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Pros and cons of Samsung Captivate?

Inkoryu

Lurker
Nov 5, 2010
3
0
So I've been looking through lots of topics and reviews, and I really want just a simple answer on what really works well and what doesn't work well on the Captivate. I've gathered that the GPS isn't the greatest, but that's not extremely important to me. I hear some things about random shut downs, lagging, etc. But what is the status of the captivate now? What is rooting, and how does that affect the phone? I'd really appreciate anything anybody can tell me so I can decide if I want to buy this phone or not (vs. the HTC Aria). FYI, I'm a college student, and mainly want to use my phone for email, web browsing, texting, social apps, etc. Minor use for calendars, and stuff like that. Based on this, what can you guys tell me?
 
Thanks, that link was rather helpful. I'm pretty convinced in buying a Captivate now, especially with all of the customization that can be done once the phone is rooted.

One thing I'd like some input on though is how is the free texting app on Android? I use TextFree on my iPod, how comparable is the speed of the Android equivalent? If it's good enough, I'll stick with my crappy 200 messages text plan and get a 2GB data plan, otherwise I'll probably get an unlimited texting plan with a 200MB data plan, unless you guys can convince me otherwise that 200MB won't be enough... which I'm slightly worried that it won't be. I'll probably have to get the 2GB and stick it out with the free plan no matter how bad it may be...which I'm hoping it isn't.
 
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great screen, you will be amazed with it. awesome camera phone im my honest opinion. the HD video it records isnt as well executed as the iphone but its nice knowing you can return decent quality videos off your phone. i love this phone. minus the GPS. if the GPS was perfect this phone would be perfect. I never experience any shutdowns or lag what so ever. I just got my phone 6 days ago so it might be they fix that issue with the newer builds.
 
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Pros:
Screen - size and brightness
Swype - magnificent way of entering data

Cons:
GPS
Battery life
Lag
Battery overheat
Issues texting
No camera flash
No front facing camera
and, a few other issues that I had when I owned one.

All that said, if the GPS had worked properly, I likely would have kept it and been fine with that - but I had paid $199 minus a $25 credit, today (3 mos later give or take) and some offer it for next to nothing - that really blows.
 
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I was in the same boat with you...Captivate vs. Aria. The aria being around $100 cheaper on Ebay. I would recommend going into an AT&T store and playing with one then playing with the other. What you'll find is that the Aria is way too small of a screen when compared to the Captivate. You'll notice the difference in area & brightness almost immediately. To me, the Captivate was more worth it. And look at it this way...if you don't get it what else are you going to get assuming that the iPhone4 is not in the runnings.

As for the Captivate itself, the bad is that the GPS is still unusable for most of us, Froyo is taking forever still, although I have a leaked ROM on mine (works fine), and the battery drains pretty fast. Have a charger everywhere you go. For me that is Work (USB), car (Cig plug), and home(AC).

The good is that the screen is great! It's fast, and it does everything that it should app-wise. I think Android is just like a PC where quirks happen where you have to restart the phone every now and again whileas the iPhone4 is more like an Apple where you don't have to do too many restarts, but everything app-wise seems restrictive and sterile.

The only other Android phone that I've played with that is better than the Captivate is the Droid X. Now that thing is a monster screen-wise and quality-wise, but alas it is a Verizon-only phone.

As for the SMS question, I just moved over to Google Voice and their SMS system and removed the 200 messages for $5. It works fine; it just sucks having to tell everyone in your address book to use the new GV number. I seem to text way more now that it's free, go figure.
 
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I'm hearing lots of things in this topic, but I'm still probably going to get the Captivate. Now all that I need to learn is how to optimize the phone, probably by rooting it and stuff. I guess the last question I have is if there is some type of tutorial for using Google Voice texting with the phone. After that, I'm sure I can find tutorials on everything else I may need...
 
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Inkoryu,

the captivate is a lovely device..

Very sexy :)

I have had an aria as well

Pros for the Captivate:
Fast(in my opinion)...The screen transitions/animations are a bit much sometimes which makes it appear kind of laggy but honestly no complaints here....

Such a beautiful screen

I am in love with the music player

The camera is great even without a flash

Cons:
I don't really like touchwiz except for the colors it adds to the phone which make the colors POP

GPS is a major issue...for some....

I have an issue with downloading apps and i have to factory reset my phone from time to time...this is my second captivate

Does get hot

Signal issues....kind of like the iphone, if you hold it a certain way...it loses signal and will be without signal if your in a low coverage area as well


As far as an aria goes

The aria is the sexiest at&t device i have owned besides an xperia & Captivate

I liked everything about it...
Personally, i'd recommend an Aria
over a captivate just because
it seems like it meets a lot of your needs
and it's a great device

Besides HTC seems to stand by their phones more so than Samsung
with their devices....
 
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You're in a fanboi hotbed. Don't expect any unbiased opinions here.

These people love their Captivates, and can't stand to hear dissention. if you disagree, you'll be shouted down and banned.

The Samsung phones are flawed in many ways. if you can accept those flaws, they are fast and have nice screens. Good luck.
 
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You're in a fanboi hotbed. Don't expect any unbiased opinions here.

These people love their Captivates, and can't stand to hear dissention. if you disagree, you'll be shouted down and banned.

The Samsung phones are flawed in many ways. if you can accept those flaws, they are fast and have nice screens. Good luck.
in which ways? im aware of the gps, but the thing is mine works fine as does everyone i know that has one, but there is a gps issue still. what other flaws?

name any other phone that doesnt have flaws?name one phone on tmoblie, since that seems to be your favorite, that doesnt have flaws. alot of g2's have faulty hinges since you brought up how much a better phone it was
 
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I don't consider myself a fanboy. I just really dig my phone. If I didn't I would have returned it.

I don't understand why people keep phones they don't like. The 30-day trial period is there for you to trial the phone and be able to exchange if you don't. If you didn't fully test the phone before your 30 days are up, why would you blame the device?
 
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the way i see it
is...it's like a relationship.
you have issues...nothing is perfect
yet you try to work through them...give it time
to see if you can make things work...
a phone is like a relationship because your pretty much stuck with it for almost 2 years
unless you get a new one at full retail

For a lot of people...this is the best phone they could get on at & t.

People hate the backflip

People hate the xperia

people don't give the aria enough credit

and to be honest, that other motorola phone is in the same boat as the backflip...

It's called settling...which is what i believe a lot of people are doing...
i just don't understand why people get so worked up when people complain about the phone...and that is any phone...the droids, the mytouch families, the evo's, epics, etc. etc.

i think people keep these phones past buyer's remorse because they are told they will be receiving this update or that update at a specific time yet never do....
 
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I don't consider myself a fanboy. I just really dig my phone. If I didn't I would have returned it.

Same here. I wasn't even "rolling the dice" for Froyo/2.2, because even with 2.1 it was pretty awesome.

In the event I had gone past the return date and I didn't like the phone, I'd spend whatever money was necessary to have a phone I liked (whether that was an iPhone 4, or a different phone and another carrier).

At this point I've had fun tweaking my Captivate, it's been an excellent business tool, provided plenty of entertainment, etc.
 
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I have had my Captivate since launch day, and I feel like I've gotten to know
it very well. I had the Iphone4 for 28 days as well as the 3g and 3gs, there was a huge leap from 3g to 3gs, but the I4 was not much better than the 3gs.

Back on topic, the captivates biggest flaw is GPS, but this flaw has been made worse by user error. If you go to lbstestmode and adjust the settings you can make your GPS a lot better or a lot worse. Please research the best settings before making those adjustments. I have settled on the best settings for my phone and I honestly have no complaints about my GPS performance.

Another Captivate flaw is Samsung support for upgrades. Well XDA developers solved that problem, I have had Froyo 2.2 on my phone for over a month now and it works great. With the Voodoo lag fix Cognition rom my phone scores in upper 1500s on the Quadrant test constantly.

In conclusion I would like to inform you guys, that you are in possession of one of the best phones on the market, if you take the time to research. Yes, I would have liked my phone to come out of the box capable of what it can do now, but this is a weakness(or strentgth) of Android. Check out XDA developers website, they are doing great things over there.
 
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I have had my Captivate since launch day, and I feel like I've gotten to know
it very well. I had the Iphone4 for 28 days as well as the 3g and 3gs, there was a huge leap from 3g to 3gs, but the I4 was not much better than the 3gs.

Back on topic, the captivates biggest flaw is GPS, but this flaw has been made worse by user error. If you go to lbstestmode and adjust the settings you can make your GPS a lot better or a lot worse. Please research the best settings before making those adjustments. I have settled on the best settings for my phone and I honestly have no complaints about my GPS performance.

Another Captivate flaw is Samsung support for upgrades. Well XDA developers solved that problem, I have had Froyo 2.2 on my phone for over a month now and it works great. With the Voodoo lag fix Cognition rom my phone scores in upper 1500s on the Quadrant test constantly.

In conclusion I would like to inform you guys, that you are in possession of one of the best phones on the market, if you take the time to research. Yes, I would have liked my phone to come out of the box capable of what it can do now, but this is a weakness(or strentgth) of Android. Check out XDA developers website, they are doing great things over there.

+1: The Captivate is an excellent device....I was about to pick up the Nokia N8 but decided to take a hiatus to Android from Symbian. No real comparison there-except for the camera-but there should be no iphone comparison..2 different niches, so they can both co-exist. I don't get most of the rants...

Regarding the GPS..since I changed the supl server to google, port 7276 the GPS time to lock is almost a non issue...anybody waiting forever for a lock should try that. If I get bored I'll move back to Symbian..but for now I'm not looking back
 
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If you are not going to root then I would skip this phone, simple as that. I bought the Captivate on day one, GPS took forever to lock even after JH7. The screen is beautiful and the phone has it pros but Samsung just doesn't do it for me. Returned it after 3 months and got an iPhone4, many thanks to AT&T for making that possible. Call me whatever you want, my iPhone4 has never given me an issue. I don't care about rooting, wanted a phone that worked and functioned as advertised, the Captivate is not that phone.

Cons:

- Connecting to Cisco access points is an issue.
- Email app needs work, not ideal for corporate environments
- Lag
- Battery life not that great
- GPS
- Lack of upgrades, HTC/Motorola have upgraded all their new and/or top phones, no word from Samsung as to when the Captivate will get Froyo
- Samsung support is horrible, anything they say should be double checked by the FBI for accuracy
 
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Cons:

- Connecting to Cisco access points is an issue.

The Cisco access point thing should be fixed by Froyo. So that may be a non-issue hopefully soon. After I upgraded to a beta Froyo build all my wireless access connection issues went away. Before that I couldn't connect to AP's at my work.

The main issue I have with the phone is the GPS. Its just plain weaker than my previous phone (Nokia E71). At this point I think its a hardware issue so its just not going to get fixed. For a test I tried running google maps while my wife was driving and I noticed that it worked much better if I left the metal back off the phone. It was staying constantly locked with reporting 5 meters accuracy and it was right on location. When I put the back cover back on it got less accurate.

The main thing is going to effect is turn-by-turn navigation. Getting off here and there throws that right off. I mostly use the GPS to zoom into my location on google maps so I can check traffic, not navigation and it works just fine for that.

Everything else on the phone works great, the screen is awesome, the battery life is good, the Swype keyboard is great. The form factor is exactly what I was looking for. I've never really had issues with Lag, but then again I barely remember what touchwiz looks like (LauncherPro is the way to go).

I think its a great phone unless you are looking to do turn-by-turn navigation because its not just not going to hack that.
 
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Turn by turn on my captivate couldn't be more accurate. Shows my car crossing a street as I'm crossing it.

I think I may have been lucky and got a good one.

Either that, or my using GPS Test the first time I didn't get a lock somehow kicked my gps chip into proper behavior.

Since I have Lookout and having asked a few questions about GPS chip...I just keep GPS checked all the time on my phone.

Unlike previous phones where activating the GPS means you are actively calling on the GPS chip, in the Captivate, unless you're using Navigation, the chip is sitting idle (like the great debate about apps in memory when we discuss Task Killers LOL). The only time it is active is when you see it in the notification bar, which it never is when I'm not using Navigation.

It could be that leaving GPS on 24/7 helps to get the almost-instant lock and accuracy I have.
 
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Turn by turn on my captivate couldn't be more accurate. Shows my car crossing a street as I'm crossing it.

I think I may have been lucky and got a good one.

Either that, or my using GPS Test the first time I didn't get a lock somehow kicked my gps chip into proper behavior.

Since I have Lookout and having asked a few questions about GPS chip...I just keep GPS checked all the time on my phone.

Unlike previous phones where activating the GPS means you are actively calling on the GPS chip, in the Captivate, unless you're using Navigation, the chip is sitting idle (like the great debate about apps in memory when we discuss Task Killers LOL). The only time it is active is when you see it in the notification bar, which it never is when I'm not using Navigation.

It could be that leaving GPS on 24/7 helps to get the almost-instant lock and accuracy I have.

Huh? What do you mean you "keep GPS checked"?
 
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