Ugh, the improved battery life sounds great. The thing is, as some may remember I just got a warranty replacement Vibrant. It was a pain setting everything up again, especially re-downloading all my apps. I don't really want to go through the whole process AGAIN so soon...but if a factory reset is all it takes for better battery life...

Is the factory reset = bettery battery life thing just something that people are seeing after the OTA? Because when I was having that text issue w/ my first Vibrant I did a factory reset at the suggestion of customer care. I didn't notice better battery life after that one.

 

I haven't received my update yet... I'm wondering if it's because I don't get 3G where I live. I usually have full bars on the Edge network at my house, but frequently travel to areas with little or no coverage. Does anyone know if they've finished rolling out the updates yet? Should I just continue to wait for the message or head to a town with 3G & see what happens?

For reference, my phone is stock, and not rooted.

 

call tmo and make sure they have the right IMEI

 

so how many people have had their gps issues fixed, and how many are still experiencing the same issues?

i for one have seen no improvement on the GPS.. it doesn't get any signal.

 

Mine rocks face

 

Mine has seen a dramatic improvement, but I still think it could be faster and more accurate.

 

That sounds painful.

At any rate, I'm pretty much of the opinion at this point that there are those more fortunate than others with respect to the Vibrant's GPS. Some report great success with it, but other continue to bemoan having tried every conceivable update or fix with at best mediocre results.

The Vibrant's GPS is cursed; it's simply something some of us have to accept.

 

Significant improvement since the update. Not as consistently quick to lock as I would prefer, but it's definitely better, and it's much better than the standalone GPS I've been using for years. I think the 2 second locks spoil me for the times it takes 3-4 minutes. So far it's definitely usable.

(On a side note regarding Google Nav, about a 6 weeks ago I submitted two corrections to Google for map and driving direction errors near where I live. Yesterday I happened be using Nav at those points and they were fixed! So, submit corrections as you find them. They actually listen.)

 

Agreed, this is what I'm experiencing as well.

That is good to know about Google. What sort of errors in directions did you encounter?

 

sucks for me that it still doesn't work.. i guess i'm in the minority.

 

1. I wanted to make a left turn coming out of a shopping center parking lot but it originally had me taking a right turn and then a U-turn to get back the right way. I told them a left at that light was possible. Drove through that same spot again and they had fixed it.

2. The map had two roads connected that actually aren't. I'd been routed through that spot before, and ended up at the dead end. Checked it today and hey've fixed that as well.

 

Interesting and excellent.

 

So if you run GPSTest outside it sees 0 sats and 0 in use?

 

If that is the case I'm thinking hardware issue, e.g. antenna, PCB, etc.

 

I would tend to agree unless it was seeing sats before the update and not after. The hardest part of diagnosing things like this remotely is getting all the relevant facts.

 

are you sure its PCB and not PCP?? XD

 

I still haven't received the update. Some folks in my area, (central florida) have already gotten theirs. I don't understand....am I missing something here?

 

...and I never got the update that was supposed to be pushed to "all handsets" by the end of October. I tried the "force update" method numerous times, and obviously that didn't work either. Granted I could go with the Mini Kies method, but I'm against that for 2 reasons:

1. The last Kies update I tried really mucked things up
2. It's a matter of principle

For the money I paid for this phone on day 1 of it's release, and the time I went without a phone after getting rid of my Behold 2, (After being lied to about that update mind you), and the money I pay T-mobile monthly for the 2 lines on my account that I've held with them for over 10 years, the least they could do is honor me with the friggin' update.

I'm going to call T-mobile tomorrow morning, where upon I'm sure they'll tell me that they're still in the process of sending out the OTA, and that it's the only way that I will get it till they're done sending it out, and for more information that I should refer to their forums. (I called them a few days ago and already got this info from them) Once the CSR is done spewing their script, I'm going to give them 2 options to keep me with T-mobile as I'm about done with Samsung and T-mobile.

1. Send me an updated phone, correct IMEI number and reasonable assurance that I'm getting Froyo.
or
2. Send me the update, like, now.

I'm a fairly level headed person, and I have the patients of Job, and I'm probably speaking out of anger as I still feel burnt on the Behold 2 thing, but honestly after 10 years if this is the best I can do, I'm glad there's still some competition in left in the wireless industry.

DAMNIT

 

Got the update like 2 weeks ago.. huge improvement in my GPS still... My battery life works sometimes up to 2 1/2 days.... My phone is stock.. and its way faster than before the update... i guess im good..

 

Haven't received my update yet.

 

Well, I still hadn't got the update so I called T-Mobile yesterday. The lady I spoke to told me to download an app in the Marketplace called "Anycut" and that I would be able to force an update by doing so. Unfortunately she didn't give me any instructions on what to do after I installed it, so I had to figure it out myself (really helpful, right?). I used Anycut to make a link to device manager on a home screen, ran it and tried to force the update. It didn't work. In the end I just downloaded Kies Mini from the Samsung website and did it that way.

Honestly, I don't know why they bother with OTA updates. The last one I got for my Behold 2 bricked the phone and they had to send me a new one. I don't know why they don't just either make Kies Mini the official way of doing it, or send every customer an installation disc so they can install it from their computer. OTA updates seem to be more trouble than they are worth.

 

After giving myself a 24 hour cooling off period, little good that did me, I took up arms with T-mobile today. Long story short they're sending me a new phone.

Short story long, if you saw my previous post I was a bit more than upset over not receiving the OTA. I called T-mobile this afternoon and I told the first CSR that I never got the JI6 update, he asked me all kinds of probing questions and put me on hold for about 6 minutes to do something only to come back and inform me that Samsung would be pushing out the update sometime in the late fall. Huh? Late fall? It came out almost a month ago, and was supposed to run through the 31st. "Well sir, the information the engineers are telling me says it could be into late December." Um, no. "I'm willing to bet you're talking about the 2.2 OS update, not the hotfix known as JI6." "Oh," he says, "hold on." After 4 minutes, he comes back on the line to immediately read me word for word what the JI6 update included, why? I don't know, but he followed that up with, "I can put you through to the Technical support group who will push you the update." OK whatever.

Tech support: And I should have known immediately that something was very wrong when they didn't address themselves as Smartphone support as they usually do. Anyway after explaining what my situation is, she almost cuts me off to tell me that she can't push the update to me. Instead she has to take my information, and forward it to Google and wait for a response. Huh? Google? Really? What, I have a Nexus 1 now? I wish. (No, I mean really I wish I had one of those, I would rather deal with a real company that gives a crap about service, but anyway.) Out of frustration I say do whatever you want. I already made up my mind that I'm going to call back later to deal with hopefully be a smarter bunch of people. At some point during this exchange she tells me that the reason it was so loud in the background is because it's basically their Friday and everyone is getting ready to go home. Well now, I'm really pissed. You just admitted that you would rather leave then help, but still I indulge her just a bit longer. She then goes on to say that she has notes on how to work around the GPS issue and other things because she had experience with this stuff and it was all on her computer. She puts me on hold to look for this "stuff" that mysteriously disappeared from her computer. Now here's the good part. She says that if I don't have my update by Friday that she will call me back on Friday to walk me through her fix solution. (She has it it home?) OK, in addition to being pissed, now I'm freaked out. I hang up grab a Guinness and work on some other projects.

2nd call: The first woman I speak to I immediately apologize to her in advance if I get agitated during this process, but this is what's going on. In addition to explaining my original situation, I tell her about my last experience and close with the whole, I will give up this phone and T-mobile if we can't come to an agreement tonight. She puts me over to Smartphone support. They actually address themselves as such this time. This guy did something no other CSR has ever done to me before ever. He shut up and let me explain my situation without walking me through a scripted bunch of inane steps to get to a problem. (Till the end of the discussion anyway) So we both agreed that Google has nothing to do with anything. He supposedly upped my complaint to their engineers along with a few other people that didn't get the update and claims that there will be another wave of updates over the next 2 weeks. OR I can trade all of that back right now and he'll send me a new phone right now with the update installed. Hmmm. I tell him that I've waited this long, I'll give it the benefit of a week. If I don't have an update in a week, I'm taking a new phone. He noted that in the system, and now I wait. I also threw in the whole how I got ****ed on the Behold 2 and he immediately cringed. Leads me to believe that he too owned one before the Vibrant. Oh, and at the end of the discussion when I had him confirm that the correct IMEI number was on record, he went through his script for troubleshooting. Have I power cycled the phone, have I modified it, did I root it, etc. Whatever.

The only reason I'm giving them the benefit of a very big doubt is because I just looked and I have 2 apps short of 11 pages of apps on my phone, settings, screens, and everything else, I just don't want to have to get all that back the way it is on another device if I don't have to.

So what I can take from this so far is that we're definitely getting 2.2 sometime before 2011. T-mobiles "engineers" are an awful bunch. Samsung really needs to work on their infrastructure if they really want to compete beyond this phone. I have far too many apps, and I'm too patient for my own good. I'll follow up in a week.

Edit: Sorry about the lengthy post, I used to be a writer and occasionally I get carried away.

 

And these last couple of posts are why I used ODIN to get the OTA update

(BTW, unlike the Behold II, this method did *NOT* require a factory reset, meaning *EVERYTHING* was still there, exactly as before, only with the OTA update installed)

 

And it's still a very likely possibility that I'll do this if I really have to face re installation -vs- not. Right now I'm fighting the principle war mainly because I can, and I want to see how far this gets before someone admits they were wrong. Right now, I was wrong to trust Samsung/T-mobile again. A week from now things may be quite different.

 

got mine, and gps is still not working.