I want to love this phone but ...

[Gardenpapaya]

I wanna love this phone but it has major issues . Issues I really hope get ironed out with a Froyo release (official or not)! Im comin from a Jailbroken 3GS which works much better , email comes down , rarely lags (with less inside!) and things were smoother. Im no fanboy , i switched to Android happily and voluntarily.

My main gripes :

1) Very laggy and choppy UI . I get delays (sometimes for 3 or more seconds) doing things from email to text to switching home screens. not everytime but enough for me to post this .
2) The email client is terrible and replacing it with K9 doesnt really solve the problem due to the above and that K9 isnt quite there yet - feels very late beta
3)Touchwiz - nuff said ( ive rooted and removed all the AT&T crap and use Launcher Pro
4)The phone simply has to many issues to have been released , its like they rushed it , cuz these issues are minor but together they are major

This phone is so great in many ways :

1)Screen is amazing
2)Form factor is beautiful
3)Android is superior in its customization , it really becomes YOUR phone
4)The support community is fantastic (and leans more towards the geek )
5)It feels great to get away from Apple
6)An app for anything you wanna change about the phone exists X3

The fact that I see im not alone with all of this saddens me , i really wanna love this phone ! If i see no improvement by my 29th day ( i bought on the 18th , 1st customer) , I may have to return . Help me Froyo , your my only hope ...

 

[Vtec]

Agreed

 

[Intervenient]

I 100% agree. I will more than likely be purchasing the iPhone 4 until Google sorts some of this stuff out. They can still remain open-source while forcing stricter rules on updates and the like for phone manufacturers. They just have to find a way to do it.

 

[picklesNICKLES]

I need my battery life to magically improve and the GPS to be fixed or im taking this puppy back =/


and i reallllly dont want to

 

[blazeplacid]

try launcher pro or another launcher

should speed up your phone alot

mine phone runs much better with a different launcher

 

[Baldilocks]

You can also try the Stage 1 Speed/Lag fix that I posted too.

I don't have any lag whatsoever.

 

[ArainLA]

I returned my iphone 4 and at this point if things dont improve I will have the iphone 4 back in the next 2 weeks as I try and see if I can live with the limitations.
Glad to know Im not only one.

Email client is a big issue!!!

 

[Baldilocks]

Yeah, see I always check my mail manually. I don't like having personal information pushed to a phone that I could lose somewhere.

 

[nmoline]

Here is how to fix battery. Turn off live wallpaper. Set advance task killer to aggressive when screen off. Use set cpu to limit cpu to 200-400mhz when screen off. I am getting mad battery life.

Also turning off live wallpaper fixes a lot of lag

 

[jabooh1]

Me too. I ditto all of the above and add one more thing. For be a bkuetooth keyboard is needed. I travel a lot and have not been convinced it can be done. I can find drivers but for unusual keyboards that have to be special ordered abd cant be returned if they dont work.

Oh and the apple predictive typing is a great feature that Droid CAN'T.

Aug 20th and counting.

 

[MaxPowers]

I thought bluetooth keyboards are supposed to work with the Galaxy S? You are telling me they don't?

 

[ArainLA]

I hate that I have to manage and turn of some of the cool things about this phone to get better battery life.

I bought a few chargers and USB cables to feed it when I can.

 

[Baldilocks]

Yeah, I seriously hope that any new software updates improve the battery life of this thing.

 

[JDM9499]

I'm sure it's entirely your fault for draining your battery to the point that is so disappointing to your expectations. The phone does so much, with amazing brightness and color. What kind of battery life would you expect from such a screen, and OS that does true backgrounding?

If you're wanting the iPhone 4, then why gripe about it here on an Android, Samsung forum? Just get the iPhone 4 and live your life with expectations that your battery will last longer, with your demands.

It really is incredible what some people expect a 1ghz processor phone to do for them, all while expecting the battery to last much longer than their previous phone.

Cheers.

 

[Gardenpapaya]

Did you even read what I said about the phone ?!

Check it again please.

I'm not complaining about battery life at all ( Where did i complain about the battery ?) . I simply said the phone has a lot of issues for what is advertised and expected .Judging by the forums as a whole and the responses to my post i am hardly alone .

You sound like an android fanboy JDM9499. Im not an android or apple fanboy - im a mobile phone / tech fanboy, period . Im simply stating that this is a great phone with great potential that its not living up to. If you read the starting post you will see that I , like alot of others believe in this phone and hope that Froyo can fix the issues that I and ALOT of others are finding.

Regarding your silly comment about what I expect from a 1 ghz processor .

Yes , I expect it to do better than my 3GS with it 600 mhz processor. Why would I not ?!

JDM9499 stop being an ass and read before you respond , thx

PS : Did i mention even something as basic as the battery indicator sucks ? It looks like its 80% but its really reading 56% ! WTF ?!

 

[DontMindMe]

No need to be rude garden papaya. He could have been responding to someone else, which im pretty sure he was.

I get delays every now and then, but its only when ive got a billion things running in the backgeound, which is expected. I go into ATK and kill them and its all better.

As for the email client thing, im not quite sure what youre complaining about. Be more specific please? Im using the gmail app, and in my opinion its better than the iphone version.

The battery indicator is working fine for me. Blue means youre good, yellow means watch out, and red means get to a charger. No need to get all messed up with numbers.

Not gonna comment on touchwiz. Any other complaints? Cause it seems like you went and hit enter for another complaint but you either forgot it or realised you didnt have one.
Be happy youve had a good phone before. Coming from a long line of terrible phones, i am more than pleased with a phone that can make calls and text and have battery left over to do anything.

 

[kingzq]

I also have problems with the default email client. I have posted a thread here about a week ago but not many people were responding. Glad to see somebody else is also pointing out the problem. The Gmail app certainly is great, but the email client for the other mailboxes are horrible, they basically don't auto check inbox at all. Well, maybe once everyday even I set the time interval as every 10mins. And yes the K9 email client won't work either, the only thing I find working is the MailDroid, it does great job of pushing emails, but has very limited functions, like it can't open the attachments except you save it to the phone first then open them from another app. Also I am not happy with the default music player, the button on the earphone can only do single click to play/pause, but won't do double click to move next or triple click to move back. The third big drawback I have with this phone is also about the botton on the earphone, it won't hang up calls like my old iphone would do when you click on it . I don't know if all these problems are specifically for Captivate or Android phones in general as this is my first android phone. I like the great freedom to customize the system, which is much more flexible than iphone. But I have to say the softwares from either samsung or the android community are far behind apple.

 

[ecb]

I have to agree with the OP.

I'm just not a big fan of TouchWiz. It adds some nice elements (I like the contacts app and the notifications area enhancements) but it comes at the cost of very poor performance. Using the spotlight search (the magnifying glass button) is just painful as it's slow to filter to the app or contact I want and then it takes a good 10 - 20 seconds to open up what I selected. I've tried out the Droid Incredible, EVO and the Nexus One and the lag on the Captivate is much worse than those phones.

I could live with the lag, but the gps is absolutely useless for navigation. I've used Google Navigation on other Android phones and it works almost as well as a stand alone Navi system. However, the GPS on the Captivate takes forever to get some sort of a lock, and then it loses the lock onto the satellites almost as quickly as it gets locked in.

There is also the fact that the signal strength drops by a good 10dBm if you are grasping the bottom of the phone when you hold it, but that is not a big issue for me as I can't say that I've dropped calls as a result.

I've seen a video of a European Samsung Galaxy S running a beta of TouchWiz with Android 2.2 and it seems to fly, so I do think the lag will be adressed by the Froyo update.

My biggest concern is that the lag and GPS issues were present in the Samsung Galaxy S released outside the USA over a month ago, so it's not like these issues just popped up. I'm very surprised that these known issues were not adressed before Saumsung's huge release of this line in the USA.

The fact that Samsung has already been slow in resolving these issues (especially the GPS) and their poor reputation for supporting their phones will make it very difficult to keep the Captivate if there is not a firmware update before my 30 days is up. I'm not looking for Froyo, just a fix to the GPS.

 

[jabooh1]

I thought bluetooth keyboards are supposed to work with the Galaxy S? You are telling me they don't?

From what I can tell, the KeyPro app lets you connect a BTKB to the phone. However people are having problems with it (visit w^3 mymobilegear dot com) to review. Also the keyboards that are supported are not something you can pick up in your local store (or at least not mine). So I don't want to invest $80 on something that might not work that I can't return.

 

[tekonus]

While the captivate isn't perfect, I really love the hell out of it compared to the iPhones I had before it. The only things I could possibly want would be:
1) sharper screen resolution
2) LED camera flash

Those aren't even complaints... just things I wish it had. I am use to charging my phone when I get home every night, so daily charging doesn't effect me at all. I don't consider myself a "power user" by far, but I do feel like I use the crap out of this phone all day. At the end of the day my battery is usually at 40-50%. I don't consider that horrible at all. Also... my GPS works fine, but I only use it for driving directions so I don't know for anything beyond that. I love the freedom of Android and have promised myself to NEVER buy another Apple product again. I hated Apple before the first iPhone, but it was actually the best phone you could get for a while. This is no longer the case.

Not to sound harsh, but personally I can't wait till August 18th so that we can have less threads like "I dunno guys, I think I'm gonna return this thing...". They are starting to get annoying to me. If you don't like your phone, return it. Don't go online looking for people to convince you to keep it. Like I said, I don't mean to sound harsh, as I'm sure a few will take this as mean... I just would like to be able to log in here and see some constructive posts, not a wall of complaints.

 

[Bearsyzf]

Well coming from a Iphone to the Captivate i absolutely love it, and i also believe once it goes to ( Froyo ) alot of these issues will be cleared up.... so i'll wait until the update and then see what i'm working with.

 

[JDM9499]

Wow, GardenPapaya, relax. I should have quoted the person I was actually referring to, "I need my battery life to magically improve and the GPS to be fixed or im taking this puppy back =/" <----that is not your quote. Sorry that you thought I was responding to your post, that was my mistake.

With that said, I am by far not a Fanboy by any means, for any OS. I too just love technology/gadgets.

I do expect a 1ghz phone to perform exceptionally well, but I do realize if I'm running multiple programs, with widgets refreshing and tracking location, with a live wallpaper happening at the same time, it simply will lag. (This is something I do, and need to stop.)

Just get whatever makes you happy, and whatever performs best to your expectations. Whether that be an Android phone or an iPhone. Either way they are both amazing, beautifully designed phones.

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

 

[JDM9499]

tekonus ---> "Not to sound harsh, but personally I can't wait till August 18th so that we can have less threads like "I dunno guys, I think I'm gonna return this thing...". They are starting to get annoying to me. If you don't like your phone, return it. Don't go online looking for people to convince you to keep it. Like I said, I don't mean to sound harsh, as I'm sure a few will take this as mean... I just would like to be able to log in here and see some constructive posts, not a wall of complaints."


-AMEN

 

[Gardenpapaya]

My apologies as well JDM9499

I think (hope) Froyo will resolve most of these issues if by nothing else than using all the RAM . Ive been reading that the phone is only using 256mb instead of the 512 it has.

Have a better day !

 

[Aerimus]

Help me Froyo , your my only hope ...

Don't you mean Frodo...or was that Obi Wan...hmmm.

And yes, I agree on all accounts but I would add the gps issue as well.