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[Q] Rogers Samsung Captivate - Has it Died on You?

I'm looking to purchase a Galaxy S in Canada, and I'm just worried with the problems that I'm hearing here for the Bell Vibrant owners. For the Vibrant owners, I'm hearing problems such as the internal SD died and so a motherboard replacement is required to fix it, the phone refuses to boot, etc. Owners of the Rogers Captivate, please report back so you can help me, as well as helping other Rogers Captivate owners.
I hope this isn't a repost btw. I did a search and didn't find anything here..

Hey,
I purchased one the day it was released in Victoria, BC. Since then, I've rooted, nandroid backup, and installed the OCLF and a bunch of other cool ****.
I'm constantly turning it on and off. On and off. I have the screen brightness to the max (that's the way I like it), and at stock firmware, it's freaking awesome! Runs really smoothly. I don't really find much lag, but I can see room for plenty of improvement, which are going to be coming up shortly. My biggest complaint is the battery life (65% of mine goes to the brightness), but lasts just as long as any phone on standby. I went on eBay and got 3 batteries and a charger for $10. All hail, removable batteries.
I don't doubt more phones will come out within the next month or two, but if you want one today. I'd recommend it.
Let me know if I can influence your decision in anyway.

100% agree with TheShamsMan above ^
Got this phone from Vancouver @ Day 1 when Rogers launched it. Have done a ton of flashing on it, adding things, removing things, turning on and off the phone..haven't had a single problem with it so far. GPS has worked wonderfully for my needs so far(haven't tried car navigation yet though but i'm sure it would aswell work well). 100% recommend the phone. Even though some info for the Nexus S is out, I think the Captivate's looks beat it hands out. Let me know if you have any question~

Only had it a few days, but delighted with it so far.
I wasn't thrilled with the battery life, until I figured out the default wi-fi sleep policy was killing it.

The phone is pretty good, i've had it about 2 1/2 weeks right now.
I did encounter the shutdown issue though, but after using CaptivateKeepAlive for a little while (and then uninstalling it), it has seemed to gone away, though it did happen one more time recently, so I'm playing around with the battery and seeing what the trouble is (I have contacted futureshop though, and have a replacement phone waiting for me whenever they get more in stock).
Besides that issue, I'd say the battery is the only other thing. It seems to me, that even after applying all the good settings, I use quite a bit of battery. Its hard to tell because I play games on the phone often, but using batteryplotter and spareparts, it seems that most of this is caused by my wifi, and the phone always in a 'running' state. I don't mind very much right now, as I'm always near a plug, and I could make it last a day if I needed to without charging (though no games, and very little use).
So Battery problems, and shutdown problems aside, the phone is lovely. I have no GPS problems like ATT phones report, and no problem with lag either (though perhaps I just don't notice it yet).
All in all, the phone is quick and responsive, and the 16GB internal SD is quite nice. I wonder though, if its possible to use the roms for the ATT captivate on the Rogers captivate? (given the phone is a different model #)

FiniteSM said:
I have no GPS problems like ATT phones report, and no problem with lag either (though perhaps I just don't notice it yet).
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Click to collapse
I hope the your GPS non-issue is the rule and not the exception on the Rogers Captivate. I do remembering reading an article where a Rogers rep stated that their phone with throughly tested to make sure the GPS was fixed.
Assuming it's the rule ... I wonder what change they made to get the GPS working as it should?

crabjoe said:
I hope the your GPS non-issue is the rule and not the exception on the Rogers Captivate. I do remembering reading an article where a Rogers rep stated that their phone with throughly tested to make sure the GPS was fixed.
Assuming it's the rule ... I wonder what change they made to get the GPS working as it should?
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Click to collapse
I dont know what they tweaked...but it also works great for me.
All in all the phone is great. I am coming from a Blackberry Bold 9000 that I used for 2 years and decided that I wanted to try something differents.
The Wifi Sleep policy is something you should change when you get your phone.
Settings -->Wireless and network --> Wi-Fi settings --> (menu button) Advanced Settings -->Wifi Sleep policy --> Never
The constant switching between wifi and 3G drains the battery like you won't believe!

Thanks guys. Looks like I'll have an excellent time with my Captivate.
It's nice to hear that no one's Captivates died on them yet. It has me worried, but at the same time I think the whole thing was blown out of proportion.

Hey,
I bought my Captivate from Rogers on Sept 25 (I believe it was the launch date) in Ottawa, ON. I tried out the stock firmware and everything worked swimmingly. I had great GPS locks, the phone was quick enough for anything I did, and did everything it was supposed to. As long as I was mindful of how bright my screen was and whether GPS/WIFI/Syncing was toggled, I was able to push my phone reasonably into the second day without charging it.
Since the first few days, I've been loading Cognition software (currently 2.4) onto my phone. Not because the stock firmware was horrible or anything, I'm just an obsessive tinkerer who needs the absolute best performance and reliability out of his phone. Unlike many of the AT&Ts out there, I didn't break my GPS after loading cognition. My phone is lightning quick, whether it is picking up a GPS satellite lock or playing my music through the auxiliary input in my car. The battery lasts just as long as it ever did, maybe even longer. Again, Cognition isn't a miracle battery cure, and you still have to be mindful of any running apps in the background or if any of the GPS/WiFi/Syncing is toggled to really max out your battery life. Alternatively, you could get an app like locale which automates things like that for you.
If you're looking to buy a version of the Samsung Galaxy S, I really can't think of a better version to buy than the Rogers one. I haven't had ANY troubles with it and it seems to have the least amount of problems between the ones released in Canada and the US. I may be wrong on that, since my researched focused mostly on the Captivate, but perhaps someone could verify what I just said.
I'd go for it,
Tom

The phones pretty damn fantastic, I just wish Samsung would drop Touchwiz and release vanilla Android. Seriously, no one likes it, and everyone likes new versions of Android.

FiniteSM said:
All in all, the phone is quick and responsive, and the 16GB internal SD is quite nice. I wonder though, if its possible to use the roms for the ATT captivate on the Rogers captivate? (given the phone is a different model #)
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Click to collapse
DOUBLE POST! (Sorry guys, not sure if it's an issue here, I know on some forums it is)
To answer your question, yes you can. Personally, i've had issues with data not working and OCLF + stock is more than fast enough for me, after I got rid of TwLauncher. One thing to note though, is that you will have a permanent ATT screen before the "I896" screen, so if that bugs you, stay away.

I picked up the Captivate last night and loving it a lot. However I am having a few problems with it that I dunno how to solve yet. One of em is the poor battery life, and another is texting. I'm not gonna repost it here. If I have to, I'll make another thread.
Thanks for the feedback guys!

This is all very good news. I had the Samsung Vibrant (Bell) version before and never really ran into big problems other than some freezes, but let go of it because my buddy's internal SD died, so that phobia caused me to get the Captivate, since they are all the same internals..
Mine is coming in the mail from retentions.. Lets hope i'm not disappointed. Already got a case from SGP lined up and on its way, also the 2 battery + battery charger combo. Already know what to expect.. Surprised that the GPS is fixed!.. I will be sure to check when I receive my unit tomorrow.
Has everyone checked it with the actual GPS receiver turned on? Because, I know that the "wireless networks" gps box always works. But what if it is unchecked, and only the GPS box is on, does it still work then?

FiniteSM said:
I wonder though, if its possible to use the roms for the ATT captivate on the Rogers captivate? (given the phone is a different model #)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would also like to know if someone can please confirm whether the roms for the ATT captivate (i-897) are still compatible with the Rogers Captivate (i-896), just incase I want to flash a rom in the future.
Also, if the OCLF is safe to install? Or do we have to wait for one specially made for the Rogers Captivate?

Is there a level of delusion and wishful thinking?

So I recently made the plunge and rooted my Nexus S. It was well worth the trouble. But maybe not for the reason most people might think.
Obviously, my aim was to try out different ROMs and get more power/battery life/functionality out of my phone. I agree on the functionality, but I have great doubts about the other two.
For the last week I've been testing Cynogenmod against Inf1nity against NSCollab and the results have been poor on most accounts.
Improved battery life:
Absolutely no way. My battery life has never been worse. No matter what I try, the battery drain is pretty bad. Not helped by the fact that in all three ROMs there are serious bugs which means auto-syncing even though it's switched off and constant notifications, even though they are all switched off. And that's just on the surface. System processes are going berserk on all three ROMs for no good reason at all.
Improved speed:
If there is, it's a bloody small one. In my opinion, it's quite the opposite. Maybe there's a performance improvement in certain areas, like gaming or audio. But in general the phone was prone to sluggish behaviour, no matter what settings were selected. Only Infinity felt snappy. In all cases you have to remove whatever non-stock launcher was on there and switch off many things.
The only thing you get from all of them is more functionality. But to be honest, I'm back on the stock 2.3.4, rooted and flashed the kernel and my phone is the snappiest it's ever been and so is the battery life. And there was no ROM in sight to get it there.
I'm new to this, so if I have been testing the wrong ROMs then please do point me in the right direction. If not, I'm just going to stick to my rooted phone and customize the parts I want when I have a need for it.

For some reason there is often a disparity between the experience that one individual has with a ROM, and that which another person may have. Even on the same make/model device and the same ROM, peoples 'luck' may be completely different. Perhaps it's the interaction of ROM + Apps installed, configuration, usage, variations at the silicon level...sheer luck...? Who knows?
My device hates Stock ROMs but excells with CM7, whereas others with the same device often have the opposite experience. That's why we're lucky to have a diverse dev culture and usually many options available to us. You just have to find one that fits.

Well, I'm not giving up, that's for sure The Nexus S compatible ROMs seem to be quite new, so I'm hoping future versions will show improvement.
In the meanwhile I have to applaud the community spirit and the work some people put in this. Just a pity it's not translating into results on my phone quite yet. I hope to see a real lean and fast ROM run on my phone soon.

[Q] Switching from Revolution to Charge What do I need to know?

Hi All,
I am switching phones from the LG Revolution to the Droid Charge Free upgrade from VZW due to the two phones that bricked themselves overnight.
I had the LG rooted and the sole custom ROM loaded and I loved it.
I have a few questions about the Charge I hope I can get answered here:
1: I've heard about a lot of issues with the GPS not being accurate/having trouble locking on to Sats. Is this true? Is there a fix for it?
2: How is 4G connectivity/speed? With the LG I had good connectivity and pretty decent speeds ~ 8mbps down. Is the charge in the same realm? Faster slower?
3:I played around with the change in the stores before deciding on the Revo and
the one thing that I hated about the DC was how laggy the screen seemed to be in switching between app drawer and Home screen and even between desktops.
Apps launching also seemed to be slower. I've been reading that the lagginess can be fixed with a custom patch is this true and how much of a difference does it make?
4: Since I intend to Root this 1st thing, and it looks like there are a few different ROMS out there, what is the best ROM to put on this phone?
5: What other quirks and gotcha's do I need to be aware of with the Charge?
Thanks

My noob insight
I have had the charge for about 2 weeks now and did a lot of research and testing between the two devices and the Thunderbolt. Off the bat though, you don't have to deal with the bing intergration (unless that is your thing.) Here is what I know of:
1. It usually works fine, but I have experienced some issues with getting a lock on GPS. It usually would last no longer than a few minutes, but it does happen occasionally. Nothing I believe should be worried about or require a fix. The 4G seems to be fine, I have heard of previous issues but i think they have been addressed through an update.
2. My 4G with the charge is crazy. I consistently get between 10-14Mbps in my apartment, and have rarely seen anything under 9 on my speed test, including on the subway. (Bart in San Francisco)
3. That lag is annoying. It is there and I have been trying to figure out how to relieve some. There is the kernels with the Voodoo lagfix that address the issue. My experience has been so so with voodoo. I received a lot of errors in the custom rom (could have been my fault though) and seen the same lag (sometimes worse). But you should try, most seem pleased with the patch. Most cases it is fast enough though. Reducing the home screens to 5 and cutting back on widgets has helped a lot. But I guess that is expected.
4. I tried the GummyCharged. Altered Beast seem to be pretty popular as well. Both provide increased speed and reduced bloatware. I prefer Touchwiz personally. Nice overlay and not as intrusive as HTC sense (I hate sense).
5. check out this thread http://www.mydroidworld.com/forums/...harge-full-factory-tar-flashing-software.html in case you want to flash back to stock. Always disable voodoo when flashing anything. I was unable to disable it when trying to go back to flash, someone recommended a program (look it up) although I got the info after I just force flashed back to stock. I am still worried about issues that can arise, but so far so good.
Hope that helps.

Hitting the sweet spot in ROMs

I've tried most ROMs that are out for the MT4g, and I can say there is a massive variety. I really love the ability to fly between ROMs like this, but there is one glaring fact that I can't get by: they each have very evident weaknesses.
Yesterday, I flashed MIUI for the second time. The first time didn't last long - I quickly reverted to whatever I was using before, probably CM7 or VU. This time, however, I immediately became enamored by its quickness. Responsiveness I had only found on iDevices previously was very evident - and after installing launcherpro, I had the smoothest and most enjoyable surface-level device you could ask for. Polish was very evident in many parts (The two-pixel tall battery meter that would be above the notification bar was quickly a hit with me.) However, I quickly learned that it was not entirely translated from Chinese - the search button from the homescreen would produce only Chinese results. The registration for MIUI's built-in services was built around Chinese websites. On top of these evident, but manageable, issues, I noticed that music would randomly skip, sometimes multiple songs at a time. This issue kept reappearing in third-party music apps. Also, netflix was plain awful. A notification would lag the video and make the audio be out of sync. And that was only when the video actually worked. I ended up switching ROMs this morning when I accidentally turned screen brightness down to the lowest setting which made the screen permanently black, which for some reason has no method to fix. I was not willing to set everything up again.
Of course, before this I had to have a reason to switch from another ROM, right? CM7 has been my go-to for an acceptable Android experience. It works, but has a good number of rough edges, and isn't the smoothest experience ever. It does, however have many aspects that are universally compatible with almost every other Android device on the market running the same ROM, like the theme manager. Updates come almost every day if you are willing to flash a ROM every once in a while. Under the right circumstances, it is pretty speedy. My dealbreaker with it is poor radio performance. I don't know how MIUI would fit in with radio performance, as I was only on it for a day. Sense ROMs seem to have exemplary radio performance. CM7 randomly drops Wifi and is on edge where sense roms would have one or two bars of HSPA+. In addition, it takes longer for CM7 to actually connect to data services when you want to connect to a webpage or something.
My second most common ROM is Virtuous Unity. I think it has some cool eye candy, and has awesome data performance. Unfortunately this is as far as it goes for me. Sense is bulky. Really bulky. Looking at the built-in process manager shows a constant use of 4/5 of the RAM. This is not OK. I could quickly notice that the graphics performance for everything other than the launcher and certain built-in apps quickly decreased. The same apps would run smoothly on a ROM like CM7.
I guess my point is that it has been a while in the development for this device. Why hasn't anyone made a ROM that can pull the best aspects of these together?:
-The visuals and ludicrous responsiveness of MIUI
-The low resource consumption and crazy customization like CM7, as well as generally good compatibility with media apps
-The outstanding radio performance of Virtuous unity and other Sense ROMs
Maybe I'm completely in the dark here on why this might not be possible. Let me know if there's some ROM that I haven't tried yet that comprises these features and you may have found me my new daily driver.

I don't really know what to say to help ya out.
Running MIUI was fine for me, I never saw any Chinese and I ran MIUI for 2 months straight back in the summer. And the notifications never lagged apps, it bugged me when i was on Navigation, but I would turn that pop up off.
Sense ROM's were fine for me as well, I never experienced the bad graphics that you're talking about. I always played games and everything was fine. Sense always takes up more RAM but that's never an issue, even with Sense 3.0 ROM's you're still left with 100mb's or so. Even with 4/5 of your RAM taken that's not a problem as unused RAM is wasted RAM anyways.
And as for CM7, it's always my favorite and "go-to" ROM. It's always smooth and buttery for me 24/7 and has never slowed up on me. Wifi never drops on me and I get the same radio reception that I get on Sense ROM's.
Maybe you have certain apps installed or something that's causing you to have these weird problems with CM7 and Sense. As for MIUI, I never saw Chinese lettering so now sure how I can respond on that one.

I'm on Miui and I love it. You can overclock it and even undervolt a little too if you want but even overclocking the battery life is still really good.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

on miui right now and pretty content with myself
never saw chinese either personally, and never really felt like i needed to go to the miui site for any support, this place has been great for any issues i've had
as for the screen blacking thing, this is a known issue and is fixed by sliding the "trackball" to the right to bring the brightness back up or knowing where the brightness button on the settings page is.
and i personally feel GPS locks on faster in miui then it does when i was on tdj's 3.5 port. i unno, it took awhile for gps to lock on that but in miui it locks on so quickly lol

if you are really having that hard of a time getting full functionality out of the ROMs you are installing you are doing it wrong.

darinmc said:
if you are really having that hard of a time getting full functionality out of the ROMs you are installing you are doing it wrong.
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Click to collapse
Everything the OP is talking about is opposite of my experience.
My radio works fine. GPS is zippy on the new leak.
I watch netflix at work ... Ive been through 6 documentaries and 28 episodes of Man Men.
MY experience with all the mentioned ROMs have been great.
If you dont do the recommended steps or do additional research Im gonna have to "+1" the comment above.
Sense: loved the flow of functions, hated the animations & batt life
CM7: Loved the reliability and speed, hated the blandness
MIUI: Love the themes, speed and batt life. Hate the contact manager
(I make my UI look sleeker and more sophisticated than an iphone)
People that dont like it because it looks like an iphone or acts like one is because you let act like one or look like one. You gotta understand all the eatures to appreciate it

MIUI.us has been my everyday ROM for over 2 months now. The only concurrent issue with it is with MIUI Music, where it would entirely lock up the phone even when I followed the advice and disabled certain options in the app that "helped" solve the problem.
Other than that, I haven't seen anything else wrong with it up to this day. I use my phone a whole lot, meaning I watch a lot of youtube videos on it, and even HD TV Shows (Go Kamen Rider Fourze!! ) without any problems whatsoever.
Check out the Doubleshot port if you want to swich to something different every now and then. It's pretty good as well, works great!
Give MIUI.us a second chance, just make sure you wipe everything beforehand. Check everything out and you'll be happy enough once you use it for a while longer, you'll see.
Right now I've got the latest BeatMOD BlissSense ROM with Beats Audio and it's an okay ROM, with the same downside as most Sense ROMs, it is a bit slow here and there.
[EDIT] Oh yeah, about the radio reliability, I've got the best radio results with CM7 and AOSP ROMs. Have you tried flashing the Panache Radio ROM to see if it helps?
Well, that's my two cents

For the Chinese search results hit the search button then menu then change the default search engine.
The only other Chinese I saw was in the themes app, but I find it much easier to get themes from English forum sites.

Thoughts on ROM choice/need advice

I hope I won't hurt the moderators feelings by creating yet another thread on this issue.
I've been using my ONE S (S4) for a year and a half now, and have tried only two roms to date: the official one and currently CM10 (10.1.3).
Official rom seems to be smooth and responsive enough, greatest camera software (I guess that applies to any Sense based rom though), but only untill you start dealing with multitasking. Sense probably takes to much memory, so switching between heavyweight apps (Facebook, Navigon, Torque) basically means starting them over again.
CM 10 has it's own pros and cons:
it's lightweight, responsive, but camera software kinda sucks in comparison with stock one and screen turn-on lag drives me crazy sometimes.
I also have weird problems with CM when it all of a sudden reboots and gets into the bootloop mode, or starts being power greedy (100 to 30 in 10 hours without apparent processes responsible for it), in which case cleaning caches and fixing permissions helps.
Also, can't really say that battery life is much different on both roms, but on the other hand I don't bother switching off GPS/WIFI/3G (I still need my phone to be 'smart', you know).
Maybe I'm missing something an there are roms (or maybe kernels?) that combine the best of both worlds?
Is there a lightweight, responsive rom (maybe supporting some alternative tuned power saving kernels) which has great camera app and is stable as hell?

i use odyssey rom (3.21 build) which has been the most stable/quick/customisable i've found (it's a happy medium at least). battery is ok with the kernel that comes with it, but i've tried with the bubba kernel which does give slight battery improvements, but i get bootloops with it.

Hi,
I'm running on PAC-Man ROM. It's based on Cyanogenmod and has some extra mods. I can say I have never seen a better rom than this one. I am very satisfied with it. And one thing you should be interested in about this rom is that it doesn't have only the basic CM camera, it has an app called Focal too. It is a built-in app so you don't have to care abut downloading some extra camera software.
I am really very satisfied with this rom so far. I can only recommend it.
But, of course, you should try it on your own.
Good luck! :good:

@twotimer I understand that you are simply trying to find the best combo of rom and kernel for your device. The problem with these kinds of threads is often times they tend to move more to discussion which compares roms and kernels or sometimes even other software. For the sake of the public, these threads simply just aren't allowed to exist, no matter how they are phrased or presented. Sorry.
Thread closed.