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Samsung Acclaim w/ US CELLULAR is BAD PHONE

U

UsCellSUCKS

Lurker
The Samsung Acclaim by US Cellular with the Droid software is a BAD phone. If you are planning on purchasing this phone PLEASE DO NOT. US Cellular is standing by this phone and encouraging people to purchase it (possibly to get rid of the stockpile they have?) when they know that the phone does not work properly. If you call Us Cellular's technical support they will tell you that the problems with the phone are because of the Droid software and that as soon as the update comes out for 2.2 that all the problems will be fixed. It is not a droid problem, it is the phone.

THE BATTERY LIFE IS EXTREMELY SHORT! Talk on the phone more than 30 minutes and expect to have to carry your charger with you constantly. Play a game and it will drain your battery. Have nothing even running on your phone and walk through the mall for a couple hours and it will be dead.

PHONE FREEZES Talking on the phone to an important client....when "hello, hello" i was talking to myself for five minutes and I look at the phone and it is frozen. Press the buttons, nope, nothing. Call Us Cellular technical support (from another phone of course) and they tell you to take the battery out to restart the phone and wait the 45 minutes it takes to reboot and come back up to the phone so you can explain to your important client that even though you though Us Cellular was a reputable phone company you are loosing your faith in them to choose good phones.

BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE Call customer service with US Cellular and they will tell you that you made a bad choice in choosing to not exchange your phone for a new Samsung Acclaim, even though they can not make the new phone work any better than the old Samsung Acclaim, and you will loose the Apps you downloaded because they can't transfer those.

COUNTLESS PROBLEMS that Us Cellular was unable to resolve. Please don't buy a Samsung Acclaim phone from Us Cellular.

Believe in something better? What???? Believe that if you buy a US Cellular phone that when you call them to complain they will make up every excuse about why the phone is bad and
 
Battery life on smartphones are horrible in general, you will never get battery life like on a regular phone. The Acclaim is a lower end phone, if you follow some instructions out there, you can make it better! Usually its some apps that are installed that cause freezing/FC's/reboots, have you tried not installing some of the apps that you have on there? Also, it should not take 45 minutes to reboot!! Not defending anybody here, just trying to help, I have two Acclaims and havent had any issues.
 
I doubt this guy is going to come back anyways but to address some the issues.

First battery life. That's all dependent on how you are using the phone. I have been able to get 2 days out of one charge. My guess is on heavy call usage I would probably only be able to get one. Also the first couple days I had my phone I also noticed poor battery life but after letting it get a full charge overnight for about 3 or 4 days it seemed to improve.

Games are always going to take huge amounts of battery life when you run them just because they are using processing power and RAM and also require power to the backlighting. I have the DISH remote access app installed on my phone to use with my sling adaptor and I can watch that for about half an hour and I will lose about a quarter of the battery at times. I didn't really expect anything better than that though just because that is such a resoure intensive app. I can however use pandora or audiogalaxy for over 3 hours easily and lose barely a quarter battery life. That to me is pretty awesome.

Your freezing issues, like cwill said, are most likely due to some crappy application that was poorly developed and you need to uninstall that. You might want to start from scratch and install only a couple apps at a time and see what happens. I think everyone here that has had that problem and solved it, solved it by uninstalling a problem app.

Boot time on this phone is slow but not 45 minutes. If it is 45 minutes there is something seriously wrong.

Haven't lost a call yet on this phone. I also haven't had any freezing issues like others here.

This phone is bottom of the barrel as far as USC's offering of Android phones. I do think 2.2 will help(if we ever get it). But overall you have to realize this is probably one of the cheapest android phones you can get. If you want a real powerful android phone from USC look at their offering from HTC. That thing has quite a bit more power than the Acclaim, but of course you will have to pay for that.

Good luck. I hope you are able to solve some of these issues and get your phone working the way you want it.
 
i did find that battery life improved as time went on. Either I play with less or the battery got into a better cycle of life.

I've never lost a call but on occasion I do accidentally press buttons with my face. It's really bad if you leave your dialpad open while you're talking.

it is a bottom feeder phone. I wouldn't buy it again if I had the choice but I won't say it's a bad phone either. I know early on they wouldn't connect with Windows 7 64bit because of a USB driver issue(that is now corrected).

Battery life draining walking through a mall could very well be signal loss. You want to see battery life die, go to a 'fringe' area where you're constantly searching for a tower and you're battery will die quicker than a red shirted person on star trek.
 
Some users will encounter issues with their device and then feel negatively impacted by the manufacturer, the store, the carrier and of course the reps they deal with.

Others will just feel that, if the issues can't be cleared up, they've purchased a lemon and they need to have it exchanged or repaired.

Fwiw, CNET reviews of the Acclaim, and the comments by users that followed, are pretty good:

Samsung Acclaim Review (U.S. Cellular) - Smartphones - CNET Reviews
 
I have to wonder if the OP even ever used the Acclaim. A number of the statements made are completely untrue.

First, the phone does work properly, but it is a lower end Android phone. I've had this phone (along with the Mesmerize) since the day after it came out, and while not perfect, it is far from being a bad phone as the OP claims.

One of the OP's claims is short battery life. The statement, "Have nothing even running on your phone and walk through the mall for a couple hours and it will be dead" is a complete fallacy. I've gone two days without a charge if I'm not using the phone, which I consider awfully good for a non-BlackBerry smartphone. With normal use, I need to charge it every day or day and a half. I can only recall two or three times that I have needed to charge it more than once in a day. I'm not a heavy duty game player, and I don't have time to watch YouTube videos all day.

Will the phone freeze up? Yes, it certainly will. Overload it with apps, or being too lazy to houseclean your Messaging Inbox will reward you with quite an unpleasant experience. From first hand experience I have learned that this phone likes to have at least 100MB free, on the phone. You can check where you're at on this by going to Settings > SD Card & Phone Storage and look at the amount of Available Space under Internal Phone Storage. I've noted on a number of Acclaims, that once this gets below about 75MB, the phone will start freezing and becoming sluggish, and below 50MB, this will get to the point of being irritable.

The phone does not take 45 minutes to reboot, that is another out and out fantasy. I just did a battery pull on mine, with 119MB of internal free space, and it took 1:31 min/sec to get to the desktop. That is much better than most BlackBerry smartphones, which will take twice that time, or more, to boot.

"BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE?" That must be why US Cellular was recently voted #1 in Mobile Carrier customer service in the US by Consumer Reports, and their info came directly from customers, just like us. Forbes rates US Cellular as one of the most trustworthy companies out there, with a perfect, 100% score (the only mobile carrier in their list), and US Cellular has won numerous JD Powers awards for service excellence. BTW, fewer than 5% of all public companies make it on this Forbes list, and far fewer get a 100% rating!

RE: Consumer Reports article

Forbes Most Trusted
 
I got this phone as work cell phone we purchased 10 or so of these. The price was right.

My acclaim, doesn't last all day, by lunch I have to recharge it. I use it fairly regularly. I have went into US cellular and replaced the battery numerous times so it can't possibly be the battery. I also have also had a task killer sense the first day I got the phone, it most likely helps the battery a little bit because I constantly use the app.

I went to USCC 2 days ago and they blames the bad battery life on the phone being one of the first android phones that USCC carried, which doesn't completely make sense because there are a couple different phones that are the same as the acclaim just with a different name and carrier.

The phone also locks up every so often, but it could be much worse. One of the more annoying parts of the phone is how slow it is. For example if I get a call, it will start vibrating and the ringtone starts, I then look at the phone and it is still at the lock screen. It takes like 5 seconds for me being able to answer the phone. It sucks when I am in a silent room and my phone starts going off and I can't answer it. This doesn't happen all the time just regularly.

The only other thing is that I keep wifi on, but last month it was off and I got about the same battery life so I figured why turn it off.

I know USCC no longer offers this phone atleast within the last week.

Just curious if anyone has any suggestions.
 
if you're battery is going dead in 4 hours I have to ask what are you doing with it? Is the GPS on? Is the WIFI on? is the SYNC on?

I had the phone for about a year until I broke the screen. Then I got a Mesmerize.

I'd lose the task killer and see if you're running a bunch of background stuff like GPS that you don't need on some of the time. As well as Wifi, if i'm not in a wifi zone I turn it off otherwise it'll be constantly hunting and looking for something to latch onto which will kill the battery quicker.
 
It's got a weak 800MHz processor and 160MB of RAM. That it's a terrible phone isn't a matter of opinion, it's a cold hard fact. The OP exaggerated about the battery life and maybe about US Cellular (who knows, he could have got a bad/new rep, or someone at the end of a long shift, you never know), but this phone is objectively bad. With a good ROM (I use UberAcclaim, over on SDX) this phone can suck less, but regardless, you're dressing up a pig. And I got a GOOD Acclaim. My wife didn't. I shattered the screen on mine and threw a screen protector up there. I'd still rather use mine than hers. I've had it since the Acclaim came out and I've never had to replace it. If I hadn't shattered the screen, I would keep my Acclaim around after the upgrade, just as a spare device for whatever. It's not entirely worthless. It's just that Samsung dropped the ball. If the Acclaim had had at least 256MB of RAM, maybe it would have been alright. Maybe.
 
i have to disagree it's all still relative.

My first cell phone was a brick. Weighed about 3 pounds and did nothing but make phone calls. But it was one of the better phones at the time.

My first real computer was an IBM PC that ran at 4.77mz and was expandable to 640k(yes kilobytes) of ram. A real screamer at the time.

The Acclaim was US Cell's . 3 or 4 years ago it would've been a high end phone. Since US Cell get's their phones 6 months+ later than the big guys it was leading edge for them.

5 years ago V6 with 220 hp and 30mpg was fantastic. Now you can get a V6 with 300+hp and 30mpg making the earlier one seem inadequate.

I can go forever with what was once trendsetting is now woefully inadequate.

I'm currently running a Mesmerize. Great phone, but people bash it as well. I'm eligible for an upgrade but with custom ROM's I see no reason to at this moment.
 
I liked my acclaim and I would prolly still be using it if I hadn't cracked the screen. I'm glad I did though cuz my mesmerized is the shiznittle and I could put a. different rom on every week for a few months prolly if j wanted to though I am currently satisfied with 4.0.3. anyway I'm sure anyone who had a stockpile of acclaims would be trying to get rid of them! where is the fault there?

I will say that acclaim comparably to the mesmerized is not very customize able and there aren't really any devs supporting it. still a fully usable and GOOD PHONE!
 
use "antutu battery saver" and get rid of the task killer and if you didn't notice a big difference between the month you left wifi on and the month you left wifi off then your prolly not being honest with yourself!
 
There is actually a dev supporting the Acclaim over on SDX, and he does good work. I mentioned this before, but I'll mention it again since somebody just said it's not being supported.

TheTehk17 over on SDX has a ROM out called
 
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