[Merged] Samsung Galaxy S / Captivate Android Phone

[Sounds Good]

Just in case you want some input that arent iPhone bias there are forums to check out. www.Androidforums.com or http://forum.xda-developers.com.

Too funny... those 2 forums are EXACTLY where I found most of the comments about the Captivate!

I wasn't gonna do this, but you seem like a good guy so I'll answer your other post line-by-line:

You really dont know if you have to root it and i can tell you that you do not have to root the phone to fix a lag.

There are SO many Android users out there that have said that the Captivate MUST be rooted to eliminate the lag. If you say that yours doesn't need to be rooted, I believe you -- but when that many Android (non-iPhone) users say the same exact thing, at some point you gotta believe it. I'd rather not buy the phone just to find out if they're right or wrong. (Can you blame me, really?)

I do not have AT&T and never will which is why i am not getting a iP4. Dont want to spend a bundle for a phone that will always be on EDGE , so i cant say that you will need a more expensive data plan from them but i doubt it. Why would you just to get updates? My Data plan is $20 for unlimited on T-Mobile. Most Apps gets updates and it is no different of Apps from Apple.

I was not referring to apps... I was referring to widgets. Again, according to many, the widgets reach out for info much more often than the occasional updating of an app. Therefore, it eats more bandwidth. I'm fine with AT&T's cheaper data plan with an iPhone, but the Captivate might (might) cause me to have to step up to the more expensive data plan. (Get what I mean?)

Crisper Text? I have no idea what your talking about here. My text is fine, looks good and i have no trouble reading it...

Yep, crisper text on the iPhone 4 than on the Captivate. I saw it with my own two eyes. I did not say that text on the Captivate was blurry -- I said that text on the iPhone is crisper. At least to me.

Dont think flash is an issue either but some just think the word "flash" is a big deal. Night mode works good and there have been many examples in here but to each their own.

Exactly, to each his own is correct. To me, though, I found night mode on the Captivate to be too grainy. I know photography -- very well -- and I know that I personally would rather have a flash than not.

As for copy and paste....did you really think there might not be copy and paste with this phone?

Didn't know. A couple of users said that copy and paste is on the phone but not in Mail. If it's true, I wouldn't be able to deal with it. If it's wrong, it's just one thing on the list.

I dont use Outlook so i cant say. Yahoo works just fine on it though while a couple say it wont work at all.

I do use Outlook so it's important to me. I don't use Yahoo.

You say Captivate was not intuitive enough for you but seems to me you dont really know since you are guessing what it will or wont do.

Not exactly true. I spent a very long time in the AT&T store, mostly playing with the Captivate. There were many times I seriously couldn't figure out what to do. Example: the calendar is important to me, I use it all the time... so I wanted to see how easy it was to add an entry then edit it. Adding an entry was very easy. No problem. Then I attempted to edit the entry. I didn't know what to do. This was very frustrating since on the iPhone there's a little button there for Edit. It literally took minutes until I figured out that I needed to click on something on the bottom to bring up a menu that contained "Edit." Now obviously, I now know how to do it. But my point is, it wasn't very intuitive. If I hand my iPhone over to my wife or even my 7 year old son, they can operate anything on the phone. If I hand them the Captivate, they'd be lost. That's all I meant.

So that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. Bash away!

 

[Vegastouch]

Too funny... those 2 forums are EXACTLY where I found most of the comments about the Captivate!

I wasn't gonna do this, but you seem like a good guy so I'll answer your other post line-by-line:


There are SO many Android users out there that have said that the Captivate MUST be rooted to eliminate the lag. If you say that yours doesn't need to be rooted, I believe you -- but when that many Android (non-iPhone) users say the same exact thing, at some point you gotta believe it. I'd rather not buy the phone just to find out if they're right or wrong. (Can you blame me, really?)


I was not referring to apps... I was referring to widgets. Again, according to many, the widgets reach out for info much more often than the occasional updating of an app. Therefore, it eats more bandwidth. I'm fine with AT&T's cheaper data plan with an iPhone, but the Captivate might (might) cause me to have to step up to the more expensive data plan. (Get what I mean?)


Yep, crisper text on the iPhone 4 than on the Captivate. I saw it with my own two eyes. I did not say that text on the Captivate was blurry -- I said that text on the iPhone is crisper. At least to me.


Exactly, to each his own is correct. To me, though, I found night mode on the Captivate to be too grainy. I know photography -- very well -- and I know that I personally would rather have a flash than not.


Didn't know. A couple of users said that copy and paste is on the phone but not in Mail. If it's true, I wouldn't be able to deal with it. If it's wrong, it's just one thing on the list.


I do use Outlook so it's important to me. I don't use Yahoo.


Not exactly true. I spent a very long time in the AT&T store, mostly playing with the Captivate. There were many times I seriously couldn't figure out what to do. Example: the calendar is important to me, I use it all the time... so I wanted to see how easy it was to add an entry then edit it. Adding an entry was very easy. No problem. Then I attempted to edit the entry. I didn't know what to do. This was very frustrating since on the iPhone there's a little button there for Edit. It literally took minutes until I figured out that I needed to click on something on the bottom to bring up a menu that contained "Edit." Now obviously, I now know how to do it. But my point is, it wasn't very intuitive. If I hand my iPhone over to my wife or even my 7 year old son, they can operate anything on the phone. If I hand them the Captivate, they'd be lost. That's all I meant.

So that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. Bash away!

Nope! ..You have your reasons and are happy with the iPhone so till you feel Android is improved or iPhone isnt down the road...whatever the case may be, you should stick with what your comfortable with.

Only thing that puzzles me is why rooting would fix a lag. Only thing i can think of is that you can overclock the CPU by rooting the phone.

I still think 2.2 will fix some issues. I just dont know exactly what yet.

And BTW... i dont have a iP4 as i stated so i havent been able to look over the display real well. Ive only held one for about 30 seconds where i work. Was afraid to hold it cause it is so fragile and didnt want to drop it

 

[Sounds Good]

Only thing that puzzles me is why rooting would fix a lag.

Not sure, but I think it had something to do with TouchWiz or LauncherPro or something like that. Can't remember.

Was afraid to hold it cause it is so fragile and didnt want to drop it

I'm with ya there. It's one of the reasons why I looked so hard at the Captivate. I'm investigating cases as we speak, since I'm sure I'll accidentally drop the iPhone 4 at some point!

 

[ArainLA]

I just returned the Captivate after a week!

I wasmin line and got iPhone 4 on day one.
I was berry happy but I wanted the white one and I did have the proximity sensor problem but no other issues.

I returned the iPhone 4 and thought I'd get the white end of July and hope prox. Sensor would be fixed. Next day they announce white iPhone 4 delay.
Since iPhone 4 was 3 week wait I thought I'd try the Captivate and stick with it if I liked it.

At the store the screen looked so bright and colorful.

This phone is a nice toy for someone who wants to tinker with the endless settings and countless ROM's you can stick on it.

I just wanted a phone that worked good out of the box with good selection of quality apps. The customization part would be a bonus.

But the email app sucks.
I'm a IT manager and need to sync my Exchange corp. email.
I have subfolders and the email client on this Android phone handles it badly.
The subfolders are not organized as in Outlook. They are alpha but my RSS folders are mixed in. On iPhone it looks just like in Outlook with RSS folders at the bottom. So getting to my important folders was a chore scrolling left to right to find e right folder. And then you can't move emails between subfolders.

This was enough to kill it but I stuck with it for a week.

The phone has design flaw with the touch sensitive buttons at the bottom edge.
They lag so you want home you push it and it lights up but didn't go to home so touch again a bit longer or a little more in the right spot. Then in the dark good luck figuring out where to touch...darn that was back! They shoo.d be physical keys you can feel in the dark.

I didn't know about ATK(advanced task killer) so the phone started to lag.
There is not much documentation so good luck figuring outnhow to shut down apps. iPhone is so easy double tap and you know what apps are open.
I learned about ATK in forums to kill apps every hour to keep phone snappy. I don't want to jump through these hoops to keep the phone running well.

The typing is not as good as iPhone. I made many mistakes. Not sure why they would not turn on auto correct by default? Copy and paste was not clear how it worked. I long pssed on text and got a menu I'd choose select but en go back and was not able to select. iPhone has this hands down!

The screen did not rotate like I expected.
iPhone screen rotates as I'd if it knows that's what I want. This phone rites oddly and not always when I wanted.

Today I popped the SIM out and used a iPhone 2G just to get through work day. Went to apple store and got last GB iPhone 4. Went to AT&T and paid $35 and returned the Captivate.

Maybe 2.2 will make it better.
Anyone saying this phone is better than iPhone 4 has not used one.
Oh the screen as you get closer you can see it's pixels. And at night in dark room it's so bright yourneyes burn after an hour.

 

[intervenient]

Ugh, I flip flop every day on whether or not I'm going to keep my Captivate.

 

[HXGuy]

Here are my thoughts on the Captivate after owning it for one week...

The Captivate works much better as a PHONE while the iPhone works much better at everything else so it depends on what is more of a priority for you.

As a phone, I find the Captivate more natural to hold, it has a signal everywhere for me and not one dropped call in the past week. The iPhone would drop at least a call or two per day. Captivate also works better over Bluetooth car handsfree and has useful basic features like long press speed dial and searching using the numerical keypad. One place the iPhone does much better is Visual Voicemail. I have Google Voice setup for Visual Voicemail on the Captivate but it's buggy at times. The volume is real low for some reason and sometimes it takes a while to load the messages, I've even had it give me an error that it couldn't connect. Never ever had a problem with Visual Voicemail on the iPhone.

The Captivate does a much better job for settings and switching different things on/off via widgets, but that can be done an a jail broken iPhone as well.

Typing is much better on the Captivate because of Swype. I love it.

For me, that is where the advantages of the Captivate stop.

The display is a hands down winner for the iPhone for me. I know the screen is smaller but it more than makes up for it with the clarity. Items on the Captivate look jagged...not always but often enough.

Email on the iPhone works much more reliable for me. I have it setup as IMAP and it just works, never had an issue syncing. On the Captivate, I've tried the stock app, K-9 and MailDroid and none have been reliable. Even Gmail, which gets the email real quick...doesn't work properly with my Apple Mail program (shows messages still haven't been read even though they were read on the Captivate). Visually the iPhone mail app is much more polished than anything available on the Android Market.

Browser is not as good on the Captivate, and I tried Dolphin HD too. Just usnt as smooth and I don't like how it renders the text.

Text messaging is pretty similar with using ChompSMS on the Captivate but again the iPhone is more polished when adding a picture to your message or allowing you to call the person directly from within the app.

The camera is far superior on the iPhone. I did some tests of shooting the same scenes and the iPhone easily won. Much sharper and better color photos. The app itself is also easier to use. Yes the iPhone has almost no adjustable features but it doesn't need them here, it just works well the way it comes. The LED flash is also great, not only for pictures but also as a flashlight.

Android Market vs App Store again is no contest. The App Store just has a lot more mainstream support. I couldn't find any apps to play Romanian radio on Android whereas the App Store has dozens of them. There is no Chase Banking app on the Android market and before you say there are alternatives, they are not close enough. The iPhone app allows me to deposit checks by taking a picture of the, the Android copy, not so much. These are just a couple examples but you get the idea.

That about wraps it up. As you can see, my biggest gripes withnthe Captivate are mostly Android related. It just feels amateurish to me, like a bunch of "shade tree" developers put it together while iOS feels like it was put together by a company who knew and cared what it was doing. I know youncan customize it as you want but Ive been trying for the last week to find the correct apps to make it "just work" and haven't been able to yet.

It's funny, I usuallybhave both phones within reach and I grab the Captivate if I need to make a call and the iPhone for everything else. I still haven't decided which I'm going to keep...having a cell phone that actually works as a phone is a pretty high priority.

 

[wreckshop]

It literally took minutes until I figured out that I needed to click on something on the bottom to bring up a menu that contained "Edit." Now obviously, I now know how to do it. But my point is, it wasn't very intuitive. If I hand my iPhone over to my wife or even my 7 year old son, they can operate anything on the phone. If I hand them the Captivate, they'd be lost. That's all I meant.

So that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. Bash away!

Uh... what exactly were you doing for those 2 minutes until it dawned on you to click some buttons?

 

[sciwizam]

Not sure, but I think it had something to do with TouchWiz or LauncherPro or something like that. Can't remember.


I'm with ya there. It's one of the reasons why I looked so hard at the Captivate. I'm investigating cases as we speak, since I'm sure I'll accidentally drop the iPhone 4 at some point!

LauncherPro app doesn't require rooting.

 

[Sounds Good]

Uh... what exactly were you doing for those 2 minutes until it dawned on you to click some buttons?

I clicked on a bunch of things. It just took a little while to figure out exactly WHAT to click on. I went back into the main section of the Calendar and clicked around to see if it could be done from there. Eventually I realized that I needed to click on something along the bottom. Again, my point was that it was not as intuitive to me as the iPhone is to me.

I'm not trying to bash the Captivate. In fact if not for the iPhone 4, I'd buy it.

 

[Vegastouch]

Not sure, but I think it had something to do with TouchWiz or LauncherPro or something like that. Can't remember.


I'm with ya there. It's one of the reasons why I looked so hard at the Captivate. I'm investigating cases as we speak, since I'm sure I'll accidentally drop the iPhone 4 at some point!

Launcher pro is a browser. You can get it from the app store and it is faster than the stock browser but not near as customizable as ADW Launcher. Opera is actually a very fast browser but it has a couple bugs. Can't use it in a forum for example. Won't go down so I can hit the send button and the pinch to zoom don't always work constantly. They fix that and it is a blazer of a browser.

 

[Sounds Good]

LauncherPro app doesn't require rooting.

Launcher pro is a browser.

Yeah, obviously I don't remember what the correct name is. But more than a few over on XDA said that the Captivated became less laggy once they rooted it and did something... I just can't recall what that is, sorry.

 

[sciwizam]

Launcher pro is a browser. You can get it from the app store and it is faster than the stock browser but not near as customizable as ADW Launcher. Opera is actually a very fast browser but it has a couple bugs. Can't use it in a forum for example. Won't go down so I can hit the send button and the pinch to zoom don't always work constantly. They fix that and it is a blazer of a browser.

LauncherPro is a launcher, not a browser.

 

[sciwizam]

Yeah, obviously I don't remember what the correct name is. But more than a few over on XDA said that the Captivated became less laggy once they rooted it and did something... I just can't recall what that is, sorry.

They probably rooted it and removed the crap that the carrier included. But, just the LauncherPro will speed up UI, than using the Samsung Touchwiz.

 

[eelpout]

People crack me up about the screen. I don't recall anyone complaining about the iPhone 3G and 3GS having only 165 PPI screen. When I got my work phone a Droid, I was wow this screen is so nice, it has 265 PPI and that was a year ago. I kept asking myself why my 3G then 3GS had such a crappy screen.

Now the iPhone4 has 326 PPI and everything is crap?? Makes no sense.

I know. My HTC Fuze from what, 2 years ago, has 286 ppi and looks great as well. Windows 6.5 OTOH has a few issues. But as a phone it's actually great and running custom ROMs is cool.

And for those who say you need to root an Android phone to make it work, ask anyone with a 3G who upgraded to iOS 4 how they're dealing with memory. Jailbreaking is a must so you can run Memtool or SBSettings all the time to free up space and kill off unnecessary processes.

 

[wreckshop]

I clicked on a bunch of things. It just took a little while to figure out exactly WHAT to click on. I went back into the main section of the Calendar and clicked around to see if it could be done from there. Eventually I realized that I needed to click on something along the bottom. Again, my point was that it was not as intuitive to me as the iPhone is to me.

I'm not trying to bash the Captivate. In fact if not for the iPhone 4, I'd buy it.

But there's NOTHING to click on. There are no on screen buttons in the calendar. You went back and forth for 2 minutes between at most 3 screens which have no on screen elements to click on, and you used the back button but during those 2 minutes it didnt occur to you to use the menu button right next to it? sounds like PEBKAC to me.

 

[Sounds Good]

But there's NOTHING to click on. There are no on screen buttons in the calendar.

This is EXACTLY my point. I'm getting tired of making it.

Call me whatever you wanna call me... I don't really care.

 

[sman789]

I've been using the iPhone since the 2G. Got the 3G and 3Gs, all jailbroken and I think iOS is great once jailbroken. I've now had the Captivate for 2 days, rooted and AT&T Bloatware removed. This phone is fun to use, it really is like a desktop computer in your hand. Swype is lovely after hating it the 1st hour and voice input for text is great for the car. BUT, the GPS is unusable, that's my biggest gripe. Battery life is horrible but so are the iPhones. Also, my iTunes collection (7+ years, 400gb+ worth) isn't working properly in DoubleTwist.

 

[jonhcox]

Not the Captivate, but I bought an EVO and gave Android a shot, even staying long enough to try the 2.2 upgrade. It was an improvement but not enough of one. The customizability was nice but once I had it to what I thought was good well, that was that. I still think iTunes is a better media organizer.

I did go take a look at the Captivate- I did like it better than the EVO. It was smoother, especially on the one the rep had Launcher Pro installed on.

 

[sman789]

Something intriguing for us lone Captivate owners. I flashed the European 2.1 Galaxy S rom on the phone and then put the Captivate firmware on top of that. It's faster, without any AT&T wares and for some reason the GPS works nicely now. I drove from my house to work, 10 miles with half on the freeway and it was very accurate. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=734871 is the write up how to do it. I'm still on the fence but I definitely love the phone more now.