I have a Galaxy S by Samsung.
I have had it for several months.
I travel a lot with my work, and have found that the phone
performs well everywhere I go.
At the beginning I did have a problem where it turned itself off
a couple of times but that has never happened since.
I think the phone is great, and so is Android.
However, I cannot say the same thing about Samsung and especially Kies.
Because I travel a lot as part of my job, I use Skype and wanted to use
it on my phone.
So I go to do this and find it does not work.
1) Email to Samsung New Zealand - Why does Skype not work ?
2) Answer from Samsung NZ - The problem is with Skype.
3) Email to Skype - Why can't I use Skype on my Samsung ?
4) Answer from Skype - You need Android 2.
5) Email to Samsung NZ - Skype say the problem is because I don't have Android 2.
How can I get Android 2.
6) Answer from Samsung NZ - We have not released Android 2 in NZ yet.
7) Email to Samsung NZ - When will you release it. I see it is available in other countries.
8) Answer from Samsung NZ - We don't have a release date at this point.
bah - humbug.
Now as to Kies, this is the biggest, bloatest, worst piece of unnecessary crap
I have come across. Designed by a bunch of nerds, somewhere
in Korea, who love this sort of BS. Kies is very intermittent about when it
decides to recognise the phone. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does
not. I use Win XP Pro.
It has all these features, no one needs, as others have commented
above. Most of the features that are in Kies, I already have in other
applications. Why do I need yet another media player ?
Why do I need another file or photo organiser ?
I now am able to access the photo and video files on my phone directly
by using Windows Explorer, and just treating it as another USB drive.
I use TUT (The Ultimate Troubleshooter from Answers That Work) to
maintime my PC and find out what crap these manufacturers put on
my PC.
Anyway, I'm doing a regular cleanup using TUT, and hello, I see FsbUSBService,
supplied by Teruten is running. Just another piece of
background BS that I don't need as I hook up my phone about once
every two months, max.
So I will be disabling that. All of these things slow your PC down and
make the startup take ages.
When will software manufacturers stop putting useless, unsolicited
programs on our PC's ? Never I guess.
Example - Logitech make good Webcams. Fit one of these to a PC,
and install the drivers. Simple - right ? Wrong, it installs all sorts
of movie editing stuff and other things without asking you.
Now, when I put one of the cameras on a PC, I let it install everything,
then go and do an uninstall, which strangely does not remove the driver,
but uninstalls all the unnecesary stuff.