Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G

[JaeWeb]

Since there is no thread on the forum on this phone yet, I wanted to ask if any of you have it and what you like and do not like about it. I'm drooling over it. The Sensation, One S, GS2 are all too big for me, a 4" screen is the perfect size for me.

Just looking for feedback

Thanks all

 

[Ubizmo]

There are a few threads going, but not much activity. I guess a mid-tier Android phone just isn't that exciting. I'm also giving serious thought to getting one of these. I need to go into a T-Mobile store and spend some time looking at the display, because that's one of the points that gets lukewarm reviews. The pixel density is 235 ppi, I believe, using PenTile technology. I don't know much about this, but some people say that the result isn't as sharp as it could be.

I value my eyes, so screen clarity is important to me. That doesn't mean that it has to be the absolute best in its category, but I want it to be good. My BB Bold 9900 has 285 ppi, without PenTile, and I've gotten used to that sharpness. So the only way I can decide whether the Blaze is clear enough is to go an play with one for a while. Other than that, it looks pretty promising.

 

[JaeWeb]

There are a few threads going, but not much activity. I guess a mid-tier Android phone just isn't that exciting. I'm also giving serious thought to getting one of these. I need to go into a T-Mobile store and spend some time looking at the display, because that's one of the points that gets lukewarm reviews. The pixel density is 235 ppi, I believe, using PenTile technology. I don't know much about this, but some people say that the result isn't as sharp as it could be.

I value my eyes, so screen clarity is important to me. That doesn't mean that it has to be the absolute best in its category, but I want it to be good. My BB Bold 9900 has 285 ppi, without PenTile, and I've gotten used to that sharpness. So the only way I can decide whether the Blaze is clear enough is to go an play with one for a while. Other than that, it looks pretty promising.

I haven't had a BBerry in some years but i did go to T-Mobile today and the screen on the Blaze looks beautiful and crisp to me!

 

[Ubizmo]

I haven't had a BBerry in some years but i did go to T-Mobile today and the screen on the Blaze looks beautiful and crisp to me!

Thanks for doing so and reporting back. I did the same and found the screen resolution to be completely satisfactory.

So I watched eBay for a while and bought a used one, which I should have tomorrow or Friday. Then I'll be able to give more information about it.

I'll need to give some thought to the whole rooting question. It's my understanding that this phone comes with a huge amount of T-Mobile junk, and I'm the sort of person who likes to get rid of stuff like that. I always shrink the OS on my BBs. But I'm relatively new to Android, having only had Android phones for a few weeks total, so I don't know what can and can't be safely deleted, or whether the risk of breaking the phone is worth it.

I hope there's at least some way to hide the junk. On my BB I created a folder called "Junk" for the stuff I can't delete and then make that folder invisible. Maybe I can do something similar on the Blaze...

 

[CirkDroid]

The easy way to "hide" it.

Use a custom launcher program (no they don't require root, seriously, most things don't) such as launcher pro. There are many of them that allow you to hide applications in the app launcher.

Best of all, most of them can be set up to where you pretty much only even need to access the app launcher on a rare basis, anyway.

If you root the phone (spend 3 seconds looking at the other threads for this phone, it's been posted for weeks) you can then use programs such as titanium backup pro to uninstall system applications, or what is a safer option for many of them, is to freeze them. A frozen app won't be displayed in even the stock app launcher, won't ever be ran, and won't ever check for updates. It's only impact is yeah, the memory is taken up by the phone.

But don't think that your phone will "run better" because it has less "bloatware" installed. That's a real misnomer, seriously. Android ram utilization is not like your windows PC is.

For me, the main reason why I like to remove or freeze the "bloatware" is it makes it easier pertaining to market updates of apps. I don't ever want to run those apps, I mean, I PREFER google maps navigation, so why would I ever want to update tmobilenav.

 

[Ubizmo]

The easy way to "hide" it.

Use a custom launcher program (no they don't require root, seriously, most things don't) such as launcher pro. There are many of them that allow you to hide applications in the app launcher.

Best of all, most of them can be set up to where you pretty much only even need to access the app launcher on a rare basis, anyway.

What exactly do these launchers do? I understand that the Blaze comes with something called Touchwiz--isn't that a launcher already? Can I install a launcher on top of a launcher?

 

[CirkDroid]

Touchwiz is not a launcher, well not really. Touchwiz as a whole would completely replace the android launcher, ie: the android launcher that is on a stock device is literally not on a touchwiz phone, nor is it on a sense phone.

You might be confused on what a launcher really is. It's basically the interface that you use the phone with. It's true that samsung also replaces or adds applications that would be in stock android but much like microsoft word is not an operating system, the phone dialer or the email client are not the launcher.

So basically, when you load something like adw, or launcher pro, you do still have the touchwiz launcher, but when you set it to default, the phone will use the launcher program you downloaded instead.

For example, launcher pro has more flexibility with the dock. I can have scrolling docks (where you swipe the dock and a new set of dock launch slots are available) or have gesture actions from the dock. That is, the dock is not just a touch the icon to make a program launch, I can swipe that dock button up, (adw also supports down swiping I think) and an entirely different program or shortcut can be activated. I have more options for the home screens, and there's a bunch of other stuff as well. I suspect most people use custom launchers because they have more customization options than the regular launcher does. Personally I like them because they allow me to use fewer home screens, and I almost never have to go into the app launcher. I only use 3 home screens, but I could probably also get away with using two. I just happen to like to keep the home screen relatively clear of stuff (only 4x1 widgets on it) because I like to have a hot girl as my background.

:thumbup:

Oh yeah, another big plus....a lot of the launchers allow you to modify the grid size settings, or even resize widgets that are not normally able to be resized. That is, I can have more icons on a screen with launcher pro than I could with the stock launcher, and an example of resizing a widget is that I can stretch or shrink the google voice widgets to either hide information, or make it so I can read the entire voicemail all from the widget.

If I don't want to use that launcher application anymore, maybe I'm bored of it, maybe I don't like how it works.....just like a replacement text messaging app, all I have to do is either uninstall it, or set it to no longer be the default launcher program, and 2 seconds later my phone works however it is then set to.

 

[Ubizmo]

You might be confused on what a launcher really is.

I definitely am! The last Android phone I tried was the LG G2x, which had nothing like Touchwiz. Hopefully things will become clearer when I actually have the Blaze in my hands.

It's basically the interface that you use the phone with.

Okay, thanks. Since that's important I'll look into launchers early on.

So basically, when you load something like adw, or launcher pro, you do still have the touchwiz launcher, but when you set it to default, the phone will use the launcher program you downloaded instead.

So if I set some other launcher as the default Touchwiz goes away, but does it still use CPU and RAM?

If I don't want to use that launcher application anymore, maybe I'm bored of it, maybe I don't like how it works.....just like a replacement text messaging app, all I have to do is either uninstall it, or set it to no longer be the default launcher program, and 2 seconds later my phone works however it is then set to.

Maybe I can find an article that compares the features of the various launchers.

 

[CirkDroid]

So if I set some other launcher as the default Touchwiz goes away, but does it still use CPU and RAM?

No, and yes, but not in the way you think.

Android is not windows, or whattever. Your phone is not a desktop.

Say that a few times.

Let's address the easy part by going back in time with Android a little bit. I don't know how things were back in the original days, but when I first started using an Android phone it seemed like everyone out there was obsessed with battery life, and hated apps that "drained their battery".

Somewhere out there, is some guy doing coke of a model's uhm, backside, because they got rich from writing the first task-killer app.

People know that with a computer, if a program is open, it takes up resources. They assume the same logic is true with their phone.

What they forget, is that Android and other systems like it, were designed with the fact that they run off batteries, and have significantly lower specs. Not only do they have far less OS overhead, but they manage the other resources such as RAM much more efficiently.

Because they have to. Seriously, I'm sure the Samsung Galaxy S3 is a crazy fast phone, but just because you might have a computer, even a very old one with fewer cores, and a slower ghz rating........doesn't mean anything. If you somehow put the two in a head to head competition, even a $400 crapbox special would smoke the living daylights out of the phone.

With Android, if a program is in open memory, it is there for one of two reasons. It might actually be running. For example the clock, will almost certainly always be running.

Or it might be another app, that is frequently called by other apps. Android is designed to keep things in memory that have been opened recently to CONSERVE BATTERY LIFE. If it's in memory and not doing anything (such is the case with probably 50% of the processes in your phone) it is not........using the CPU in any way, whatsoever. But if that app is needed for whatever reason by Android or more specifically, by another app, or as a result of another app, Android will re-open it. Technically, that action uses cpu cycles.

Bah, forget all that, here's a much simpler way to explain it. Right now I have about 750megs of free "ram" in my phone, this seems to be about normal for me.

If I were to go to the market and download a bunch of really large applications that number of course would drop.

Would my battery life drop, assuming I used my phone in the exact same way and I never used those programs?

Nope!

Most importantly.........just don't worry about the performance issues. The phone is fast, crazy fast, especially for how affordable it is. It's a beast.

As for battery life, it's really simple. The only things that really make a SIGNIFICANT effect on your battery life is how big the screen is, how bright you have the screen set for, how often the phone is sending or receiving wifi/mobile data, and how often it is vibrating.

For phones in this screen size, don't expect to be able to watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica on a single charge and you'll be fine.

 

[Ubizmo]

Most importantly.........just don't worry about the performance issues. The phone is fast, crazy fast, especially for how affordable it is. It's a beast.

As for battery life, it's really simple. The only things that really make a SIGNIFICANT effect on your battery life is how big the screen is, how bright you have the screen set for, how often the phone is sending or receiving wifi/mobile data, and how often it is vibrating.

For phones in this screen size, don't expect to be able to watch the first season of Battlestar Galactica on a single charge and you'll be fine.

Thank you very much for that explanation; it was very helpful.

The Blaze arrived yesterday, so I spent some time trying to learn my way around and get things set up. I found that Touchwiz does allow me to dump things into a folder in the Applications list, so that helps me not have to scroll through stuff I'll never use every time I'm looking for something.

I've reduced the number of home screens to two, for the things I expect to use a lot.

Concerning screen brightness, I bought an app called Lux that claims to be better than the stock OS at regulating that. I find that if I set brightness to "Auto", it tends to make the screen brighter than it needs to be when indoors. Lux lets me set it the way I want it.

As for vibration, I don't like all that so it's all turned off, except of course in "silent mode".

Also, I think I have everything except weather and email set to manual update. I don't need to have Facebook and Twitter refreshing in the backbground; same with RSS feeds.

So we'll see how the battery holds up. I know better (now) than to make any judgments for a week or so. I'll be doing a lot of fiddling for a while, which uses more battery, and in any case batteries seem to have a "break-in" period. I don't understand it but I've seen it enough times to believe it.

Anyway, so far, so good. My Swype text entry is reasonably fast and accurate, considering I'm just getting used to it again. Swype itself seems improved from the last time I tried it.

I'm keeping GPS turned off, for the time being. On my BB I keep it turned on, because it doesn't do anything unless an app actually needs it. But in Android I'm not so sure.

 

[st satin stain]

I recommend JuiceDefend, a free governance for system battery use; it's not a task killer, task killer I dont consider good. JD regulates the use of the battery by data synch etc. I liked the free version so much that I ultimately got JD Ultimate. Tried the beta for awhile - it stable enough - but I dont recommend it for most. Most folk need only the free version for significant battery saving. There's another one some friends use, 2x Battery.
I rooted my phone after discovering that ICS does not have Flash, and there are some other negatives such as resource use greater. PCM.com has these facts in a glowing review of ICS. I decided to buy next phone with ICS installed. I'm happy with the Blaze, so rooted it and the improvements are even more marvelous than unrooted phone. You dont need to root the phone for JD to work. I just wanted to rid the Blaze of some battery sucking apps I dont like. Be extremely careful if you decide to root. Check xda developers site. Be even more careful about the apps you remove; you can end up with a Blaze paperweight.
Try JuiceDefender Free. Remove task killer apps.