Help a million issues with this phone and now it wants to behave? anyone?

[milk.day]

hi everyone~!
ive been stalking the forums for a few weeks, reading up on all the issues and things associated with this phone and i can say ive experienced most of them (excluding rooting issues, i havent rooted).

* (of course) gps issues
*phone spontaneously shuts off and battery has to be removed before it will turn back on
*randomly awakes itself from sleep just to display the lock screen
*painfully short battery life
*laaaa...aaagggg....ggg...iiiin....nnng.ggggg....
*no signal for a long time, have to restart phone several times before it returns.

these have all plagued me horribly the past month or so. then today it decided it wanted to....::gasp:: behave?!?

my battery still had half its life left when i got home tonight and its usually dead or yelping for a charge by that time (activity/usage the same today too). pages loaded quickly today and i had a signal all day.

has anyone else seen a sudden turn around in their captivate's behavior?

 

[NorCal Einstein]

I haven't experienced spontaneous shut off, random awake or significant lag....but my battery life did greatly improve after a week or so of usage where I drained/recharged the battery.

 

[BigCiX]

No sure shutoffs, minor lag ans of course GPS issues.

 

[CrimsonPride]

i had a problem with the shutoffs about every week after i had the phone for nearly a month and contacted support and they sent me a reset number to dial and that seems to have fixed that problem. but i never had the battery life one, its hard for me to drain it in one day

 

[jeremytanner]

Location has something to do with the drain, but I'm not sure what, exactly. I always assumed longer distances to the nearest tower would cause more drain, as the phone would need more power to stay in touch. I live in a rural area, with the nearest cell towers being 4 miles, 7 miles, and 9 miles away. Depending on which side of my house I'm on, I get one of the 3. My battery lasts a full day, and usually has about 20-30% remaining.

Recently I went on a trip out of state, and was staying in a house where the reception was great. I could see the cell tower down the street. My assumption was that the battery life would be great, but instead I found that I'd drain about 15 to 20% of my battery every hour. I was charging 3 times a day, plus overnight. I turned off all autosync and background data, but noticed little change. With light use, my cell standby and phone idle were killing the battery, 80%+ of the total load, whereas, at home, with poor reception (and not using wifi), those things typically added up to less than 15% of the total battery use.

All that to say, I have no idea WHY that was the case, but location definitely made a significant difference. Only, the opposite of how I thought it would.

 

[Smoghog]

You definitely have valid complaints, and from what I understand, not uncommon ones. I returned one captivate due to a weird hardware defect that would cause it to stop sending texts/data or making calls for an hour at a time during random days (while still showing 5 bars and 3g connection), but even it had solid gps. My new one seems to be working fine, and I've yet to experience any of the problems you're having with it. I can offer a few insights just from reading around these forums and personal experience:

1. Alot of people who were having random shutoffs found it to be caused by using SetCPU. If you have that app installed, try removing it and see if it solves the problem. If you don't, it's probably a defect and I'd exchange it.
2. I thought mine randomly woke itself, but I figured out there were two things that caused it to happen. If it's charging, the screen will come on briefly when (it thinks) the battery is full. Also, when my Wifi router ****s up (as it often does) and the phone swaps back to 3G, the screen would come on to display the change real quickly.
3. If you're having trouble with lag, try ditching TouchWiz interface and using LauncherPro (with home switcher to permanently set default). I made the switch and my phone has been twice as snappy ever since.
4. Battery life is definitely a drawback with these, as with any newage smart phone. The more features and options you pack into a phone, the more it's going to drain battery. Especially with the faster processors and higher RAM. Make use of the stock Power Widget to turn off features you aren't currently using, such as GPS and Wifi. You can also look into higher capacity batteries, though I haven't tried any myself, there are plenty available on amazon. It was kinda silly for Samsung to only pack a 1500mah battery in these things...

Hope some of this helps. Overall though, if you're having that much trouble with it and you're still in your 30-day instore return window, swap yours for another one. Don't give up hope just yet, these really are great phones if you manage to get one without any defects.

EDIT: I definitely think there's a break-in period for these phones, though. Mine took some tweaking and tinkering during the first few days, but alot of the annoyances I had with it dissipated rather quickly. Sometimes it really does seem like it just takes time for the phone to clue in to what you do or don't want happening and fall in line to obey... =)

 

[MassacrMan]

The screen does turn on when put in the charger, and when it's fully charged. (To prompt you to remove the charge as to not over charge).

It also turns on before you receive a MMS message, the message has to download so you dont receive it until a few seconds or so after the screen turns on.

 

[tcv]

Most of my problems disappeared when I stopped using Advanced Task Killer and SetCPU. But.........my GPS does not work AT ALL and battery life is still weak (but better then when I was using ATK)

The phone can lag sometimes but it isn't really common or very noticeable after I applied the OCLF.

 

[milk.day]

when it is awakening itself from sleep it is NOT on the charger or anywhere near the time im receiving a text message.

im 50 days in with it, so the att store refused to do anything with it other than swap it for a possible refurb which i dont really like the idea of.

sorry to say, im a few hours im heading back there and i think im just going to pick up an iphone4 and sell the captivate. too many issues.

 

[Endoran]

when it is awakening itself from sleep it is NOT on the charger or anywhere near the time im receiving a text message.

im 50 days in with it, so the att store refused to do anything with it other than swap it for a possible refurb which i dont really like the idea of.

sorry to say, im a few hours im heading back there and i think im just going to pick up an iphone4 and sell the captivate. too many issues.

So...you're deciding to drop your phone after it starts behaving? Am I understanding this correctly? You've had issues for 50 days. By the sounds of it ALL of the issues you can get...and 50 days later when your phone starts working a lot better you decide you'd better get a new phone? I'm not bashing you or anything I just am having a hard time seeing your logic here. If you do as you plan you will be out at least 200$.

 

[mesasone]

Remind me to never buy a used Captivate.

 

[Autolysis]

Meh, last night while at a Football game(Wreck 'em!), my phone was randomly clicking on other apps and constantly flipping screens.

It was weird.