Pros and cons of Samsung Captivate?

[gcobb]

not really, i always keep an extra battery in my car in case i end up being out longer than i had planned or something. leaving a battery in my car doesnt make it anymore difficult than not carrying one around really. and if my battery is at 50% and im about to leave home and go out for awhile i just pop a new one in and put the old one on the charger. its no trouble at all and i dont have to carry an overly heavy battery on my phone or an awkward battery door or anything like that

I've had extra batteries and chargers for almost every phone I've ever had. Keep one charged and you're good.

 

[Captain19]

Screen - I agree
Swype - My fingers must be too big. Don't like it at all

GPS - Don't care - Have a GPS in my car.
Battery life - Great. Twice as good as the iPhone I had plus I can swap.
Lag - Don't have any
Texting - Works great
Camera flash - Camera flash is a joke. Has about a 5ft range. Not needed
Front facing camera - Nice if it would work with skype. Not like iPhone

I think if I load my phone up with all kinds of apps that always access the internet and have all email accounts on auto sync and run live wallpaper.......my phone would lag too. I have not "rooted" my Captivate and can't see any reason to. I can change just about anything including the home screen all with apps from the market. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only advantage to rooting the phone is to change the ROM (not a good idea) or load hacked apps (also not a good idea).

Go to an iPhone forum and read about how many people are having problems. Most of those people are the one that jailbreak their phones but they don't tell anyone that in the forum. They just complain about the phone and the uneducated think there is a problem with the phone. Sounds like the people that are complaining about the Captivate.

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.

 

[gcobb]

Taking into consideration that there is an actual OS in the Captivate that relies on memory and CPU time, it's very safe to believe that LAG is related to a lack of either of those, which is generally caused by operator error or lack of knowledge. If I run a lot of things at once I can make mine lag. If my memory gets down around 50mb it's definitely possible. Close some apps that are left open and unused and this will resolve that issue.

I had no interest in a front cam when I tried the iPhone. I don't have the need for a GPS except on the rare occasion. The camera flash is indeed a joke and 5 feet is being conservative.

I think it's the best phone I've had, including 2 iPhones and the Torch.

As for the OS upgrade I'd rather wait for a finished and tested OS than to compromise the stability of my phone. I am not going to blame Samsung or play the blame game. I can wait until its ready.

 

[fldude99]

^ +1: I agree with the wait...it's not like the phone is lacking in function. It's just missing what froyo can bring. Only problem, is that it appears that ATT will probably never come out with what they feel is a stable 2.2..so I think 2.1 is it, unless one eventually roots and flashes a 2.2 rom. As far as cons: I wouldn't say camera flash is a joke..I think it's a definite negative, as one does miss out on many indoor memories. But the GPS is more than adequate IMO. I use it ALL the time-navigation, maps, endomondo, photo tagging, etc etc. Another minor con: lack of FM radio-that is a definite handy thing to listen to the audio on TV in the gym.

On the pro side: Pretty much everything else

 

[RavenFox]

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....

Very good post.

 

[viny2cool]

if people complaint about front facing camera and camera flash then they should have known that before buying it and iphone would have been best choice.

Also a poster above said, people experience lag becoz they dont use their phone properly and do things like rooting or flashing new roms. i got my phone 3 months ago, i was pretty happy with it and thought it doesnt lag at all. But one day i started having problem with my battery, wifi connection and gps never worked anyways. So i tried to exchange it, and as i was over my 30 day period from amazon, i had no choice but to stick with my laggy phone with defects. What did i do? I rooted it and flashed new rom.

Advantage: 1) Super fast, try lag fix and then compare it with ur current speed. you will realize how laggy ur phone was.
2) I know people dont want leaked froyo, but buddy you should see froyo once. it super amazing not just flash player its awesome over all.
3) most of the roms comes with other tweaks like changed battery indicator and backlight working etc...these stuff are awesome men and you can never have them on unrooted phones

I am not asking you to root/flash your phone, but if you have complaints and samsung/ATT doesnt want to help, then help urself instead of complaining. Why should i wait for awesome Froyo on my awesome captivate, when my friends old first gen mytouch can have it already.

 

[jas2k9]

Screen - I agree
Swype - My fingers must be too big. Don't like it at all

GPS - Don't care - Have a GPS in my car.
Battery life - Great. Twice as good as the iPhone I had plus I can swap.
Lag - Don't have any
Texting - Works great
Camera flash - Camera flash is a joke. Has about a 5ft range. Not needed
Front facing camera - Nice if it would work with skype. Not like iPhone

I think if I load my phone up with all kinds of apps that always access the internet and have all email accounts on auto sync and run live wallpaper.......my phone would lag too. I have not "rooted" my Captivate and can't see any reason to. I can change just about anything including the home screen all with apps from the market. Correct me if I'm wrong but the only advantage to rooting the phone is to change the ROM (not a good idea) or load hacked apps (also not a good idea).

Go to an iPhone forum and read about how many people are having problems. Most of those people are the one that jailbreak their phones but they don't tell anyone that in the forum. They just complain about the phone and the uneducated think there is a problem with the phone. Sounds like the people that are complaining about the Captivate.

Well, I have a iphone 4 now. It is NOT jailbroken, and I see no reason to do this - I have to be honest, I don't care if the screen is customizable or not.

I do visit more than one iphone forum, mainly everythingicafe.com - because it has sister sites for android and even win phones. And frankly, there were plenty of complaints on proximity sensors and yellow pictures, but those seem to be mostly gone now. There are few real compaints now - other than the regular broken screen stuff.

If you want all the features to work, and work reasonably well, it's the only option - on ATT. I can tell you without hesitation, had ATT had the droid 2 or the incredible, I likely would have stayed with android. However it was 2 phone choices for android with the non-functional captivate as the better of the 2. For me, based on my time with the phone it was a failure - I do hope they are able to salvage and fix the problems - that are still there now nearly 6 months after release and make the galaxy line a real option, but for me, they have lost me forever (samsung) as a customer.

 

[MegatronVsMe]

I dont understand the problem everyone has had with the gps. Ive had mine from about two weeks after it was released and im a delivery driver and its never failed for me, at all. I've also had the iphone 2G, 3G and 3GS and the gps on this phone has been perfect compared to those.

The only cons i have with this phone is the battery life. Also every once in a while the apps will take longer then usual to load up (what i mean is, lets say i will be on the browser and go to the home screen and it will be blank for a few secs) in which case a restart the phone, which takes 2 minutes. Only happens maybe twice a week.

All my iphones lagged WAAAY too much. I had to hold the home key and the power button on a daily basis to restart it, because it would freeze.

I run Launcher Pro and my home page looks sick, i dont see any reason to root it. I didnt "settle" for this phone because i was on At&t. I wouldnt rather have any phone over this phone. Not the X, Evo or Incredible. Those are all badass phones but, i love my phone.

 

[sremick]

I dont understand the problem everyone has had with the gps. Ive had mine from about two weeks after it was released and im a delivery driver and its never failed for me, at all. I've also had the iphone 2G, 3G and 3GS and the gps on this phone has been perfect compared to those.

You don't understand the problem because it's not universal and you're one of the lucky few not affected by it. It doesn't mean the rest/majority of us aren't.

Perhaps you got good hardware by fluke luck. Or maybe you live in a densely-enough populated area that it can accurately determine your position via cell tower and wifi AP triangulation methods.

 

[viny2cool]

So I have flashed Cog 2..3B6....I just went out to get lunch today and I tried my gps for walking direction. I was surprised that it was so accurate for even 4 blocks. It gave me prefect instrustions on every turn and took me where I wanted...

My office is in Mid town Manhattan, NY....So i dont think its becoz of densely enough populated area....

 

[Cuerbo]

Have a coworker that also flashed his Fascinate and no longer has GPS issues. With that said, I've tested his phone on/off a couple of times and it's hit or miss. Sometimes you get a lock right away other times you don't. My cousin and his wife both have the Epic and they don't have the GPS problem, ran some tests driving around as well as walking, both phones work as expected. However, when I bought my Captivate on July 18th, it was a nightmare and that nightmare lasted 3 months. Tried all kinds of tricks and it wouldn't make a difference.

 

[sunshine92510]

I've had the Captivate for about 3 and a half months now. It worked perfectly for a month and a half, then it started shutting down on it's own here and there, till it came to shutting down around 5 times a day.
This urked me a lot, so i downloaded the Captivate Keep Alive app. It runs battery life down a lot quicker, but it was so worth it. After all, there is no point to having a phone if it shuts down on you. After a while, I stopped using that app and my phone was back to normal. No more shutting down on it's own!

Other than the automatic shut downs, my Captivate does lag here and there. It's not a big deal, you just have to be patient with it.

 

[gcobb]

I've had the Captivate for about 3 and a half months now. It worked perfectly for a month and a half, then it started shutting down on it's own here and there, till it came to shutting down around 5 times a day.
This urked me a lot, so i downloaded the Captivate Keep Alive app. It runs battery life down a lot quicker, but it was so worth it. After all, there is no point to having a phone if it shuts down on you. After a while, I stopped using that app and my phone was back to normal. No more shutting down on it's own!

Other than the automatic shut downs, my Captivate does lag here and there. It's not a big deal, you just have to be patient with it.

The automatic shutdown problem is known and if you call Samsung they will send you a replacement phone. Android is an Operating System. Crappy apps can and will cause lag, can and will use too much memory and cause your phone to run slowly. Everything isn't the fault of the phone. My battery will run down about 60% over a day or normal use.