A Captivate owner is forced to use a Backflip

[sremick]

Nothing of real value here. But as a Captivate owner forced to live with a Backflip for a while, I thought it'd make an interesting discussion.

Here are things that have jumped out at me:

• Even the AT&T store manager referred to it as the "Backflop".
• I don't mind a flip-out keyboard as much as I thought I would. It's sort of nice to be able to flip it out when wanted and not interfere with what's on the screen.
• That said, the keyboard sucks. Tactile feel is horrible and it makes the phone really thick... far thicker than I'm used to
• I really, really miss AMOLED. Once you become used to the look and advantages of OLED, you don't want to go back to LCD. Unfortunately, most LCD fans haven't used AMOLED in order to realize how much better it can get.
• Sort of nice having a small phone again physically, but for many tasks I wish I had the larger screen area. Portability and usability will always be at-odds with each other.
• Phone is slow. That 200MHz difference is really noticeable.
• GPS just works. Even on this old, crappy phone, even on Android 1.5... it works perfectly and amazingly. Just rubs salt in the wound from the Captivate. I can bring it to a window and even within 1' or so, it locks to 8-9 satellites within seconds. Same window, the Captivate is lucky to lock on to 1 no matter how long you leave it pressed right up against the glass. Samsung: I hate you.
• Many things don't work on Android 1.5, including Google Voice. So I updated it... all the way to Android 2.1. Get that? 1.5 -> 2.1. Can you imagine Samsung updating the Captivate all the way to Android 3.0? Hate Motorola all you want (MotoBlur sucks), but they do update their phones. Watch them release 2.2 for the Backflip.
• I really like the charge light around the USB port. Nice touch.
• Touchscreen is nowhere near as-responsive as the Captivate's.
• That said, the bottom 3 off-screen touch buttons (menu, home, back) work perfectly all the time and are very responsive... in stark contrast to the Captivate's bottom 4 buttons which are stubborn and finicky as hell.
• Did I mention I hate MotoBlur?
• I miss Swype. A lot.

 

[tylerdurdin]

My wife loved that phone, something wierd was going on with it when it first came out though, after about ten minutes of talking it would just drop the call. Yeah I know, you would think it was a network issue but thats impossible since we have the att microcell in our house, I have unbeliveable 3G everywhere in my house. After number four moto finally confirmed that it was a KNOWN issue. Then my wife sold us out and got a Iblown. A little less than a year later though, shes crying everyday about getting a new android phone.

 

[drapacioli]

I was with the backflip for a week before exchanging it for the captivate. Lucky me, it was on sale the weekend I went to get the captivate so I could actually afford it, otherwise I would have been stuck with an iPhone 3GS. I mainly got the Backflip because I have had Motorla phones in the past and I figured it would last (I still have a KRZR K1 that our family uses whenever one of our phones break. It goes longer than the Energizer bunny!) and I hadn't really had a bad phone from them...until the Backflip. The Backflip was a horrible phone! It was dead slow, the build quality was bad (After one week the keyoboard hinge felt like it was a year or two old, and the screen felt flimsy), and I found it hard to really like the phone, even though I wanted to, it being my first android phone and all. But you do have to admit the GPS was flawless, the camera was on par with the captivate's and even had an LED flash, and I didn't experience as many dropped calls (Then again, I didn't make many either, and I blame AT&T for that more than the phone itself) The one thing I miss about that phone was the battery life. I could use the phone, I mean really use the phone all day, and I'd still have a charge left at the end of the day. Now I have to plug in my phone every time I get in my car, or sit down anywhere with an outlet. I do agree with you when you say that MOTOBLUR SUCKS!

One last note: I bet the Backflip gets Froyo before we do

 

[Chris_Marie]

I wouldn't be so quick to say that moto will update the phone to 2.2 before samsung does with our phones. Backflip was released in march and upgraded to 2.1 in november. The moto cliq was released in october of '09 and was upgraded to 2.1 in november. The moto cliq XT was released in march of this year and is still currently waiting for the upgrade to 2.1.

 

[mnemonicj]

Phone is slow. That 200MHz difference is really noticeable.

It's not the speed of the processor, it's what the phone can do with it. I have a friend with a G2 (800 MHz) and his phone definitely feels laster than my Captivate. The G2 having Froyo may have something to do with it too.

 

[sremick]

It's not the speed of the processor, it's what the phone can do with it. I have a friend with a G2 (800 MHz) and his phone definitely feels laster than my Captivate. The G2 having Froyo may have something to do with it too.

Well yes, once you start talking different OSes you can't really compare. Froyo has numerous speed enhancements and benchmarks have shown for a while that slower hardware running Froyo can be faster than faster hardware on Eclair.

I was comparing the Backflip (800MHz) on 2.1 Eclair with the Captivate (1GHz) also running Eclair. So the OS level was the same, for a fair comparison.

 

[Number1Gsxxr]

I read about the GPS issues and Samsung's reputation for not really supporting their phones and chose to go with the Captivate anyway; thinking that there might be a chance Samsung would actually support the Galaxy S phones. I can say that the only Samsung product I might consider buying from now on are their TVs and monitors.