JaeWeb

Who here has it? Do you like it? I don't see this phone listed on the forums yet so I wanted to ask here. Moderator, add this phone to the list and move this thread there? I'm thinking about buying it in the next couple of weekssince its on sale @ Walmart for $199

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Its MEEEEEE!!!! I was the turkey all alooooong!!

surgerush

I got this phone a few days ago and LOVE it. I upgraded from my Optimus V to this phone, so I don't know how it compares to some more high end phones, but compared to the Optimus V, this blows it out of the water in my opinion. Very smooth, definitely not perfect, but worth the $200 and the 4g compared to the 3g is just AWESOME. Definitely recommend this phone to anybody who is looking for a cheap plan and doesn't use a lot of minutes since the $30 a month plan only comes with 100 minutes.

drfreeman

Does this phone have a Notification LED?
I have the Optimus V and the speed, amount of storage, and lack of notification LED bother me on this phone.

surgerush

I personally don't use the notification led, but if you go to the thread below, that should explain that for you. As for the speed and storage space, it doesn't even compare to the OV, the Exhibit II is so much better.


http://androidforums.com/samsung-exhibit-4g/442227-exhibit-ii-no-notification-light-power-save-mode.html

soda gong

For me it's a mixed bag so far, mostly not good.

PRO
Size and weight.
On-board storage space.

CON
Mostly disappointing and spotty 4G.
Short on RAM.
Backup to 4G is practically useless Edge, not 3G.
Images tend to look washed out and greenish.
Slipperiest phone ever.
Audible tones on dialer too loud even at lowest setting.

surgerush

I've had a completely different experience. The backup to 4g is edge, which does suck, but I've very rarely had to use edge instead of 4g. The images, videos, picture, everything has been beautiful, I mean the picture and video looks awesome to me, I don't see at all how the picture looks bad in any sort of way. I picked up a D3O case for my phone, so slipperiness hasn't been an issue. Lol, the audible tones on the dialer are quite loud, which can be almost embarrassing when you are somewhere full of people, but you can simply turn that off, not a huge deal. I'm not at all trying to say anything that he says is wrong, just letting you know another perspective since my experience has been completely different. I'd definitely look into coverage really good in your area before getting it though.

Last edited by surgerush; November 16th, 2011 at 02:49 PM.

drfreeman

So there is a notification LED then? I couldn't really understand what was going on in that thread personally.

surgerush

It looks to me like there is a notification, it just doesn't work when the phone is in power save mode, which you don't have to use, I don't use power save mode.

Any chance a mod could make a forum specific to the Exhibit II?

Last edited by surgerush; November 17th, 2011 at 11:22 AM.

dwcasey

Yup, same here. I have the LG-OV and got my wife the Exhibit 2 and it's really a great phone with great features.

__________________
HTC Eris : Rooted/OC'd : CM 6.1 Shed Froyo
Droid X : Rooted : GummyJAR ROM : GO Launcher : Liberty X 1.0 : ApeX 1.3.1 : Apex 1.4.1 : 3.4.2 Leak : Liberty 1.5 : 2.3.3 gingerbread - .596 - CyanogenMOD7 - CM7DX - romaholic LG Optimus V : Rooted : Running something from here

surgerush

Also, another thing I've been playing with is Grooveip used with google voice, which allows you to make your calls through your data plan, which in turn does not use your t-mobile minutes. It is not perfect, you have to play with the settings quite a bit to get it right, some people hear echos... But Grooveip only costs $5, and any time you are in a 4g area or wifi, it works great. I will be using this to make calls, but still probably receive calls on my t-mobile plan. But with the 2 apps, you pretty much get unlimited minutes since you're getting 5gb of data.

drfreeman

notification light = checked
4g = checked
1GHz processor = checked
front facing camera = checked
Samsung? = CHECK AND CHECK!!

I will be upgrading from the Op. V for this phone next week sometime.

surgerush

After reading that thread again, the phone may not come with an led notification, you might want to check into this a little more if it's something that is important to you. Like I said, I've never used that setting on any of my phones, so I may be missing it, but I'm not seeing a setting to turn on led notifications on the phone. If you tell me which setting it should be under, I can double check this for you. But it looks like you can use the app "noled" if it turns out that it doesn't have one.

JaeWeb

The only phone I've ever had with a notification light on it was my Motorola Cliq.

907ski

I'm looking at my Exhibit II right now and there is no notification led. I used to have the Moto cliq and I did like that feature, but this phone has so many other better features. Totally worth the $199 @ Wal*Mart.

Btw, does anyone know how to turn off T-mobiles throttling?

JaeWeb

There's no way to get around the throttling. I've never gone passed my 2GB limit though so I wouldn't know. Unless you sit and watch Youtube on your phone all day long.. Even when I use the web and Facebook apps a lot I still barely hit 1GB in a month. I have 10 days left in my month and I have only used 253MG. I don't use Youtube or stream any other media so I am happy with my 2GB monthly limit

Epic Drop

I got my first smartphone and made the switch to Tmobile's $30 plan and the Exhibit II after reading a lot about GrooVe IP. I've played around with it non-stop for the last 3 days, and even with a consistent 4g connection with ~5MB/s, the quality is horrible 99% of the time, and lags terribly.

Could you share your settings? I'm frustrated, because it doesn't seem like my plan of using GrooVe IP to offset the 100 min is going to work unless I can pretty dramatically improve the sound quality/lag.

surgerush

I've changed my mind about grooveip... at first it was great... now it seems like I'm having nothing but problems with it no matter how much I play with the settings... it was a complete waste of $5.... I'll still be ok with the 100 minutes a month, but grooveip is worthless for me.

ww321q

I got one a week or so ago. I'm upgrading from a very slow 3g Iphone. I had it unlocked and am using it on AT&T till my contract runs out. Seem like a really good deal to me. No problems yet. I rooted it to remove unwanted T-Mobile apps. I picked up a spare battery and battery charger from eBay to use in case I'm not around any place with power. I really liked the size of the Iphone because it was the smallest phone that I could still read text from the web. The Exhibit II 4g is almost the same size . Web pages load several times faster and scroll pretty good too. Lots of cool Android apps and I don't need Steve Jobs blessing to load them ! Don't expect it to preform like a $600 phone though . But for $200 and a $30 a month service from T-mobile , This is an unbeatable deal ! for sure !

ja5219

Maybe if we get a good enough community here we can get our own forum!

I bought this phone exactly one month ago.
This was my first initial smart phone (I had used the Optimus V (not mine) on and off with VM for a few months).

There are some very good things about this phone, and some things that I don't like.

Mainly its sluggish at times, Its probably my fault I do like to use alot of apps frequently, so sometimes when I'd like to go back to my home screen.. I'll get a blank wallpaper image and the icons slowly reappear.
It seems like 512MB RAM (which in reality is 350MB or so for apps) is not enough for android.

But the 4G coverage I get very well makes up for that. I have watched/heard live streams/high quality radio stations and doing many things at once thanks to 4G.

This past month? After pretty heavy usage I only had 1.5GB out of 5GB bandwidth used. (It should really be 2.5GB but halfway through the month.. it reset the bandwidth counter.. Shhh!)

Overall, I love this phone... Onto month 2!

JaeWeb

I finally got this phone last week! I love it!! I don't use it enough to notice any lag and I'm not an app heavy user. But it's just slightly bigger than my other 2 phones and I'm happy with it. I'm using it with my current Monthly 4G $60/mo plan

And I agree, WHEN IS THE EXHIBIT II 4G GOING TO GET IT'S OWN FORUM????? ~

A very happy Exhibit II 4G owner

FlyingBoat

I tried GrooveIP with my daughter's exhibit as well. As everyone is saying here, the quality is terrible. Unfortunately not useable even on WIFI. Now, I just installed the app on a couple of Droid 2's and a Droid X and it works very good on these phones on my verizon network. It even works OK from my trying it a bit on 3G on these phones.

So what is the deal here? Is it a problem with Tmobile network, or implementation on this phone? I would be interested in knowing if other TM phones work better with Groove.

dodukes

Getting this phone for xmas and very excited from what i read here....going to try to root it so i can tether to mytouchpad or can i do the wifi hotspot from this phone with no problem?

smt4375

I've had my Exhibit II for about 2 1/2 months and I absolutely love it! You don't have to root it for tethering and wi-fi hot spot capabilities, it comes already installed on the phone.

surgerush

They are built in, but if you try to use them, it will bring you to another page letting you know you have to pay extra for these features... So to be able to use them for free, you will have to root it. I'm still too worried to root my phones, but I would love to get rid of all this bloatware that came with it.

ja5219

Me too, i've read alot about people already rooting this phone but still can't bring myself to root mine. I'd like to freeze the extra junk running on this phone from startup.

gigg423

Does anyone know yet if this phone will get ICS? Im thinking of swapping from my LG OV to this, becuase I am near WiFI a lot and tmobile lets you call over wifi without it hitting your minutes.

surgerush

I'm still new to Android and smart phones in general, I've only been using them for a little over 2 months, but from everything I've come accross, unless the phone is a big name phone, IF the Exhibit II was to get the ICS upgrade, it probably wouldn't be for a VERY long time. But this phone does have Gingerbread, whereas the OV is still only running froyo. I upgraded from the OV and I HIGHLY recommend the upgrade from that phone. HUGE difference.

bonxaiz

I've read from this thread that some of you have rooted your samsung exhibit ii. can you please let me know how to do it and check if it's already rooted? thanks.

gigg423

Thats good to know, I like my little OV, but it does get very laggy when I use Navigation. Since I am always around WiFi I love the idea of calling over wifi without using minutes. That would make it a much better deal (for me) than the virgin plan.

Last edited by gigg423; December 19th, 2011 at 10:46 AM. Reason: added something

surgerush

The wifi calling actually does use your minutes unless you use the grooveip/google voice setup, which in my experience just plain sucks, no matter how much I played with the settings, either they couldn't hear me, I couldn't hear them, or there was so much echo or just bad sound in general you couldn't have any sort of conversation. BUT it's only 10 cents a minute after the first 100 minutes, which I personally don't think is bad, at least for me.

gigg423

For Cereal... it counts against minutes??? That's Lame. I read some FAQs on the tmobile website and it said otherwise (I thought). I may have to rethink switching, but this phone still looks much nicer than my little Optimus V. I would upgrade to the optimus slider on virgin, but that does not seem like much of an upgrade and I don't care about a physical keyboard. The motorola is still running 2.2 so I don't think I will go for that one .

Maybe I will just wait until I can getting something with ICS on a prepaid carrier.

gigg423

OK from the Tmobile website...

If you use Wi-Fi to make and receive calls, consider adding our Free Wi-Fi Calling feature. With this feature, calls over Wi-Fi do not count against monthly plan minutes. For more information on Free Wi-Fi Calling visit a T-Mobile store or contact a care representative.

But I do not see any option to add that on the prepaid plan :S

lion7718

I don't have an Exhibit II, I have the 1st Exhibit & it came with a Wi-Fi Calling App installed...I use it a friends house where cell service sucks..from all providers...anyway, every time I start it up, it shows a little warning message that it uses your minutes...I've got unlimited, so I don't care.

The App is listed in the T-Mobile App Store Free Premium Apps With Every Data Plan | Android Marketplace | T-Mobile

surgerush

I've used the wifi calling through the app and was deducted minutes. I don't know if it's only for prepaid or not, but it definitely uses up minutes on the prepaid plan. The wifi option is nice though if you are ever in a situation where you are able to connect to wifi but you don't have a signal otherwise.

gigg423

Thats true, and the coverage at my office usually sucks (Metal building) at least 80% of incoming calls go to voicemail because I never get the call.

gvc

just read the sticky post at the top of this forum: "all things root"

http://androidforums.com/exhibit-4g-all-things-root/447530-samsung-exhibit-4g-all-things-root-guide.html

jilebi

Hi ww321q,

I too would like to unlock it and use on AT&T. A couple of quick questions -

1. Would you mind sharing how you unlocked it? I have tried all the methods posted on these forums for unlocking Exhbit I, but none of them work since they all need access to file nv_data.bin, and for the life of me, I cannot find that file on Exhibit II after rooting it. I also looked at commercial services but they costs like $20-$30!!! Very expensive, compared to $2 I paid for unlocking LG Optimus T.

Anybody else figured out out how to unlock the Exhibit II, pleaaaasssse do chime in.

2. Have you tried your unlocked Exhibit II on AT&T 4G? If so, does it work and what kind of speeds did you get?

Many thanks in advance!!!

captainbob

I just got my Exhibit 2 after a bit over a week with a Samsung Gravity Smart which was horrible compared to the Exhibit. The Exhibit is 1,000 times better than the Gravity in my opinion and for an extra $100, is well worth it.

john37

Wifi calling does not use any minutes if you are using NETTALK which is a free app and free calls to usa and canada which is crystal clear,so stop using groovip and wasting your money.

john37

Hey guys,i just got my t679 unlocked by t-mobile.
here is what you need.
you need a proof of purchase of the phone,your name,phone #to reach you at,your e-mail address,your phones IMEI# ,if you activated your phone with t-mobile the phone # they gave you,and write down a brief explanation of why you need your phone to be unlocked and the last thing you have to do is call t-mobile and request a Sim Unlock Reference # and ask them for fax # of unlock team.
what you have to do now is simple,put all that information you have up there on a piece of paper starting with ATTN=UNLOCK TEAM and fax it to them,they will send you an e-mail in a day saying that unlock code may take 2 to 14 days,hurray you are done,enjoy your unlocked phone

surgerush

Well "Nettalk" seems to be for outgoing calls only, unless I'm misreading something, but I will definitely be giving this a shot, I will update with my personal experience with Nettalk within a couple days. Plus this app hasn't been updated since January of 2011, but if it works it works I guess, but after looking at all the reviews I'm not too hopeful about it.

Last edited by surgerush; December 26th, 2011 at 12:33 AM.

surgerush

So far, not so good. Calls are going through well, we can both hear each other, but every single person I call hears an echo of them selves in the background and they all say it's a pretty bad echo. I've looked through the settings and messed with my volume on the phone like it says to, but to no avail. I've done both wifi and 4g calling. Although it is working a bit better than grooveip, I don't think it's going to work out well again, I'll just have to live with the $.10 a minute after the 100.

john37

well,it is working really well for me,I have $10 a month prepaid plan which carries unused minutes over to next month,when people call me i do not answer the phone then i call them back with nettalk for free(i use the phone kind of a pager thingy)with my exhibit 2 4g it works ok for now,i also rooted my phone and got rid of all the bloat ware from t-mobile maybe that help a bit.

surgerush

I'm sure it works well in different areas, but I can't use it. Plus now every so often the phone doesn't stop ringing even after it connects. Just doesn't work right for me no matter what I do.

On another note, I highly recommend downloading a new launcher right away if you get this phone. I stuck with the touch wiz launcher as long as I could because I liked the way it was set up, but I couldn't deal with how slow it was anymore, so I downloaded golauncher, wow what a difference in how the phone runs, especially if you use a live wallpaper.

xojess09

I love this phone! I don't use it for apps enough for it to be sluggish. I do agree that it is a little slippery. I don't understand why the top of the phone is more square than the bottom. But I am gonna look into the D3O case for it. Right now I have a rubberized plastic case and it's added some grippage to it.

olc

What settings are you using for Groove IP on the Exhibit II? I'm having little success even on wifi. I too planned to use it only to make calls and would be happy with that.

surgerush

Lol, actually if you reed down a bit further, I then said

"I've changed my mind about grooveip... at first it was great... now it seems like I'm having nothing but problems with it no matter how much I play with the settings... it was a complete waste of $5.... I'll still be ok with the 100 minutes a month, but grooveip is worthless for me."

Not a fan anymore, lol. Some seem to have it working great though I guess.

coyote1

Seems endemic to VoIP in general, and with this phone in particular.

I started with Talkatone on the iPad. Has some echo, but not terrible. Moved to the alpha-testing Talkatone for Android on the Exhibit II, and at this point all my 'victims' report significant echo on their end.

Tried muting the mic with my hand and the echo diminished a bit but not completely. The workaround is to use earphones. The echo goes away entirely.

That tells me two things:

a) The echo is acoustic, through the body of the phone. With a mic in such close proximity to a speaker, this is no surprise. Physical isolation in such a small unit while preserving audibility would be nearly impossible.

AND
b) that's why typical cellphone communication sounds non-duplexed. Clearly, the makers of the phone soft/firmware account for it by muting one side or the other depending on when you're talking. If you're not talking, your phone's OS is muting the mic. If you are talking, your phone's OS is muting the earpiece.

So I guess once Talkatone, GrooveIP, et al get the basic VoIP comm circuit working right, their next area of effort will be to work on the conditional muting.

franquis

How do you reset the bandwidth counter?

franquis

I tried groove ip as well and didn't get good results. I'm now using skype. It's not free, but I'm getting acceptable call quality. It costs $30 a year for unlimited calls, and if you want to have a number where they can call you, you can buy a number for $30. I didn't buy a number yet, maybe I will in the future. What I'm doing is letting the calls come in through groove ip (with my GV number), but not answering them, this allows callers to leave a message on my google voice acct which I can access without calling TMobile voicemail (which uses minutes). Then I call them from skype (I have set my outgoing number on skype as my google voice number so on their caller id it shows the correct number.