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Droid X vs Samsung Galaxy S

TheAlmightyDrew said:
Wow. I didn't know the Fascinate didn't have a notification light. What happens with the Galaxy S phones when you get a message, email or miss a phone call or something? I hope someone with the Vibrant can let me know.
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Yeah, kinda nuts, eh? Who knew you could get away with making a smartphone without a notification light these days? You have to turn on the screen everytime you want to check your missed calls, texts, emails, etc. If you do enough of that, I could see that impacting battery life.

I've seen a mod that shows a black screen with a small patch of color to simulate a notification light. It requires root and last I checked had some quirks, but it might be better than nothing.
 
None of the Galaxy S phones have a notification light. If you depend on a blinking light to let you know someone is trying to reach you, you cannot use any Galaxy S phone.
 
TheAlmightyDrew said:
Thank you so much for answering all my questions thoroughly. That really helped. It really looks like I will be making the swap for the Fascinate. I still want to wait until the phone is out. I want to hold it and see if I like the feel of the phone.

Based on your time with both phones, which do you prefer? If you could only choose one, which would you go with?
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sure thing. honestly, i think it is a tossup. i think i may be biased, because i have modded my x quite a bit, and i really have it just like i want it.
i really think it's gonna be a tossup, and just depend on each individual's preferences. i do like the bigger screen of the x, but that isn't an up side for all people.
plus, that hummingbird proc and the gpu are just incredible on the fascinate.
like you already said, it's a good idea to hold both, and play with them both. once you do that, i think the answer will be clear.
 
The Faceless Rebel said:
None of the Galaxy S phones have a notification light. If you depend on a blinking light to let you know someone is trying to reach you, you cannot use any Galaxy S phone.
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yeah. i dont think it will be a deal breaker for a many people, but it is something i do miss. my days at work can get pretty hectic, and i often have the phone on vibrate or silent. i like to be able to take a peek at the phone, and know if i have a missed call/email/sms. and if, for example, i am waiting on an important email or text, i like that i can look at the x and know if i have one or the other (blue LED vs red)
 
@sundOwn, thanks for all the great information. :)

It sounds like to me that the Fascinate has far more up sides than down sides.

The LED notification light is a good thing to have, but it is not that important to be a deal breaker. I turn my phone to vibrate if I am in an important meeting. And if I am in an important meeting, I am not going to answer any email or text anyway. So it is a moot point to me. Besides. it is really not that hard to adapt to the notification bar instead. :)

While it is nice to have a slightly larger screen like 4.5", but the stunning Super AMOLED screen will compensate adequately.

The overall finish of the Fascinate is simply fantastic. In my humble opinion, if we are paying for a high-end device, we want high-end finish.

@sundOwn, may I ask a quick question? I have not seen anyone anywhere mentioned the DLNA feature. Have you tried it on the Fascinate? If you have, what do you think?

Thanks!
 
@sundOwn

Thanks for all of the info. Some quick questions.

1. Can Bing be removed?
2. Can the google search widget be installed?
3. How is the battery life?

Thanks again!
 
TheAlmightyDrew said:
Oh wow. I can't believe I forgot to ask about that as well.

I definitely want to know about battery life as well.
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TheXFactor said:
Hey sund0wn,

Probably a top ten question. Battery life compared to the X?

No notification light is a huge deal breaker for me.
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I would also like to chime in requesting some real world numbers, although I would expect it to be similar to other Galaxy S phones.

Also, I am disappointed about the lack of a notification light. That's one thing I've really liked on my otherwise crappy Eris. I am in meetings a lot, and sometimes people's phones vibrate when messages come in, especially when their phone is on the conference table. I like being more discreet and just seeing the light come on. This, to me, is just one other minor gripe to add against the Fascinate. I'm so glad I signed up for this forum ... I appreciate all you guys, not just the member that has a Fascinate, but input and questions from everyone. Makes you learn as much about something as possible.

Exiled said:
Totally makes sense. I can't even go back to my old ipod touch. It seems so pathetic. Which is a pity, since the Apple store has so many great games that would be wonderful on the X's larger screen.
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I totally hear you! And they would be wonderful on the X or Fascinate because of their dedicated GPUs. Where's the real Bejeweled game for Android?
 
I believe I saw an app to replace the LED notification. It will have a red dot that shows up on the screen. Am I dreaming this or did anybody see it as well? Maybe androidcentral???

MentatYP said:
Yeah, kinda nuts, eh? Who knew you could get away with making a smartphone without a notification light these days? You have to turn on the screen everytime you want to check your missed calls, texts, emails, etc. If you do enough of that, I could see that impacting battery life.

I've seen a mod that shows a black screen with a small patch of color to simulate a notification light. It requires root and last I checked had some quirks, but it might be better than nothing.
Click to expand...
 
Jrid32 said:
I believe I saw an app to replace the LED notification. It will have a red dot that shows up on the screen. Am I dreaming this or did anybody see it as well? Maybe androidcentral???
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I think you are talking about noled ? i hear it eats up battery life like crazy tho
 
I have the captivate which is a galaxy s phone, (almost same as the vibrant) so just thought I would try to share my experience with it. I have no experience with the x and am sure it is a nice phone, but cannot speak to it personally. The XDA developers made a program which makes the captivate SUPER easy to root so kudos to them. After rooting, it was also super easy to do the "one click lag fix" which is now just an app you download and run. It was also super easy to run the 1.2 ghz overclock from XDA in Odin. After running both the lag fix and the overclock, the phone is running 2500ish quadrant scores. The highest score I ran was a 2693. I have a screenshot if anyone wants to see it, but had a problem trying to post it in the Captivate forum. The phone is really really fast. I can just blow right through apps in market place where as before I had a few seconds waiting for market apps to load. The "voice to text" speech recognition comes back almost instantly where there was a few seconds wait before. I "raced" an iphone4 here at work with one of my friends and after we both cleared our caches, and history and cookies to make it fair, opening really large pages, huffington post, etc, the captivate was opening the pages maybe, 4-5 seconds quicker. I don't want to say it was twice as fast, because it wasn't but it was definitely not close. The iphone did not open one page faster. Also apps just snap right open. The only issue I see with the overclocking is that when people hit the power button to take the phone out of sleep mode, it has "wake up" lag which is another second or two before the screen turns on. Not a big deal, but noteworthy and certainly worth the trade off in speed.

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I had a blackberry bold 9700 previous to this and the notification bar on the captivate is so easy to use it did not even occur to me to miss the blinking led on the blackberry. Phone takes great pictures, and quite frankly unless its pitch black out it really does take good pictures at night. I would have preferred a flash, but I compared night pics with flash from the blackberry to night pics with no flash on the captivate and they don't seem much different. It has a low light setting on it which seems to work ok. Takes really good daylight video, but I haven't tried any night video. Battery life is good, but not awesome. If you are on it full time without any breaks, not letting it sleep, browsing, etc, you will get about five or six hours use before needing to charge it, but that use is unrealistic. I am on it A LOT and have not gone home from work, (sometimes 12 hour days) and been worried that I was going to shut down from battery loss. One day I got down to red and just as an experiment, played a movie on the phone, and got almost through the whole movie before it finally shut off. Anyway, just my impressions, really like the phone, feels solid, just hope samsung is as solid backing it up, updates, etc. They seem to have to ball rolling so hopefully it works out.
 
sund0wn,

Thanks for the info!

I may jump to the Fascinate but want to wait at least 30 days for people to report on the phone.

1) Any word on battery life?

2) What class is the SD card (16 GB?) that comes with it?

3) Is there a "lag" on the phone as has been reported with the Vibrant? They say it's due to the file system that Samsung has implemented.
 
A key element for a smartphone, a notification light. First thing I noticed between the phones, the DInc and the X. The light on the X will blink forever until you check the phone. The DInc does not. It's time limited.

I can't spend half my day turning my phone off and on to see if I have missed calls, emails or texts. That being said, having a notification light is one thing, not having one at all is another.
 
TheXFactor said:
A key element for a smartphone, a notification light.
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Not sure I'd go that far.. I think not having a notification led was stupid but, after a day or two of use I didn't notice it much, after a week I could care less either way.

I turn the phone on throughout the day anyway to check the time, weather, send a message etc.. It's rare that I don't hear the notification tone (since the Vibrant is WAY louder than the X) and when I do I'm usually turning the phone on within 10 mins of whatever I missed and catch it then anyway.
 
EliC said:
@sundOwn

Thanks for all of the info. Some quick questions.

1. Can Bing be removed?
2. Can the google search widget be installed?
3. How is the battery life?

Thanks again!
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hey guys, sorry i didnt get to your questions until now. today was hectic! but i will try to get to all the questions that i can!

1. No. Not unless you root it.
2. No, unfortunately not. google maps and nav can be installed, but not google search.
3. battery is not too bad. i find it to be somewhere between the Dinc and the x. (not quite as good as the x, but not as bad as the inc). with proper management, it would last me 14-16 hours with moderate to heavy use.
 
substring said:
@sundOwn, thanks for all the great information. :)
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you're welcome!

substring said:
@sundOwn, may I ask a quick question? I have not seen anyone anywhere mentioned the DLNA feature. Have you tried it on the Fascinate? If you have, what do you think?

Thanks!
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DLNA is great. it works really seamlessly. when i logged on to my wireless network, i just clicked the notification, clicked thru the prompts, and it asked for permission to let each connected device share. I let my computer in, and when i opened windows media player, there was my fascinate. it was super easy to xfer music and photos.
then, i accessed it with my tv, again, really easy to play music from my phone right on my tv.

i really like dlna, and i think it's really cool how simply it works.
 
krichek said:
Not sure I'd go that far.. I think not having a notification led was stupid but, after a day or two of use I didn't notice it much, after a week I could care less either way.

I turn the phone on throughout the day anyway to check the time, weather, send a message etc.. It's rare that I don't hear the notification tone (since the Vibrant is WAY louder than the X) and when I do I'm usually turning the phone on within 10 mins of whatever I missed and catch it then anyway.
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I don't always carry my phone with me. Regardless of the volume of the ringtone, I may or may not hear the phone. With the notification light I can look at my phone any time during the day and tell immediately if I have a missed event, without turning the screen on, constantly.

Of course that situation may be different for others, but for me, it's what it is.
 
dmiller2007 said:
I have a question sund0wn, how do I get a job testing out new phones? Lol
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heh. i am not a "phone tester" per se, but some positions in the corporate office are allowed to have new devices about a month before they release. it is more of a perk than an actual phone testing task. but, they do ask that in return we provide feedback, and of course, we arent supposed to have the phones out in public (and of course arent supposed to talk about them/post about them before they are announced). i am getting a new one next week, and i dont even know what it is yet.
 
Jrid32 said:
I believe I saw an app to replace the LED notification. It will have a red dot that shows up on the screen. Am I dreaming this or did anybody see it as well? Maybe androidcentral???
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i should be multi-quoting. oh well, screw it.

this does exist. i havent tried it, but i heard it works okay. not awesome, but not useless either.

something i really got used to was my motorola h17 bluetooth. it has motospeak, so it was set up to read my texts to me, and read the sender and subject of the emails (you can also set it to read part or all of the email). i hardly noticed lack of the LED once i started using this. it was amazing for work situations where you have to have your phone on vibrate, and cant look at it every 2 minutes. Highly recommended.
 
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