OK, with the the posts here with people having issues, and toubles, I thought I would post up a story, or review of a weekend out of town with the Captivate. On this little trip I really put the phone to a good test to actually see if I was going to keep it, or keep looking.
I start by saying this is my second Captivate. My first one had a couple of fatal issues that kept me from using the phone reliably.
So, with no further adeu:
Last weekend we went across state to attend my cousins wedding. My wife did the driving (we were in her SUV and she loves to drive) so that left me sitting in the passengers seat free to mess around. On the way, I listened to music for about an hour, using the included headphones. The music sounded nice and clear and well defined and did a decent job of blocking some of the noise from the open sunroof and we spead along at about 80mph. After an hour or so I got a phone call. So i used the headset for the call, again the call sounded clear and the caller (i asked them) reported that I sounded great and there was little or no background noise. (Remember there was an open sunroof just above my head).
After the call I decided to fire up Nesoid (a nintendo emulator app) and played some oldschool Nintendo games until we arrived to our hotel. Throughout the trip, I used Google latitude to update our location to our expecting family accross state, and several other vehicles in our carivan of family and friends as we traveled across state. Most of the time, my signal was locked on in less than 10 seconds.
That evening, we where winding down in the hotel room. I decided to watch Avatar on my phone. So for the next 3 hours or so we laid there in bed watching the movie. It played back great! The quality was excellent, and better than what you would expect watching a movie on your phone. After the movie, I plugged in at 36%.. no too shabby.
The next morning, we woke up and relized, OH MY GOD! We didn't bring any coffee! I opened my phone and activated voice search and said, "Locate Starbucks" within about 15 seconds, I was shown there was one just a few blocks down from the hotel. Hooray. Throughout that morning I used the phone off and on the hotel wifi to check things online and such.
That evening it was time to head to the wedding. We relized we forgot to bring the invitation so we did not know the address of the church. My wife did remember the name of it. She tried to call a few others in the family to ask, but they must have been away from their phones, no doubt prepairing for the event. I thought I would try using Google Navigator to see what woud happen. I said, "navigate to, blabla bla church" and to my surprise (since all this talk of broken GPS) about 15 seconds later, the phone started giving directions to the church. It successfully and accuratly brought us to the curch accross town without issue. I used the google navigate 3 other times and it successfully brought us to our desired destinations (the reception hall, a gas station, and a super market) without issue. That night, I forgot to plug in to charge, but even after all that use, and sitting overnight, I noticed it was at 53% when I woke up. Again, that was with wifi, blue tooth, and gps on, and a few widgets running and updating various things. So i figured, screw it, lets see how long i can go before it dies.
On the trip home, I used latitude a handful of times, an hour or so of music playback, and an hour of Nesoid, and about a half hour phone call.
In the evening, after getting home, I used it more on wifi to read some on these forums, a few posts, and some catching up on news and engadget articles. When I finally pluged in again, here are the stats:
Since last charge:Battery Charge; 9%, Time since charge: 27h 7m. Display 4h 29m, Idle 22h 39m, maps 41m 39s, Media player 1h 4m, Nesoid 56m, phone calls 27m, wifi 2%, OS 2%, Blue tooth 3%.
So, in a nutshell. I used the phone as I normally would and most folks would on a trip out of town. I was very happy and even surprised by the performance. At no time did I feel dissappointed or let down by the performance or features. It worked near perfectly for all the things I did with it. Even the GPS. I will say though, that the area we were in where I was using the navigation was kind of a desert type area. Few trees and a lot of wide open spaces with only small hills surrounding some areas. In town the buildings were fairly small, none of them more then 5-10 levels tall. Latitude did take about a minut or more to update when we were going over the mountain passes where we were surrounded by trees and very tall, rocky peaks.
So, after this weekend of really putting the Capt thru the paces (in my opinion) I am very happy with the performance, it kept me up to date, entertained and even saved our asses in a few situations (getting to the church by name only). I think Im going to keep my Captivate!
I look forward to the updates, I cant imagine what this sucker is going to be in a few months.
If you think Im a Capt. fanboi or anything, think again. Read some of my other posts of issues and troubles I had at first. I was ready to give up on this thing. But after exchanging my first one, this second one rocks!
Please feel free to post your road test stories here as well. Try to stay factual and on subject of what you did, how you used it, and under what conditions. If you had issues, how did you fix them? Or were you able to? What apps did you use to do certain things.
I want these to be factual, usefull and informational about the ups and downs of this phone. Please refrain from complaining, arguing and flaming, there are plenty other posts for that crap. Hopefully we can have a few good informational threads about others sharing their stories about using it in different situations, which apps and features you did/didnt use and your overall experience with the Captivate. For those of use who like it, lets help eachother get the most out of using them.
Thanks! I hope you find some of this useful and informational.
I start by saying this is my second Captivate. My first one had a couple of fatal issues that kept me from using the phone reliably.
So, with no further adeu:
Last weekend we went across state to attend my cousins wedding. My wife did the driving (we were in her SUV and she loves to drive) so that left me sitting in the passengers seat free to mess around. On the way, I listened to music for about an hour, using the included headphones. The music sounded nice and clear and well defined and did a decent job of blocking some of the noise from the open sunroof and we spead along at about 80mph. After an hour or so I got a phone call. So i used the headset for the call, again the call sounded clear and the caller (i asked them) reported that I sounded great and there was little or no background noise. (Remember there was an open sunroof just above my head).
After the call I decided to fire up Nesoid (a nintendo emulator app) and played some oldschool Nintendo games until we arrived to our hotel. Throughout the trip, I used Google latitude to update our location to our expecting family accross state, and several other vehicles in our carivan of family and friends as we traveled across state. Most of the time, my signal was locked on in less than 10 seconds.
That evening, we where winding down in the hotel room. I decided to watch Avatar on my phone. So for the next 3 hours or so we laid there in bed watching the movie. It played back great! The quality was excellent, and better than what you would expect watching a movie on your phone. After the movie, I plugged in at 36%.. no too shabby.
The next morning, we woke up and relized, OH MY GOD! We didn't bring any coffee! I opened my phone and activated voice search and said, "Locate Starbucks" within about 15 seconds, I was shown there was one just a few blocks down from the hotel. Hooray. Throughout that morning I used the phone off and on the hotel wifi to check things online and such.
That evening it was time to head to the wedding. We relized we forgot to bring the invitation so we did not know the address of the church. My wife did remember the name of it. She tried to call a few others in the family to ask, but they must have been away from their phones, no doubt prepairing for the event. I thought I would try using Google Navigator to see what woud happen. I said, "navigate to, blabla bla church" and to my surprise (since all this talk of broken GPS) about 15 seconds later, the phone started giving directions to the church. It successfully and accuratly brought us to the curch accross town without issue. I used the google navigate 3 other times and it successfully brought us to our desired destinations (the reception hall, a gas station, and a super market) without issue. That night, I forgot to plug in to charge, but even after all that use, and sitting overnight, I noticed it was at 53% when I woke up. Again, that was with wifi, blue tooth, and gps on, and a few widgets running and updating various things. So i figured, screw it, lets see how long i can go before it dies.
On the trip home, I used latitude a handful of times, an hour or so of music playback, and an hour of Nesoid, and about a half hour phone call.
In the evening, after getting home, I used it more on wifi to read some on these forums, a few posts, and some catching up on news and engadget articles. When I finally pluged in again, here are the stats:
Since last charge:Battery Charge; 9%, Time since charge: 27h 7m. Display 4h 29m, Idle 22h 39m, maps 41m 39s, Media player 1h 4m, Nesoid 56m, phone calls 27m, wifi 2%, OS 2%, Blue tooth 3%.
So, in a nutshell. I used the phone as I normally would and most folks would on a trip out of town. I was very happy and even surprised by the performance. At no time did I feel dissappointed or let down by the performance or features. It worked near perfectly for all the things I did with it. Even the GPS. I will say though, that the area we were in where I was using the navigation was kind of a desert type area. Few trees and a lot of wide open spaces with only small hills surrounding some areas. In town the buildings were fairly small, none of them more then 5-10 levels tall. Latitude did take about a minut or more to update when we were going over the mountain passes where we were surrounded by trees and very tall, rocky peaks.
So, after this weekend of really putting the Capt thru the paces (in my opinion) I am very happy with the performance, it kept me up to date, entertained and even saved our asses in a few situations (getting to the church by name only). I think Im going to keep my Captivate!
I look forward to the updates, I cant imagine what this sucker is going to be in a few months.
If you think Im a Capt. fanboi or anything, think again. Read some of my other posts of issues and troubles I had at first. I was ready to give up on this thing. But after exchanging my first one, this second one rocks!
Please feel free to post your road test stories here as well. Try to stay factual and on subject of what you did, how you used it, and under what conditions. If you had issues, how did you fix them? Or were you able to? What apps did you use to do certain things.
I want these to be factual, usefull and informational about the ups and downs of this phone. Please refrain from complaining, arguing and flaming, there are plenty other posts for that crap. Hopefully we can have a few good informational threads about others sharing their stories about using it in different situations, which apps and features you did/didnt use and your overall experience with the Captivate. For those of use who like it, lets help eachother get the most out of using them.
Thanks! I hope you find some of this useful and informational.
and keep the good, subjective, informational, on subject stories/reviews coming! 
