Help Should I sent it back? Second thought about the Galaxy

[bjorck]

Hello Guys,
I got my Galaxy a week ago from handyattacke.de. I plan to use it in my consulting business, and therefore depend on it very much to work in practice. It is replacing a Nokia E71.
The first thing I did after unboxing was to load the “new pc studio” onto my laptop. It took me four hours to do that and upgrade the firmware of the phone (installed on windows 7), and I have a PhD in Computer Science. However, I did not mind spending time with this new baby. The current firmware reads: i7500xxii5 (Android 1.5). I have not rooted the phone or made any modifications.
Now, after a week of use, I can’t decide if I want to keep it or not.
Please help me decide – what is your opinion on these issues? Am I just whining for nothing or are there more people out there who have the same feeling?
Here are the limitations in order of importance for me;
1)Not good in-call sound quality. No matter if I use Bluetooth headset (top of the line new Jabra), the supplied headset, or the phone itself. The sound quality is not only mediocre – it is actually a bit towards what I would call “bad”. It seems like the people I talk to hear me a better than I hear them. I find the sound sort of distorted – a little bit like talking in a very old GSM phone (as opposed to a top modern 3G phone that this is).
2)Rejects incoming calls. In the course of a week, the phone has rejected a handful of phonecalls without even making a sound – it just rejects the calls, and they turn up as unanswered in the list of incoming calls. First I thought maybe the phone was set to quiet mode, or I just did not hear the signal, but I have now verified that it does this – all by itself. In a working week, all those calls would be from my clients, and it is important for me – and them – that I can answer them if I am available.
3)Short battery time. I tried it in a GSM network (not 3G) out in the countryside of Sweden – Battery time was good to excellent. However, at home in Stockholm with full 3G coverage, the battery is draining very fast. Add a little bit of wireless LAN to that, and the phone is not practical for me. Today is the first time since the 90-ties that I drive home from the city in my car without any battery left – the phone is dead. Of course, I could have loaded the battery in the car, if I just had the gear to do it. I can live without wireless LAN, but I need autosync with google apps and I do need 3G. With some loading in the car, it will probably work out fine. However, the Nokia E71 turned out more than two days of my useage before needing reloading.
4)Small virtual keyboard. Being a swede, I need the Swedish keyboard with

 

[pegasus21]

1) Can't comment since I don't use any bluetooth headsets

2) There's an active topic covering this. The short story is that it's a EMI shielding issue which is a hardware problem. I'm not sure if I see it myself too since mine is a bit different and it only affects 1 particular person. I only have 1 call forwarding active and it's when I'm unavailable. The call gets forwarded without even ringing and no call shows up in the call log. Luckily my provider has missed call alerts when I'm unavailable and this only happens with 1 person so far. All other calls are fine.

3) I myself was receiving really bad battery life with the stock firmware. After upgrading, with sync on, it was getting about 2-4 days of uptime on a full charge. However, recently just enabling background data drains my phone for no apparent reason even with sync disabled or with no google account set up. It can drop by 6-35% in an hour. Disabling background data and it'll drop about 1-2% per hour. I don't really understand this problem yet.

4) Have you tried other virtual keyboards? Like HTC's Touch Input. Perhaps you might need a hardware keyboard.

5) Yes. That's the only way that I know of too. I hope that will be changed in later versions.

All in, I agree that these problems are not so small that you can ignore it and I'll say just return it and get another phone. Some of the problems cannot be solved by you.

 

[Xenon]

My previous phone was HTC TyTN which has a full QWERTY keyboard, and
now I'm on Galaxy. Exactly two months since I bought it and I still don't find
it easy to type on the screen. It's not that I haven't adjusted to it, it is
just that I can't seem to find a proper "rythm" of typing. Sometimes I miss
keys and it is annoying, but it is even more annoying when I hit the keys but
too rapidly and the hit is not registered. The phone actually wants me to
type slower.

If needed to write a lot of email (which I don't) Galaxy would definitely not
be the phone I would pick.

With regards to the unlock key, I am not happy with it either.

Call quality also doesn't seem good to me. It is as if the phone software is
trying to do some equalization and failing at it! The sound sometimes audibly
changes pitch. It's hard to properly describe this problem, and even harder
to prove it. It could be that the problem is on the other end.

I recently bought an E71 as a gift for someone and while I like it, the screen
is not only small, colors are washed out. It is amazing how after Galaxy
most other screens seem pale and ugly.

 

[gie62001]

don't know about you guys but im getting tired of Galaxy. it's not that it's not a great phone which it is but for me it seems kind of slow (im on H8) and don't want to update further as read that II5 has more bugs than fixes
but the most annoying thing is support: look most of the phones are getting 1.6 (donut) and Motorola droid will come out with 2.0 (eclair) while we're stuck with 1.5 and god knows when if ever we get any updates not even talking about fixing the existing problems like the battery,call drops,shut downs and many more.
so as for me i'll just wait a little bit more till something new comes out and sorry i'll have to abandon this great phone as appears to me that i need more ram (say having my GPS navigation on plus calling and maybe listening to the music at once) try and you'll see that the phone gives up and becomes so so slow, slower than my old nokia n73
so i maybe Bjork you should send it back or just wait for a little bit longer till something new comes out so that you could replace with something better.
but the last word i want to say that despite all this the phone is great or rather the Android platform itself with multitasking and many more functions

 

[bjorck]

Thanks all for the comments here.

Any more ideas on this? I actually unpacked my old Nokia E71 today, and I am still impressed by that phone even in comparison to the Galaxy.

However, I would really want a phone like the galaxy that works fine.

/Fredrik

 

[akanbi]

If you really want an Android phone, I wouldn't recommend the Galaxy.

I won't go over all the problems again as most have already been mentioned (or just look at the threads in this forum), but the lack of support from Samsung just makes it worse.

HTC and Motorola are leading the way with Android phones and together they provide a range of phones that should meet most requirements.

I would return the Galaxy while you still can, and take a look at the Hero, Magic, Dext, or even T-Mobile Pulse.

My Galaxy is being sold off this week (at a big loss), and it's so bad that I haven't been using it for the last 2 weeks because I never know when the battery is going to die. I even tried using it without any sim card (no data, calls, or texts) just listening to music while commuting to work and the battery didn't last up to 2 days.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

motorola aint leading shizzle, most of their phones are dire and theyve not had android out long enough for us to think they are good with android at all

only solid brand with android is HTC.
however i moved to my galaxy from and n95black and apart from the camera everything about this galaxy is alot better.
i cant use t9 kb's and thats all normal phones have, this is rapid for sending sms and quick emails. there is no normal virtical phone without a qwerty kb that can match it

battery life is improved without the leather (feel) case

but then it seems im a lucky person with my device as i have no hangups no system freezes and no rebouts. now and again android throws up a wait message but its when im doing lots of stuff

then theres the screen, its mint, best ive seen
as an audio palyer there is no EQ but the player itself is good and its quick to locate the music files where as other phones can take 15mins+ to fully refresh the music library once the transfer is completed

as a "phone" this phone is good imo and im very happy with it
as an android, there are probably better ones

 

[akanbi]

Compare Mobile Phones -- Mobile Phone Comparisons and Reviews at CNET UK

 

[Cougar]

"Standby time (mfr) - 444 hours"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAH AAAAHAHAHAHAH *snort*

Where do they get these figures from? I doubt you could get 444 hours out of the battery if you switched the barsteward thing off for a month. That's eighteen and a half *days* ffs.

 

[Apox]

You know something is wrong when it has the largest battery on the market, yet has far worse batterylife than the closest competitors. Samsung need to pull their heads out of their behinds and come around with some useable firmwares soon.

 

[gie62001]

i see im not alone who's struggling with the phone,lol. actually im always caring my old nokia n73 as i never know when the biggest battery on galaxy may die on me seriously never since i bought this phone i carried it alone. just never trusted the battery and tell me why my n73 can last for about two weeks on full charge with moderate usage and its by far not even close to the battery galaxy has.
that's im going to wait for another android phone and then definitelly give up on this one doesn't matter they give us more crappy firmware updates or not.
on the other hand if the battery and ram was better i'd keep this phone as its the slimmest lightest best designed phone i ever had and i mean it (SE all of them from first series to K810i and then nokia n73), just feel sorry that i guess as someone said on this forum we where beta testers
thanx anyway everyone for trying to improve what manufacturers messed up or havent finished.
especially to KAM187 (and some others) im just surprised how loyal and dedicated this man have been and is to all of us.

 

[mrbrdo]

well actually after u disable 3g u can get about 4 days out of it which is okay for a smartphone like this (compared to iphone e.g.). but it's true that the battery indicator needs some work to display better values..
anyway after installing the Galaxo ROM i'm pretty happy with the phone, it works pretty good

 

[pegasus21]

It doesn't have to be 3g. Just the apn will give you close to 10days of standby time.

 

[akanbi]

It doesn't have to be 3g. Just the apn will give you close to 10days of standby time.

I don't think so. Like I said in my earlier post, I didn't even have a sim card in the phone and it only lasted 2 days! All I did was listen to music for around 3-4 hours.

The battery capacity is not the issue, it's the software (not sure if it's Android or Samsung's problem, but other Samsung phone users complain about poor battery life, just take a look at the Samsung Mobile support forum). There are smart-phones with less battery capacity that last longer, and Nokia's new E-Series phones with the same battery capacity last several days with 3G and background sync on.

 

[spottyelephant]

I came from an n95 and love my galaxy. However as time goes on, im starting to wonder if it's android itself i love, or the galaxy.

The galaxy is excellent, however the lack of official support is really starting to kill me.
My first issue i discovered was that 3-d didnt work. Which to be honest is a big thing for me. At first i contacted the developers of speedforge, who contacted samsung support, who confirmed it was a galaxy issue, and not a game issue (further validated by me trying other 3d stuff! Still, no fix.

The firmware "updates" im not even sure are updates - they seem to be changes that are not fully tested and break other stuff, and there is never an official release or change log.

Then the NPS. I cannot believe i got a cd in my galaxy box, that doesnt work with the phone. Mental!

Where i stand is that I think it's an awesome phone, but support is unnacceptable. If the hero had a better camera, i would switch to it. But until a good android phone with a camera that matches or exceeds the galaxy comes out, I'll be with my galaxy.

You just gotta decide what's important to you. My battery is solid and the phone is fast and smooth with an incredible screen. But if support doesnt pick up, i'll be switching.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

I don't think so. Like I said in my earlier post, I didn't even have a sim card in the phone and it only lasted 2 days! All I did was listen to music for around 3-4 hours.

The battery capacity is not the issue, it's the software (not sure if it's Android or Samsung's problem, but other Samsung phone users complain about poor battery life, just take a look at the Samsung Mobile support forum). There are smart-phones with less battery capacity that last longer, and Nokia's new E-Series phones with the same battery capacity last several days with 3G and background sync on.

you are either doing something wrong or have realy old firmware
keep it out of the case and see if it lasts longer
i use my phone for 3 hrs of traveling a day with music for most of that then using it as a normal phone through the day
i get just over 2days before i need to charge

i keep it out of the case

 

[akanbi]

you are either doing something wrong or have realy old firmware
keep it out of the case and see if it lasts longer
i use my phone for 3 hrs of traveling a day with music for most of that then using it as a normal phone through the day
i get just over 2days before i need to charge

i keep it out of the case

- Why is it assumed that the user is doing something wrong when a device doesn't work as advertised?
- Why should I have to do anything at all when Samsung are marketing the phone as one with great battery life due to capacity and amoled screen?
- Why should I be denied the option of a protective case just because of a flawed hardware design? This is the first phone I have ever heard of that using a case with it reduces battery life. It's so ridiculous that I'm actually laughing as I type this.

In any case (excuse the pun) I'm on II4 O2 UK version, but that's irrelevant.

Battery life is just one of the many problems with the phone, and all the issues just combine to make the daily use of the phone frustrating. The biggest issue being Samsung not providing software that works with the phone, no official software updates, and no official acknowledgement of the issues.

 

[Rastaman-FB]

- Why is it assumed that the user is doing something wrong when a device doesn't work as advertised?
- Why should I have to do anything at all when Samsung are marketing the phone as one with great battery life due to capacity and amoled screen?
- Why should I be denied the option of a protective case just because of a flawed hardware design? This is the first phone I have ever heard of that using a case with it reduces battery life. It's so ridiculous that I'm actually laughing as I type this.

no but if you are getting less that 2 days with no sim card inserted and only a few hours of music listening then there something up. there is no network connection at all so there shouldnt be any battery drain. you critisise someone else who says their device can last a long time with 2g networks enabled but yet when someone says you might be wrong you dont like it?

welcome to the internet

fact is this, I and many others can run this phone in 3g mode with the standard battery from full charge for 2 days on ii5 using it for music 3hrs per day and the odd bit of browsing a phone calls.

the case is a problem as it keeps the camera button held down which drains the battery.

if you want to bitch thats fine but be open to suggestion that you might be able to fix the issues you are reporting just by changing how you use the phone
there are other after market cases that fix this issue, the standard case is not practical anyway as you have to take it out of the case in an awkward fashion just to use it.

 

[bjorck]

Hi all,

Thanks for these replys. I have today send back my Samsung Galaxy (or actually two) to HandyAttacke.

It also turned out that HandyAttacke by mistake sent me O2 Germany-branded phones. They asked me to return then and get them exchanged, but I asked them to just reimburse me for them. For the moment, they said they will not pay back, but since I sent them back within 14 days, I think I should be ok?

In addition, one of the phones was used and has German SMSes in it on delivery?

Anyways. Thanks for the ideas and support.

/Fredrik (the thread starter)