Sorting it all out

[Infinite-t]

Wow, Kinda cool I was able to inadvertantly spark this dialong, a lot of cool ideas and info here to.

I didn't really start this thread to compair the two phone, but inevitably it happened.

When it all sarted out i was frustrated with problems and very poor support from the manuals and samsung support. I have since been able to iron out some of the major isues i was having, and am aple to finally use my phone to a better extent.

Coming from the iPhone camp, yes, it was a bit overwheling at first.. Its like hey, how do i get music on this thing?! (despite the corrupted driver I had), Hey what is up with the ap store, how do I get play lists.. etc. I guess it is a bit like a kid moving from primary to seconday school you know. All the sudden, hey, when is recess? What do you mean homework? Huh, I have 6 teachers now? Wa?

On one side of it, yea It would be nice to have an open ended phone like the android the didnt require a whole but of fussig with to get it to work how you want it to.

But I guess it does boil down to what you want. If you just want to pick up a phone and start using it but arent to concerned with customization or fiddling, the iPhone is a great choice. Its quick, easy and has a lot of top notch features that work out of the box

I did like my old iPhone a lot. But I wanted something new and different, the android is certainly that. It took some serious getting used to,but, I must say, now that things are starting to work better and im getting used to it, I am starting to like the open customization and features and it is starting to grow on my. I like to tinker and fiddle, i just wasnt down with the 4 days of severe frustration and poor customer service.

 

[lilo]

OK. I just signed up for an account here so that I can say this.

Most of you people replying are acting like typical Linux freaks!! It is a PHONE and it should just WORK. I work on Linux/Unix for a living. Not everyone who buys an Android phone wants to eff around with rooting, tweaking internal menus, loading random drivers on their computer, etc, just to get the thing to do what it should do out of the box. That is the same problem with Open Source and Linux - LACK OF USABILITY and LACK OF STABILITY. Why do you think my Grandma is using Windows 7 and not Ubuntu?

I am in the same situation with this device. I appreciate that the devs and coders are working on these things, These guys are super-geniuses. But they don't have a sense of making anything "just work". So while they sort it out, I don't have time to waste half my life trying to hack the thing so that I can make some use out of it. Say whatever you want about Apple, but out of the box it actually does what it says it does. What a concept!

I see where you are coming from and not entirely disagree. On the other hand. The phone (for the most part) does just work. Remember that with iPhone, one just can not switch the interface. There is no need to change interface on Captivate either. I tried Launcher Pro and decided that I liked native interface better. If it did have any slowness, it was gone after I disabled life wallpaper. So, for regular user the trade-off here is quite simple - fancy wallpaper with some slowness or static wallpaper. Apple, in its usual way, made this choice for its users (no life wallpapers).

There is a useful video that shows how Home Switcher works. Pay attention at 7:30.

Here is my advice for regular users (and I am trying to be one of those although I did root the phone and removed some ATT stuff):

* Check Samsung Support site. They actually have a lot of stuff for Captivate already.
* Download and install USB drivers from Samsung Support site
* Disable life wallpaper
* Pick static wallpaper with mostly dark colors (the more black the better). this will help battery life because OLED panels use more energy or displaying lighter colors
* Consider disabling automatic control of screen brightness. Default settings are really bright, for indoor use one can comfortably go much lower in brightness settings. This will help with battery.

With these simple adjustments I get snappy performance and good battery life.

Also, I recommend people to watch the following video that compares iPhone 4 and Captivate. It demonstrates that Captivate is faster in many (most?) operations and this is without fancy setup work.

Still I did have to go through the learning curve (still going) with Android myself when I bought Captivate. Some of it is inevitable but Google and partners do have to do a better job in choosing default configurations and providing better guides.