i upgraded my captivate to 2.2 yesterday!

[sapv]

guys: i waited waited waited like so many of you but finally gave up yesterday. i flashed the I897UCJI6-OCD-REV02-Low-designgears.exe and got 2.2 on my phone. i also downloaded I897UCJF6-final-OCD-REV0.exe (to get back to 2.1). just in case samsung/at&t decides to roll out 2.2 officially. i know we had an update after I897UCJF6 (JH7 i guess). if i get back to I897UCJF6, will i be able to upgrade to 2.2 through kies (when samsung releases the official froyo)?. pls let me know.

 

[shoman94]

Yes...After jf6 you can get back to jh7 thru kies.

 

[sapv]

Yes...After jf6 you can get back to jh7 thru kies.

may be a dumb question..can i upgrade directly from jf6 to 2.2 (when it is officially available!!) instead of moving to jh7 first...i think i can but wanted to double check...

 

[sremick]

That's a very, very old leaked early development build that's been since found to have plenty of bugs. I don't know anyone still using it at this point or any reason why a person would want to.

If you want to go the 2.2 route, you're far better-off using one of the modern custom hacked ROMs that are all based on much newer 2.2 code from various sources. They work much better and have numerous issues resolved. Even DesignGears himself maintains two different Captivate ROMs, neither of which is based on that old beta code.

 

[sapv]

That's a very, very old leaked early development build that's been since found to have plenty of bugs. I don't know anyone still using it at this point or any reason why a person would want to.

If you want to go the 2.2 route, you're far better-off using one of the modern custom hacked ROMs that are all based on much newer 2.2 code from various sources. They work much better and have numerous issues resolved. Even DesignGears himself maintains two different Captivate ROMs, neither of which is based on that old beta code.

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. Eventhough i took the old route the phone seems to work fine as a 2.2 device. I too noticed some bugs and hence my dilemma to get back to stock firmware. Can you please tell me where i can find the latest 2.2 (something like the one i flashed without rooting the phone, I897UCJI6-OCD-REV02-Low-designgears.exe). Is there a place where i can find the latest build of 2.2 odin 1 click .exe file to flash on my phone? if there is one then today i will get back to stock and then try it again. Please let me know. Thanks

 

[sremick]

Can you please tell me where i can find the latest 2.2

Always best to start with the Captivate FAQ (a forum sticky, in many users' signatures and mentioned in most threads):

ROMs and Flashing - CapFAQ

 

[sapv]

Always best to start with the Captivate FAQ (a forum sticky, in many users' signatures and mentioned in most threads):

ROMs and Flashing - CapFAQ

Just one more question. I see many ROMs and lot of negative/caution about flashing the phone and stuff. I used odin 1-click flash to install the 2.2 on my captivate. are all these ROMs the same. Odin 1-click flash stuff? Also, when i read the pros and cons..i see that the 2.2 i got on my phone (eventhough it is old) seem to have less bugs than the stock 2.1 and also seem to work perfectly fine. so, why did you mention that it has lot of bugs when it deos not have lot of bugs are all the ROMs mentioned in your CapFAQ site? I appreciate your help. Can you please let me know if i have to follow the same odin 1-click route to load any of the ROMs mentioned in your site. thanks

 

[chicknlil]

You see a lot of negative about ROMs on CapFaq because that's smerick's nature and CapFaq is his baby.

if you want a relatively "close to stock" performance, but with far less bugs, try Cognition. It's a pretty good "starter" ROM, without frills or bloat.

 

[dario69]

You see a lot of negative about ROMs on CapFaq because that's smerick's nature and CapFaq is his baby.

if you want a relatively "close to stock" performance, but with far less bugs, try Cognition. It's a pretty good "starter" ROM, without frills or bloat.

No custom rom is bug free. Find me one and I will flash it on my Cappy any day. smerick is right to post the pros and cons of flashing because they are a reality. If anything the Android custom rom experience is far more bumpy than the WinMo days. Others will disagree but I know I am right.

 

[sapv]

No custom rom is bug free. Find me one and I will flash it on my Cappy any day. smerick is right to post the pros and cons of flashing because they are a reality. If anything the Android custom rom experience is far more bumpy than the WinMo days. Others will disagree but I know I am right.

Bute, the capfaq site seems to quote more of cons than pros when in fact there are more pros in upgrading the device from 2.1 to 2.2 (irrespective of the ROMs being official, unofficial or close to official). that's why i asked the question why to Mr.smerick. Other than that i agree with his intention to quote both sides of the story. I have seen many videos showing how to downgrade to original ECLAIR (factory reset). so if there is an official release of froyo, i will do that and get the official one on my phone. until then i will enjoy the 2.2. guess what the original JH7 had bugs of it's own.

 

[sremick]

Just one more question. I see many ROMs and lot of negative/caution about flashing the phone and stuff.

It's because if you go down that route, there are real new risks that are introduced that don't exist if you don't. There's also a ton more you need to learn and become adept at to reduce those risks. It's important to communicate that... often it gets lost amongst all the enthusiasm about custom ROMs, leaving people to believe it's risk-free, who then take it casually and without doing their homework... leading to disastrous results.

are all these ROMs the same.

Goodness, no. They vary in what firmware and kernel they're based on, what pieces from what other firmwares they use, custom themes, custom features, bugs, etc.

Odin 1-click flash stuff?

No, most are flashed with CWM.

Also, when i read the pros and cons..i see that the 2.2 i got on my phone (eventhough it is old) seem to have less bugs than the stock 2.1 and also seem to work perfectly fine.

Not all bugs are experienced by all users.

Can you please let me know if i have to follow the same odin 1-click route to load any of the ROMs mentioned in your site. thanks

Follow the method outlined in the articles and the videos which are mentioned and linked-to there.

You see a lot of negative about ROMs on CapFaq because that's smerick's nature and CapFaq is his baby.

And because there's already plenty of "pros" being tossed out by all the fans. The important warnings and gotchas get buried from all the "just flash and all your problems will go away!" posts, so there needs to be better visibility.

Oh, and you still have edit privs there you know. If there's something you feel needs adding, go ahead...

There are also 11 other people besides chicknlil and myself who are able to edit capfaq.com, so if there were errors or any additional information that they felt needed to be there, there's nothing stopping them. Several of them are fans of flashing custom ROMs and have already added a lot of that material.

 

[Segfault]

No custom rom is bug free. Find me one and I will flash it on my Cappy any day. smerick is right to post the pros and cons of flashing because they are a reality. If anything the Android custom rom experience is far more bumpy than the WinMo days. Others will disagree but I know I am right.

The current eclair build is also full of bugs, to me its worse than the ROMS that are out there. The wireless stack has a bunch of known issues that makes connecting to anything more than a simple home router very hard. The current bug list for Cognition is "bluetooth headset initiated voice dialing doesn't work" which is a feature that eclair doesn't have anyways.

I'm sure you guys like telling scary ghost stories to people on the forums but its not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Its really hard to brick one of these phones. When I flashed mine a few months ago all I had were some instructions I cribbed from the ROM support threads and I was able to install with only a couple of newb mistakes. Now people have full on video guides on how upgrade their phones. I even saw a new project where someone put together an automated app for rooting and installing a new ROM automatically. It keeps getting easier and easier, not harder and harder.

The sad part is that I expect the official 2.2 update will come out in a few weeks at most but that install will have more problems with that than the average Cognition or Serendipity install. I fully expect to see the forum flooded with posts about "I installed the 2.2 update and now my phone doesn't work". I have more faith in DesignGears and the other ROM guys than I do with AT&T and Samsung at this point.

 

[sremick]

Bricking isn't the only risk, just the most-catastrophic one. Other things people have experienced include:

- data loss (due to something going horribly wrong and having to reflash over, without having a backup)
- battery life issues
- reception issues
- mysterious FCs
- bluetooth problems
- button issues (like the one where the home button goes crazy)

Some of these can be extremely hard to pin down, since not everyone experiences them. If they're not reproducible 100% of the time, often the ROM dev can't do anything about it. The home button issue, for example... when I mentioned it several other people piped up and said it happened to them too. I've since seen threads with more people posting about it. But so far, no real ideas or solutions.

No one said that Eclair isn't full of bugs too. Of course it has bugs and issues... if it didn't, people wouldn't be itching so bad for 2.2. The question is: is the trade-off worth it? That question has no one answer and has to be decided by each individual in an informed manner based upon their needs, priorities and technical skill. But people get extremely ruffled when you suggest that the custom ROMs have issues too, and so those that mention it get flamed and the info suppressed. It's unfortunate.

I've stated dozens of times that I'm not against the use of custom ROMs. It's just when I suggest their use isn't a perfect world or 100% safe, people think that I'm a hater. I'm just honest. I'm sorry I don't sing their praises... it's just that they get enough of that as it is. The rest of you are doing a fine job making sure every newcomer knows the reasons they should flash a custom ROM before they've even gotten their first charge on their new Captivate. Stock Captivate is not a perfect world... and *gasp*... custom ROMs aren't either. It's a choice.

 

[fldude99]

^^^I have to say that sremick is pretty lucent and makes a lot of sense in these last couple of posts....kudos

 

[chicknlil]

Yes, I know I have edit rights still. And if my job didn't have such crap hours (see the random times I end up posting), I might actually edit...

With regards to the issues...data loss is completely avoidable if people use some common sense and back s**t up. Personally, any time I flash a ROM (and these days I do that sometimes several times a week), I do a Titanium Backup, then copy over the contents of my SD Card to my computer, flash back to stock, master clear, flash the new ROM, then copy the stuff back over to the SD card.

 

[sremick]

Ydata loss is completely avoidable if people use some common sense and back s**t up.

Totally agree. But just because some of the issues/risks are user-related and come from requiring a higher-degree of responsibility and understanding, doesn't mean they still aren't legitimate "risks" that need to be warned about.

Think about it like a black diamond on a ski slope. Do people ski that run and not die? Sure, all the time. But the warning is there to let you know that it's more-dangerous and requires significantly more skill and training in order to get to the bottom safely.

It's not wise to remove the black-diamond from the slope just to encourage as many people as possible to ski it.

Not all issues are within the user's control, however. No one has been able to explain why a bunch of users have Home (and sometimes other buttons) randomly freak-out in rapid-fire fashion, for example. And other users continue to get horrible battery life, despite following all the various "guides" for recalibrating the stats, etc.

 

[Segfault]

Bricking isn't the only risk, just the most-catastrophic one. Other things people have experienced include:

- data loss (due to something going horribly wrong and having to reflash over, without having a backup)
- battery life issues
- reception issues
- mysterious FCs
- bluetooth problems
- button issues (like the one where the home button goes crazy)

Some of these can be extremely hard to pin down, since not everyone experiences them. If they're not reproducible 100% of the time, often the ROM dev can't do anything about it. The home button issue, for example... when I mentioned it several other people piped up and said it happened to them too. I've since seen threads with more people posting about it. But so far, no real ideas or solutions.

No one said that Eclair isn't full of bugs too. Of course it has bugs and issues... if it didn't, people wouldn't be itching so bad for 2.2. The question is: is the trade-off worth it? That question has no one answer and has to be decided by each individual in an informed manner based upon their needs, priorities and technical skill. But people get extremely ruffled when you suggest that the custom ROMs have issues too, and so those that mention it get flamed and the info suppressed. It's unfortunate.

I've stated dozens of times that I'm not against the use of custom ROMs. It's just when I suggest their use isn't a perfect world or 100% safe, people think that I'm a hater. I'm just honest. I'm sorry I don't sing their praises... it's just that they get enough of that as it is. The rest of you are doing a fine job making sure every newcomer knows the reasons they should flash a custom ROM before they've even gotten their first charge on their new Captivate. Stock Captivate is not a perfect world... and *gasp*... custom ROMs aren't either. It's a choice.

I agree that there is some homework that people need to do before they can install a ROM and there can be some post install issues. But even in the worst case its almost always possible to downgrade back to Eclair and get right back to where they started from. If people want to go the custom ROM route it really pays to get familiar with the tools, watch the videos and read the support threads. Its especially important to learn what backup and recover options there are. To be fair every ROM install instruction I have read starts with "Install Titanium backup and do a full backup before you start".

I'm just concerned that all the comments about scary bugs will frighten people away from the learning part. People shouldn't be afraid of their phones. There are lots of neat things to learn in the Android world and sometimes having a wonky home button can be part of the process.

Yea, if someone doesn't want to learn anything about Android or playing around with the phones then they are better off waiting until Samsung and AT&T gets around to issuing an update. But they should know that this will be the last real update they get. Samsung never promised anything past Froyo. There might be a minor bug fix release or two after Froyo is pushed but that will be it.

 

[sapv]

I agree that there is some homework that people need to do before they can install a ROM and there can be some post install issues. But even in the worst case its almost always possible to downgrade back to Eclair and get right back to where they started from. If people want to go the custom ROM route it really pays to get familiar with the tools, watch the videos and read the support threads. Its especially important to learn what backup and recover options there are. To be fair every ROM install instruction I have read starts with "Install Titanium backup and do a full backup before you start".

I'm just concerned that all the comments about scary bugs will frighten people away from the learning part. People shouldn't be afraid of their phones. There are lots of neat things to learn in the Android world and sometimes having a wonky home button can be part of the process.

Yea, if someone doesn't want to learn anything about Android or playing around with the phones then they are better off waiting until Samsung and AT&T gets around to issuing an update. But they should know that this will be the last real update they get. Samsung never promised anything past Froyo. There might be a minor bug fix release or two after Froyo is pushed but that will be it.

well said...nice write-up..

 

[dario69]

I agree that there is some homework that people need to do before they can install a ROM and there can be some post install issues. But even in the worst case its almost always possible to downgrade back to Eclair and get right back to where they started from. If people want to go the custom ROM route it really pays to get familiar with the tools, watch the videos and read the support threads. Its especially important to learn what backup and recover options there are. To be fair every ROM install instruction I have read starts with "Install Titanium backup and do a full backup before you start".

I'm just concerned that all the comments about scary bugs will frighten people away from the learning part. People shouldn't be afraid of their phones. There are lots of neat things to learn in the Android world and sometimes having a wonky home button can be part of the process.

True, but the same can be said about all of these comments that make it sound like if you just flash your rom all of your troubles will go away. Nothing about doing your homework first. People are inpatient and will go the route of least resistance. I too have been guilty of not reading enough on the pros and cons of hard SPLing my WinMo phone. I was lucky because the world of WinMo custom roms was so much more easier to deal with than Android.

You are right, people need to do their homework. And that needs to be preached more than it has been. I know others disagree with me but I am sorry the Android custom rom world is a whole different animal than before. More pitfalls to deal with. I used to put the WinMo rom on my SD and reboot to the bootloader and press power. A few minutes later - bam all done. Rinse and repeat. 5-10 minutes it was over. With Android you really do need to review the process before taking the plunge.

 

[Space Cowboy]

We wouldn't be going through all of this and having all of these discussions if only AT&T would step up. Samsung announced 3.0 already... and look where we're still stuck.

I had a chat with AT&T last week and their new excuse is that they are upgrading their network to 4G. That may be true, but that doesn't explain the fact that they're already selling Tabs with 2.2 already on it (even though the network is still 3G) Give us a break AT&T!

 

[sapv]

That's a very, very old leaked early development build that's been since found to have plenty of bugs. I don't know anyone still using it at this point or any reason why a person would want to.

If you want to go the 2.2 route, you're far better-off using one of the modern custom hacked ROMs that are all based on much newer 2.2 code from various sources. They work much better and have numerous issues resolved. Even DesignGears himself maintains two different Captivate ROMs, neither of which is based on that old beta code.

Not trying to go round and round on this topic but I would like to mention my experience with this build which is according to you is an outdated build. I have been using this "I897UCJI6" for the past week or so. I admit it appears to have a few small bugs but to be honest the stock 2.1 JH7 had a lot of bugs that were much more in magnitude than what i see with respect to "I897UCJI6". I flashed my captivate back to JF6 (the out-of-the-box 2.1 Eclair firmware) using odin 1-click when one day engadget announced that official froyo is available for captivate which they later on pulled back. Now, i am back to "I897UCJI6" all using odin 1-click and it works perfectly fine when it comes to flashing. I don't see any problem (at least so far!).