all need a lil help figuring out what's what sometimes. I for one am very happy with the phone now that I have a working one. What is disturbing however is it seems as if samsungs quality control for this product is horrible. I've seen quite a few people on here on their 2nd 3rd and 4th cappy, and my best friend who works for att said that most of theirs have had to be swapped out. That being said the phone is great once you get a working one. Good luck!
 
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while reading these forums its important to keep in mind that the people on here would really only account for a small portion of captivate owners....

I hear ya my friend and that is the way all forums work sadly. That is why I posed the question. Trying to find a balance amongst it all. BUT... if you do peruse through some of the other forum sections pertaining to other devices you will see that this one (Captivate) seems to have more threads about issues or problems.

My guess is once some new ROM's hit they will address most if not all issues or problems that this device has.

I am however expecting it to perform "on device tasks" BETTER than my iPhone is all respects. If it doesn't then idunno.

I'm a little concerned about the media player being sluggish and what not. I need it to be my iPod as I will be loading over 10g of music to it.
 
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Where do you get that?

[STOCK ROM] Odin3 One-Click Downloader - xda-developers

:D

Specifically the web browser and music player crashed frequently, the built in email client wouldn't notify me about new emails even though it was set to check for new emails every 15 minutes...

That seems like it must have been a defective device. My captivate notifies me of e-mail typically before my computer even does, with a very noticeable "ding", and an icon in the status bar.

I was waiting for the Dell Streak... but that whole thing is a fiasco. I would suggest it.

Likewise on waiting for the Streak. Dell seems hellbent on screwing up the US launch of it, which is a shame. For all the people grumbling here that we don't have Froyo yet (even though it's only a month away) ... they're still on 1.6 (Donut, right?) on the Streak.
 
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hang on a sec... are you saying your battery only lasted 9+ hours with moderate use before you needed to recharge it. How is one supposed to make it through a days work?

I did say before that sentence that it was dependent on the way you use it. I used the GPS, surfed the net for a long time, watched some YouTube videos and had wifi on most of the time and sent a whole grip of text msgs and recorded like 10 mins of 720p video and took a whole bunch of pictures at the park with my kids and surfed these forums all morning and took about an hour of calls. So its been thru a good amount of use for that 9+ hours. So yea... depends how you use it. Drive a car with your pedal to the floor and youll run out of gas faster. But I'm cool with that since I put this cappy to work. I'm sure if I just left it on idle all day I would get some good run time out of it.
 
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phone has been out less than a month and you are bitching about a "lack of support"?

Samsung has already officially announced a GPS fix is on the way and they are aware of it, and FroYo is coming in September. So where exactly is this "lack of support"

Actually, the phone has been out in Europe for 2 months and the GPS issues are still an issue with those phones.

Also, though Samsung may have announced they are aware of the issue (from the posts I've read here of users talking to Samsung 3rd level support) I'm not certain that they have announced a fix (and there definitely has not been a timeframe put on any fix to the GPS)

While Froyo has been announced for Sept for the Galaxy S phones running in Europe, there has been no announcement that it will hit the US in Sept. The update still needs to be tweaked for the US phones (though that should not take too long) and go through the carriers before being released.

The one advantage of getting this phone over a month after it was released in Europe should have been that we got a less buggy version of the phone, but that does not seem to be the case.

I agree that it's too soon to say that Samsung is doing a horrible job of supporting the phone but, given Samsung's poor history of supporting Android phones and the fact that they're churning out phones so fast, I think there is good reason to be concerned about Samsung's desire to provide timely updates to the phone.
 
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We're humans. Our tendency is to nitpick and complain. You're naturally going to see more complaining on these forums than anything... few people bother to sign up and post that everything's just grand. Praise doesn't accomplish much here... we find the issues and post about them, because we're looking for something: solutions. What's already good needs no attention/solution.

Not to belittle the gripes: most are valid. GPS, battery, lag... all these I've experienced myself. But the truth is, I don't see myself returning this phone. Why? Because no matter what device I got, there would be issues... gripes, things that don't work like they should, bugs, annoyances... The question becomes:

1) What device has the fewest things that will bother me?
2) What device gets me (at the moment) closest to where I want to be?
3) What device shows the most promise in improving in the direction I want to go?

For all of these, the Captivate is the answer, not the iPhone or anything else. Sure, I can imagine a device where everything worked perfectly... but that device doesn't exist at the moment (whether it should is a different debate), and I don't make devices so I have to choose from what's available. Sure, I could get an iPhone and have perfect GPS and amazing battery... but eventually the honeymoon of having those two specific issues being solved would be over and the weight of everything else I traded/sacrificed to get them would grow on me. Having to deal with iTunes for everything would get old real quick and be like a hornet in my shoe. Not to mention being so restricted about what I can and can't do on it. The grass is always greener on the other user's cell phone it seems, but luckily I can look beyond that and beyond the moment.

I'm no fan of Samsung or AT&T. I only go with AT&T because they're GSM, they have the best coverage around here, and I get a discount. My past experience with Samsung has been poor.... except in the area of LCD displays. Considering the display is much of what makes a phone these days, that allowed me to give them a chance. But honestly, I would've paid more if it had been HTC hardware instead. That aside... consider #3 above. We know we're getting Android 2.2 "Froyo" within a few months, which will come with so many improvements it will shame the trivial update Apple dubbed "iOS 4". In fact, we are pretty confident we'll be getting a patch/fix for the GPS issue prior to that. Many other gripes have workarounds/solutions now via free (or cheap) add-ons. Is it ideal? No. Would it be nice just to have the experience be better out-of-the-box? Sure. But at the end of the day, it's easier to get where I want to be with Android and the Captivate than any other phone, and I'll be even closer come January 2011 with the Captivate than any other phone I can buy now.

Will there be something even better offered by AT&T in the next 6 months? Maybe. But that goes without saying, for any point in time. 6 months from now, one could wait 6 more months and get something even better. The technology train rolls on... at some point you just need to suck it up and hop on-board. 5 years on my old Motorola V635, it was time for me. Now I'm on for the ride, bumps and all, and am making the best of it. :)
 
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I actually just returned my captivate today. I loved the hardware, but the software bugs were just too much for me. Specifically the web browser and music player crashed frequently, the built in email client wouldn't notify me about new emails even though it was set to check for new emails every 15 minutes, also the phone would sometimes be unbearably slow. As for the gps the navigation worked fine, but recording tracks (runs or bike rides) didn't work at all. Also, the lack of HSUPA was a problem for me. I realize these things may get fixed in the future, officially or unofficially, but I wasn't going to risk getting stuck with the phone by letting my 30 day window expire, or damaging it, and not being able to return. These are just my opinions and experiences, and they seem to vary widely from person to person. If the software problems get fixed I may repurchase it in the future.

Did AT&T give you issues about a restocking fee?
 
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