Samsung Captivate/vibrant users: are you planning on returning your phone?

[snikt]

Since I've had my Cap I've been averaging at least 36 hours on one charge with moderate use. One of the first apps I downloaded was ATK so I don't know if that helped or not; I'm thinking it does.

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

So then, as I said in my original post in this topic - you need to look at what's running on the phone, or return it because it's draining power excessively.

Yes, I'm starting to think it may be a bad battery. Using the Running Services widgit, I can only see SnsService, WispService, OmaDrmConfigService, GTalkService, DMService, AABSyncService, SyncManager and Android Keyboard running.

 

[slightlyhuman]

got this phone from bb on monday. i had a rooted g1 for about 6 months. i love android. i am planning on keeping it. i've tried the gps once since i got it and it had no problem finding me. just walked outside(and i live in the sticks) and it had no problem finding me. it is rooted but currently running stock rom. guess i'm easily impressed by the speed(coming from g1 then hd2 for fun).

a few things i don't like about it:

the weight, feels so light compared to my past phone.
power button on the wide, wtf were they thinking?
no ability to turn 3g off, really makes me angry.
paid $230 + tax at BB, see it for less than $100 on walmart and amazon.
no camera flash, irritating.


i almost bought the nexus one but am glad i waited on this. not sure how long i'll have it but i am satisfied overall.

how do you change the 4 home row buttons or can you?

 

[dougp]

Yes, I'm starting to think it may be a bad battery. Using the Running Services widgit, I can only see SnsService, WispService, OmaDrmConfigService, GTalkService, DMService, AABSyncService, SyncManager and Android Keyboard running.

I wonder if googleTalk is the issue then ... I don't run it, so I wouldn't have any insight - but if you're close to your 30 - TAKE IT BACK. Better safe than sorry.

 

[Narmer]

Samsung products always look good on paper but are shit. However, the same can be said of most other phone manufacturers bar Apple and Sony-Ericsson.

 

[ponyo]

a few things i don't like about it:

the weight, feels so light compared to my past phone.

I think the lightness of the phone is one of the best features. I don't like holding a brick. It's hard to go back to other heavy phones once you're used to this thin and light phone.

power button on the wide, wtf were they thinking?

I didn't like the small power button on the side at first either but now I'm glad they put it there. The phone stays in my shorts pocket and I'm constantly moving while working. Accidental power on rarely happens now.

no ability to turn 3g off, really makes me angry.

Settings/wireless and network/mobile networks/ and check Use only 2G networks

paid $230 + tax at BB, see it for less than $100 on walmart and amazon.

My wife bought from Costco and it came with free car charger, case, and bluetooth headset for free. And it was cheaper than mine at amazon. I stole her car charger. 🙂

no camera flash, irritating.

I don't miss the flash. Not one bit. I'm irritated by the missing front camera and the FM radio present in the international Galaxy S. Damn you T-mobile and AT&T for making Samsung remove it.

I was about to buy Nexus One as well. Glad I read the thread here about Galaxy S being released and waited.

 

[ponyo]

I wonder if googleTalk is the issue then ... I don't run it, so I wouldn't have any insight - but if you're close to your 30 - TAKE IT BACK. Better safe than sorry.

My wife and I use googletalk. I don't notice heavy battery drain with it.

 

[slightlyhuman]

I think the lightness of the phone is one of the best features. I don't like holding a brick. It's hard to go back to other heavy phones once you're used to this thin and light phone.



I didn't like the small power button on the side at first either but now I'm glad they put it there. The phone stays in my shorts pocket and I'm constantly moving while working. Accidental power on rarely happens now.



Settings/wireless and network/mobile networks/ and check Use only 2G networks



My wife bought from Costco and it came with free car charger, case, and bluetooth headset for free. And it was cheaper than mine at amazon. I stole her car charger. 🙂



I don't miss the flash. Not one bit. I'm irritated by the missing front camera and the FM radio present in the international Galaxy S. Damn you T-mobile and AT&T for making Samsung remove it.

I was about to buy Nexus One as well. Glad I read the thread here about Galaxy S being released and waited.

how do you change the home buttons?

 

[ponyo]

how do you change the home buttons?

You mean the menu, home, back, and search buttons? I don't know if you can.

 

[slightlyhuman]

You mean the menu, home, back, and search buttons? I don't know if you can.

oh god damn. just uninstalled the email app and it's blank where that icon used to be. why in the hell would they not allow you to do that? i only use gmail. sigh.

 

[slightlyhuman]

Settings/wireless and network/mobile networks/ and check Use only 2G networks

there is no option for that. i've seen it on my old g1. not on my captivate.

 

[RedCOMET]

oh god damn. just uninstalled the email app and it's blank where that icon used to be. why in the hell would they not allow you to do that? i only use gmail. sigh.

how do you change the home buttons?

On the captivate, go to the App drawer, hit the settings button and change it to customize. Then hit the setting button again, and hit the edit button. Now you can drag and drop the icons where ever you want, including the into the app drawer.

 

[Raduque]

Some of my gripes are:
---------------------------------------------------------------
GPS - completely broken. Samsung has known about this problem for AT LEAST 3 months and there still isnt a fix. (an ACTUAL fix, not that crap that 1 out of 100 people claim that works)

Yea, it's broken, and it's pathetic. The GPS and compass were broken on the original international Galaxy S I9000 and still aren't fixed.

BATTERY - Im a little biased coming from a BB, but almost everyday my battery is completely drained in about 8 hours. As a result i bought a car charger and a AC charger for almost every place i can charge it if i get the chance (work, school, etc.)

I get 25-30 hours, and I have GPS and Wifi always on and Facebook/twitter/Beautiful Widgets updating at 2hr intervals.

DATA - I have to battery pull multiple times a day because sometimes my data just shuts off. Once it cuts out ive waited to see if it will come back once i go somewhere else, but it doesn't until i pull the battery.

I'm noticing more and more that I'm getting random 3G failures while browsing or in the market, so there may be something to this, but I've never had to pull the battery, it always comes back.

BATTERY PULLS - I feel like im constantly doing this for shit not working right - WTF - texts wont send, cant place or recieve calls, etc.

FRONT BUTTONS - Terrible - sometimes ill sit there and press it a million times and it takes forever to pick up that my finger is on top of the button. Either that or its just lagging and will pick up my 10 presses all at once.

I'd see about getting a replacement - I have no issues that would cause me to have to pull the battery, nor do my buttons ever not respond or lag.

LAG and PERFORMANCE - For the most powerful android phone it sure doesn't seem like it. When i press the unlock button i can swipe my unlock pattern sometimes 3-4 times before it picks up my touch. I do like that ive been playing FF7 on a PSX emulator without any hiccups - but id take better performance all around then just good graphic performance.

You know, I hear tons of people complaining about "lag" on this thing, but I've never seen any except during a reboot when Media Scanner is raping my SD card. The phone's performance has been way way more than adequate for me.

CAMERA- No LED flash and auto focus sucks. I can honestly say my BB 9700 took better pictures. Why do i have to touch where i want the camera to focus every time? My bb took awesome shots at almost every range (it would focus in and out and then set on the right spot) why cant my captivate do this?

You touch to manual focus, but auto focus IS there and it DOES work. It's not like most camera phones that show you it's focusing and then snaps the picture, when you hit the button it goes blank, focuses and takes the picture and it's very quick, at least that's how it works on my Vibrant. Personally, I hate LED flashes, they wash out the picture with ugly blue light and have a range of about a foot.


I love my Vibrant, it absolutely curb stomps my MT3G in every way.

 

[kaerflog]

You touch to manual focus, but auto focus IS there and it DOES work. It's not like most camera phones that show you it's focusing and then snaps the picture, when you hit the button it goes blank, focuses and takes the picture and it's very quick, at least that's how it works on my Vibrant. Personally, I hate LED flashes, they wash out the picture with ugly blue light and have a range of about a foot.

I love my Vibrant, it absolutely curb stomps my MT3G in every way.

If you don't think flash is important to you then be it but lets not exagerrate on the purpose of flash.
Purpose of LED flash is not to make your pic better. Its when you are at a a dark place like bar or club and you just need to snap a pic.
Its doing its job when you can actually see faces on a pic vs. nothing but darkness.
And the range of flash is about ~5 feet, not 1 foot.

 

[slightlyhuman]

On the captivate, go to the App drawer, hit the settings button and change it to customize. Then hit the setting button again, and hit the edit button. Now you can drag and drop the icons where ever you want, including the into the app drawer.

no customize option anywhere on this phone. can any one else confirm? thanks but i didn't have any luck with this:\

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Since I've had my Cap I've been averaging at least 36 hours on one charge with moderate use. One of the first apps I downloaded was ATK so I don't know if that helped or not; I'm thinking it does.

Shenanigans! lol but seriously do you even use the phone at all? 36 hours is ridiculous, but then again i just swapped mine for a newer one today, installed the bare minumum of what i need and used it moderately (maybe 5 mins of calls, 40 mins pandora during my drive, and 1 hour texting and browsing on and off). I am at 70% after being unplugged 7 hours ago - would be on pace for 24 hours.

I really think the problem has gotta be a random app that is eating up battery life, or a setting that keeps a connection open or doesnt go into standby or something like that.

Right now my settings are:
-flashed to the newest firmware - didnt fix my GPS like some have said, puts me in hartford when im in new haven. other than that not a big difference in the 2 firmwares - besides the fact that i might have better battery?
-GPS and use wireless networks unchecked.
-only 2 home screens with regular wallpaper
-3rd party apps: goog voice, updated maps, pandora, gps test, earth, akinator, psx4froid,
-have not rooted again yet
-not using ATK this time, some said it doesnt make any difference, im gonna try the app someone mentioned that shows cpu usage though.
-background data and auto-sync checked - my only account is my google one thats syncing my contacts, email, voice and all that crap
-swype keyboard is default

differences that i had last time that could have caused battery prob:
-different phone, girl said this one just came in as it wasnt even in the system yet
-older firmware
-rooted and removed ATT crapware
-used a calendar widget
-sometimes used live wallpaper
-used ATK when id see random apps pop up in there (ones that i might have never used like wheres my droid - which i downloaded but never set up, titanium backup, superuser permission, scanner radio, email - which i dont use, docs to go, maybe some others.
I understand that most of these arent really running and arent using any CPU, but i think its not crazy to think that one or more of them was casing battery to drain-due to it being poorly written.

list of 3rd party apps i had then: shitload of games, ATK, amazon, apps installer (didnt work) mark the spot, my wireless, barcode scanner, busybox, calorie counter, cbs football, coupons, data counter, docs to go, dolphin browser, drinks recepies, dropbox, earth, ebay, fantasy draft clock, fantasy football, fantasy guru, funny jokes, gameboid, gensoid, nesoid, psx4droid, goog skymap, googles, gps status, movies, npr news, opera mini, rockplayer (stock is better on this phone btw) shazam, speedtest, superuser permission. titanium backup, voice, wheres my droid, wifi analyzer, wii controller, and wikimobile.

Yea i know its mostly crap but i like to try out a bunch of stuff to see if id actually use it. From what i understand none of those apps should be draining battery, but im sure a few are.

I don't miss the flash. Not one bit. I'm irritated by the missing front camera and the FM radio present in the international Galaxy S. Damn you T-mobile and AT&T for making Samsung remove it.

I was about to buy Nexus One as well. Glad I read the thread here about Galaxy S being released and waited.

Im going to post side by side pics from my 9700 and my captivate. In just about every scenario the BB looks better. The video is the only thing the captivate beats it at.

Yea, it's broken, and it's pathetic. The GPS and compass were broken on the original international Galaxy S I9000 and still aren't fixed.

I'm noticing more and more that I'm getting random 3G failures while browsing or in the market, so there may be something to this, but I've never had to pull the battery, it always comes back.

I'd see about getting a replacement - I have no issues that would cause me to have to pull the battery, nor do my buttons ever not respond or lag.

You know, I hear tons of people complaining about "lag" on this thing, but I've never seen any except during a reboot when Media Scanner is raping my SD card. The phone's performance has been way way more than adequate for me.

You touch to manual focus, but auto focus IS there and it DOES work. It's not like most camera phones that show you it's focusing and then snaps the picture, when you hit the button it goes blank, focuses and takes the picture and it's very quick, at least that's how it works on my Vibrant. Personally, I hate LED flashes, they wash out the picture with ugly blue light and have a range of about a foot.

Total BS that GPS is still not fixed yet. Im 50/50 whether im gonna jump ship until a fix comes out.

I also noticed it happens more in the android market than anywhere else. (data failures)

Did get a replacement. My only problem i had today was I lost service and had to power down and up to get it back.

Mostly ill notice this lag when i hit the unlock button and then go to swype my passcode. Itll recognize 1-2 seconds after i hit the button. this is where its most apparent, though it does happen in other places. Havent noticed it yet with new phone though.

Like i said before i dont think mine is auto-focusing. My BB was able to focus on anything. For example is i needed to remember something that was written to me on a peice of paper id snap a pic and have it on my BB for later. It would always come out great quality, close to a scanner. With the captivate it wont focus if your too close, and wont auto focus for me.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

no customize option anywhere on this phone. can any one else confirm? thanks but i didn't have any luck with this:\

You can customize the middle two, the phone and apps icon cant be moved.

Click applications then your button all the way to the left and select "view type". change to customizable grid. then click your bottom left button again and click edit. Now it should let you put whatever you want in the middle 2. After your done switch it back to alphabetical or whichever you prefer.

 

[Bateluer]

Depending on how brave you are, Pete Alfonso, the dev behind the Droid's Bugless Beast rom, has an early build available for the Captivate dubbed 'Unleash the Beast'. Its still early in development, version .2, but Bugless Beast 0.4 is one of the more popular Droid ROMs.

http://www.peteralfonso.com/

Version 0.2
-Downgraded Busybox to V1.17.1 (has more commands)
-Properly symlinked all busybox commands
-Created a sideloading script! (enables non market app installation)
-Added SQLite3
-Updated Wireless Tether to pre8

Version 0.1

So what does this "Unleash The Beast" tool do? Thought you'd never ask, find out after the jump:


* Will root your Samsung Captivate (if you already have root that is ok too)
* Install the latest version of BusyBox (V1.18)
* Install Wireless Tether App (V2.0.5) (turns phone into a router for free)
* Install Market Access App (V1.0.6) (Can uncensor your market)
* Install News & Weather App (a.k.a. Genie Widget)
* Blocks Advertisements in Apps & Browser
* Removes the AT&T Boot Animation
* Removes Power On Sound
* Removes Power Off Sound
* Removes AT&T Family Map App
* Removes AT&T Music App
* Removes AT&T Maps App
* Removes AT&T Navigator App
* Removes AT&T Radio App
* Removes AT&T Hot Spots App
* Removes Days App
* Removes Daily Briefing App
* Removes Google Maps (download from market to have the latest version)
* Removes Memo App
* Removes Mini Diary App
* Removes Mobile Banking App
* Removes Mobile Video App
* Removes MobiTV App
* Removes My Files App (Astro File Manager is WAY better)
* Removes Where App
* Removes Write And Go App
* Removes Yellow Pages App

 

[AstroManLuca]

Sounds like the Samsung Moment. Data lockups galore on that phone. Samsung "fixed" the issue by putting a lower-specced CDMA radio in the Moment's successor, the Intercept (which BTW is inferior to the Moment in nearly every way). Currently the only known way to prevent data lockups on the Moment is to underclock it.

The Moment also had GPS issues that took months to fix. You might get slightly more attention since the Galaxy S phones are a lot more hyped than the Moment, but don't hold out hope for quick or long-lasting support from Sammy.

 

[s44]

Depending on how brave you are, Pete Alfonso, the dev behind the Droid's Bugless Beast rom, has an early build available for the Captivate dubbed 'Unleash the Beast'. Its still early in development, version .2, but Bugless Beast 0.4 is one of the more popular Droid ROMs.

http://www.peteralfonso.com/

Great! Definitely a sign that the Galaxy S has hit critical community mass.

 

[snikt]

Shenanigans! lol but seriously do you even use the phone at all? 36 hours is ridiculous, but then again i just swapped mine for a newer one today, installed the bare minumum of what i need and used it moderately (maybe 5 mins of calls, 40 mins pandora during my drive, and 1 hour texting and browsing on and off). I am at 70% after being unplugged 7 hours ago - would be on pace for 24 hours.

I probably should've been a little more clear about this. When I'm home I don't use my Cap often, rarely for data since my desktop is almost always on. If I need to make a call I'll use my landline. When I hit the sack, I turn off my Cap, anybody of importance can, again, reach me on my landline when I've turned off my Cap. The only time I leave my Cap on 24 hours straight is on the weekends. So, yeah, that's how I'm probably averaging 36 hours on a charge.

 

[slightlyhuman]

You can customize the middle two, the phone and apps icon cant be moved.

Click applications then your button all the way to the left and select "view type". change to customizable grid. then click your bottom left button again and click edit. Now it should let you put whatever you want in the middle 2. After your done switch it back to alphabetical or whichever you prefer.

your babies, can i have them?

that was eating at me! :beers; thanks

 

[Bateluer]

I probably should've been a little more clear about this. When I'm home I don't use my Cap often, rarely for data since my desktop is almost always on. If I need to make a call I'll use my landline. When I hit the sack, I turn off my Cap, anybody of importance can, again, reach me on my landline when I've turned off my Cap. The only time I leave my Cap on 24 hours straight is on the weekends. So, yeah, that's how I'm probably averaging 36 hours on a charge.

Thats two people I know who turn their high end smart phones off at night . . . still think its bizarre myself.

 

[Hmongkeysauce]

Ugh, now I'm getting static while playing music. I can live with almost everything else but don't it ever touch an Asian's mp3 player!

I might just have to return it for a place holder(iPhone 4) for now.

 

[snikt]

Thats two people I know who turn their high end smart phones off at night . . . still think its bizarre myself.

Hey, I pay for my landline as well, might as well put it to work. haha