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Rumor has it mid-October for official Froyo for Cap and Vibrant

http://www.talkandroid.com/16111-insider-tip-froyo-coming-to-captivate-and-vibrant-really-soon/

Taken with a grain of salt. AT&T will have to get their input before we see a push. Fingers crossed though.
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Yeah i "hope" this is the case but ever since the whole hype of Froyo on September 25th, which obviously didn't happen. We shall all see though.

Sounds good hope thats the case
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I'm not sure we will want it after Att gets thru with it. Frodo 2.2 is nice & they will butcher it.
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I actually hope it takes a little longer. It seems like the leaked version was just a quickly ported test version from the I9000. I want them to take there time and get rid of as many bugs as possible instead of rushing it out to satisfy all of those who whine.

nybmx said:
I actually hope it takes a little longer. It seems like the leaked version was just a quickly ported test version from the I9000. I want them to take there time and get rid of as many bugs as possible instead of rushing it out to satisfy all of those who whine.
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This. A mid-October release infers that the leaked version is the close to finished version, and there are FAR too many bugs to make it a worthwhile update.

Yeah just looking at the "Captivate Froyo Issues" thread it looks like many issues will need to be addressed, hopefully, it just lives up to the awesome glorifying hype!!

I REALLY HOPE NOT!
The benchmark for the leaked version isn't what we want it to be. I would rather have it refined and beating the Nexus One at everything than a half assed one that won't be updated for months and months.

well froyo is till better then eclair but hey rumor also has it that in 2012 the world is ending so you never know

I'd be fine with a mid october release. I know att is going to butcher it any way. The sooner they release the kernel the sooner we get a real FroYo experience...
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I trust nothing from either Samsung or AT&T at this point. I know it's going to happen, and when it does, then I will be happy. Otherwise, I'm content with the current leaked 2.2 we have.

I think mid-october is certainly possible - I would guess that there are close to nightly software builds; and even though the current release has lots of bugs, it is AT&T centric.
The JI6 release could just be what AT&T got for network and feature validation. We could even have a GPS fix that just hasn't been added in yet. If Froyo is this far along, why bother to come up with GPS fix on 2.1.
The build date on this was 2 weeks old when it was released - so we really have no idea what the current status is. I never saw any stability bugs, just problems in the contacts and email - Samsung customizations. GPS and audio out from the headset jack seemed to be the only hardware related bugs i heard about.
I shall remain cautiously optimistic.

SlimJ87D said:
I REALLY HOPE NOT!
The benchmark for the leaked version isn't what we want it to be. I would rather have it refined and beating the Nexus One at everything than a half assed one that won't be updated for months and months.
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Not ever going to happen. The benchmarks, such as Quadrant and Linpack, are designed to benefit the Snapdragon system. We don't use it.
It would be like designing a PC benchmark tool to take advantage of Intel instruction sets while disregarding AMD instruction sets. Of course Intel will benchmark higher. Doesn't mean it's necessarily faster.

Well guys, this is not as far fetched as everyone thinks.
http://www.androidcentral.com/ntt-docomo-gets-galaxy-s-and-galaxy-tab-brings-devices-japan
Japan is getting the Galaxy S at the end of this month and guess what it ships with... that's right, ANDROID 2.2.
I think we are actually getting a final release of 2.2 very very soon.

Did it ever occur to anyone here that these "leaked" versions could be used as a final sprint prior to the public release? Seriously. Who better to find every last idiotic bug than people like us who are nuts about these things? Makes perfect sense to me...

TheBronze said:
Did it ever occur to anyone here that these "leaked" versions could be used as a final sprint prior to the public release? Seriously. Who better to find every last idiotic bug than people like us who are nuts about these things? Makes perfect sense to me...
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Are you implying that maybe it's not quite the leak we think it is and we're all secretly being used as lab rats for corporate gain?

Better hope they take their time with the update. Because once they push 2.2 out, there will NOT be another update from Samsung. That's how they operate.

id10terrordfw said:
Not ever going to happen. The benchmarks, such as Quadrant and Linpack, are designed to benefit the Snapdragon system. We don't use it.
It would be like designing a PC benchmark tool to take advantage of Intel instruction sets while disregarding AMD instruction sets. Of course Intel will benchmark higher. Doesn't mean it's necessarily faster.
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What?!? I dont buy that. Both are ARM v7 chips at the core. One has a **** GPU (the snapdragon) one has a good GPU (samsung). But the CPU portion of each is very very similar. One thing that favors the snapdragon is that it has the full 512MB RAM, Galaxy S is limited to 304MB.

derek4484 said:
Better hope they take their time with the update. Because once they push 2.2 out, there will NOT be another update from Samsung. That's how they operate.
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Truer words have never been spoken.
It was the same case with my Samsung Impression. They released the phone with many bugs in the firmware and never released a fix. Not one. That wasn't very good for AT&T because they kept selling that phone for 2 years. It had one of the longest shelf lifes I've ever seen for AT&T.

What do you guys think is going on?

Here we are the last week of December. Promised dates for Froyo on the captivate have come and gone and keep changing. Samsung releases a new Android platform in the Nexus S and Google has control of software releases on it. I've had my Captivate since September, I'm running a custom ROM (Cognition) and for the most part my phone works with the GPS being the only sore spot.
Has Samsung/ATT abandoned development? Will we SEE Froyo released at all?
At this point I think the idea that they've scrapped it and are moving to Gingerbread is a pipedream.
There hasn't been a leaked final Froyo yet and that is really suprising to me.
We have the hottest hardware available right now and it's bogged down by the crappy stock software and 2.1 releases are crippled because we don't have proper source code for the Devs to work from.
I'm getting frustrated and contemplating selling this phone, but I LOVE the android platform and want to stick with it.

I feel the same way but I'm gonna hold out just a little longer
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gunnyman said:
We have the hottest hardware available right now and it's bogged down by the crappy stock software and 2.1 releases
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Out and out, I disagree with this. A Voodoo lagfix charged Cappy (i.e RFS-fixed) merely lacks Flash from 2.2.
There is no need on the Hummingbird platform for the 2.2 JIT improvements that dramatically boosted the performance of Snapdragon based handsets.
Touchwiz/Sense/etc is merely a demon that plagued pre 2.3 devices (and we haven't seen what Carrier/Vendor bull**** is coming with 2.3 yet, I wouldn't say we're out of the woods yet) and to be honest they are all as bad as each other - particularly if they are so ingrained that you can't dump them by replacing their components without root (much less adb/full rom flash).
There is 3 problems with the Captivate platform, to be sure, imo in the order of importance.
1. RFS
2. GPS
3. AT&T/Samsung's lack of updates/source/news
Overall, I think that Froyo is being held up over GPS not being "fixed" as well as the sleeping shutdown bug, and AT&T's general ineptitude.

tahnks for cutting off what I said to make your point. STOCK SOFTWARE SUCKS. Devs' custome ROMS are good, but held back due to the lack of an official 2.2 release and source code.

gunnyman said:
tahnks for cutting off what I said to make your point. STOCK SOFTWARE SUCKS.
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It doesn't.
RFS does. If no-one had to suffer Touchwiz with RFS, there wouldn't be quite as much hate as there is.

1randomtask said:
It doesn't.
RFS does. If no-one had to suffer Touchwiz with RFS, there wouldn't be quite as much hate as there is.
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It's STOCK and can't be modified without rooting therefore my point stands.

i really dont see what is wrong with the custom roms based on leaked firmware, it runs very smooth, and coming from a nexus one, there is definitely a noticeable difference.
but then again, the nexus one is almost a whole year older than the galaxy s phones, so if there is no difference, i would say they are doing it wrong.

meh.. Ive come to depend 100% on XDA for my updates.
I don't think we will ever see any official OTA updates from Att any time soon.
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SAmsung reps are telling AT&T they are skipping 2.2 and just putting out 2.3. Heard it from the horse's mouth ...
Take it for whatever that is worth. I doubt Samsung USA reps have a clue anymore, but that is what they shared with AT&T.

It's a good thing we have so many awesome devs creating new ROMs that are imo much better than anything AT&T/Samsung could ever release as the official updates would still come with tons of AT&T bloatware and TouchWiz, and would most likely use the laggy RFS filesystem like JF6 and JH7.

A.VOID said:
SAmsung reps are telling AT&T they are skipping 2.2 and just putting out 2.3. Heard it from the horse's mouth ...
Take it for whatever that is worth. I doubt Samsung USA reps have a clue anymore, but that is what they shared with AT&T.
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Which "horse's mouth" is that? Mr. Ed?
It's just that there's been such a large herd of them.

I'm jumping to a free streak from my Dell rep. Can't wait to get the larger screen and front facing camera for video chatting...
wish there was more dev on it though.

Ice Cream Sandwich For Milestone

Here is the inevitable question, given yesterday's event. I have been researching and it seems the tech requirements for ICS are the same as those for Gingerbread. Of course, given how Gingerbread has been very heavy on the Milestone, I know that even a moderate increase in tech requirements would be too much on the Milestone. But does it have a chance in any way? And can we backport some of the features (e.g. new Copy-Paste) to CM6 and CM7?

bandroid842 said:
Here is the inevitable question, given yesterday's event. I have been researching and it seems the tech requirements for ICS are the same as those for Gingerbread. Of course, given how Gingerbread has been very heavy on the Milestone, I know that even a moderate increase in tech requirements would be too much on the Milestone. But does it have a chance in any way? And can we backport some of the features (e.g. new Copy-Paste) to CM6 and CM7?
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I was waiting for someone to ask this ahah My guess is that when Cyanogen comes out with their version of ICS, Kabaldan or some other developer will try and port it to the milestone. Only time will tell...

Until the ICS source is published and reviewed, there can be no valid answers to such questions.

As Kabaldan noted, there's no way to know for sure until the sources are released, and that should take a little while still.
My guess: No, I don't think ICS is going to happen for the Milestone, at least not in an useful way. Along the history of Android releases, no matter what Google said about how a new release compares against an older release in resource usage, every new Android release always required a little bit more RAM than the release before: Froyo required more RAM than Eclair, but as long as you don't stuff your phone full with apps and you stick to a relatively "light" usage pattern, the Milestone still handled it pretty well. Then Gingerbread again required more RAM than Froyo, but now with Gingerbread we're really on the edge of what Milestone can handle - if you don't stick with a light usage pattern, you are sure to run into apps you need open being closed because of low RAM. I just can't see the situation improving, or even at best staying the same, with ICS.
I think a phone with at least 512Mb (like, say, SGS1 and many others released in the past year and a half) is most likely to be able to handle ICS with little downsides, but the Milestone obviously isn't in that league. The Milestone is a 2+ year old phone anyway.

cronot said:
As Kabaldan noted, there's no way to know for sure until the sources are released, and that should take a little while still.
My guess: No, I don't think ICS is going to happen for the Milestone, at least not in an useful way. Along the history of Android releases, no matter what Google said about how a new release compares against an older release in resource usage, every new Android release always required a little bit more RAM than the release before: Froyo required more RAM than Eclair, but as long as you don't stuff your phone full with apps and you stick to a relatively "light" usage pattern, the Milestone still handled it pretty well. Then Gingerbread again required more RAM than Froyo, but now with Gingerbread we're really on the edge of what Milestone can handle - if you don't stick with a light usage pattern, you are sure to run into apps you need open being closed because of low RAM. I just can't see the situation improving, or even at best staying the same, with ICS.
I think a phone with at least 512Mb (like, say, SGS1 and many others released in the past year and a half) is most likely to be able to handle ICS with little downsides, but the Milestone obviously isn't in that league. The Milestone is a 2+ year old phone anyway.
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You never know. After all the point of Ics is to get all devices in the same version.
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You never know. After all the point of Ics is to get all devices in the same version.
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Emphasis mine. I think you're taking that statement, that you've probably heard from Google and other sources, out of context.
ICS is supposed to unify the codebase for the Android OS, yes - for different form factors, i.e. Tablets and Smartphones. And that's it. It's not a silver bullet that's supposed to cover ALL Android devices.

I see the SDK on RC14, give a try of course i'm pessimist too.. already with Ginger everytime i open an heavy app the home collapse for free usefull ram.

i think we should honestly start thinking of upgrading our phones... this phone is just far too ancient. It's like asking for iOS 4 or iOS5 on the iPhone 2G... Impossible...

dmo580 said:
i think we should honestly start thinking of upgrading our phones... this phone is just far too ancient. It's like asking for iOS 4 or iOS5 on the iPhone 2G... Impossible...
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Some of us have contracts with our phone companies that don't end for another or two.

Physical limit sucks >.>, but agree with dmo... it's pointless trying to use Win 7 on P4 hardware single channel xD. About that RAZR is extremely sexy and got my attention... and i read an article where they point out the UK version could have bootloader unlocked , (and ICS update on mid 2012, but i rely on xda dev, like always and not direct support from M).

I'm sorry, but I gave up on my Milestone and bought a Galaxy S2.
For too long I've seen that the only major development this phone receives is through (very appreciated) kabaldan's work, and that's not acceptable.
Motorola abandoned this phone way too soon, yet at the same time refused to unlock it so that the skilled programmers stuck with this piece of hardware would be able to do something about it.
Not going to choose Motorola again anytime soon until they start giving their users the services appropriate to a smartphone (be it long term support or unlocked bootloaders).

dt0 said:
I'm sorry, but I gave up on my Milestone and bought a Galaxy S2.
For too long I've seen that the only major development this phone receives is through (very appreciated) kabaldan's work, and that's not acceptable.
Motorola abandoned this phone way too soon, yet at the same time refused to unlock it so that the skilled programmers stuck with this piece of hardware would be able to do something about it.
Not going to choose Motorola again anytime soon until they start giving their users the services appropriate to a smartphone (be it long term support or unlocked bootloaders).
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There are various other people who greatly contribute to the milestone modding community, and I'm sorry to hear that you don't understand that. Yes, while I too believe kabaldan has made some noteworthy and astounding contributions to the milestone modding community, he is not the only one and you should not just neglect the efforts of other developers.
Although I have to agree with you in the case that the motorola milestone's time to shine is over. While we can overclock the processor and apply various to achieve better performance, with the lack of ram and the inability to play most memory-intensive apps I do believe it is time for an upgrade. Finally, if I misinterpreted your comment, please let me know and I will try to change my comment accordingly.
Now about the Galaxy Nexus:
Although the Galaxy Nexus compared to a lot of the other competition seems to have underwhelming specs, it is still the first ice cream sandwich phone which Google and Samsung sat together which means that the hardware will be optimized for the software and also that the developer base would probably be extremely huge because of the number of consumers purchasing this product. ( I mean look at the Nexus One!) The only problem that I see with the Galaxy Nexus is that the GPU is 4 years outdated so it might not be the best phone to get but then again how many games do you really play on your phone? (I think the GPU is identical to the GPU in the Nexus S but apparently the processor is more-so tailored for multitasking and better performance, but not gaming)
Edit: Sorry for the partially irrelevant post :S

My milestone can barely run gingerbread, I have to use the less memory consuming apps for a semi-smooth phone, I don't think milestone can run ICS and if it does, it will be really slow

Android 4.0 Platform:
http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-4.0.html

Can we port a lite version of ICS to Milestone by remove some unnecessary features : NFC , Android Beam , Face Unlock ( because MS don't have font-facing camera) ?

M4zinkaiser said:
[...] it's pointless trying to use Win 7 on P4 hardware single channel xD.
[...]
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It is
But it runs Win 8 smoothly
That said, I think the modders will manage to make ICS usable on Milestone by removing some features and/or seperating vital processes from non-vital ones (like the Google Maps location service in latest CM7)

Even Windows 7 is smoother than Vista, and 8 seems to be lighter too.
Mi friends report me that iOS 5 runs better than 4 even on 3GS.
So we could have a good chance to port ICS with better results than GB on our MS.. finger crossed!!!

UPDATE! Romain Guy, renowned Android OS developer, just revealed that starting with 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, Android brings hardware accelerated 2D rendering to phones! Not just for tablets anymore This is great news for the Android community, and will only led to a smoother, and more efficient user experience. We won another one!
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http://www.androidannoyances.com/post/10

Maybe rip some needless features of ICS. It's just the hardware UI Acceleration that is important

milestone was a great phone, no doubt. the main problem is that the motorola customer service is terrible all around the world. in fact where im live hungary, the last motorola reseller closed permanently and the last customer service company moving out from the country, so the only option to take any motorola product to a bad repair service what is sending motorola phones to the closest service depo, like czeh republic. sometimes this is taking for 1-2 months.
this is happening many other country too, the only hope that google open their eyes and realise that not abandon the motorola brand (what is part of the big google branch now) and do something or else the motorola sooner or later going into the garbage.
i sold out my motorola, however i really like it, especially the hw keyboard, but i cant run many apps in recent days what i needed for my job, and my company buy for me a new phone. first i just retired my moto, packed to the original box nicely, but one of my friend told me that buy my milestone. in time i realise my new phone is so much faster than the moto was, that im not missed the greatest thing of the milestone: the hw keyboard.
so i decided to sell my milestone to my friend..
once again without Kabaldan this phone was a useless metal piece long time ago, so id like to thank you for all the hard work!
im with cm7 in my new phone, so cm7 always in my phone hearth
milestone is my first android phone ever and i never forget this!

Sony vs ICS: is ICS heading to the same buggy fate as iOS 5

I wrote this after reading Sony's developer blog about the pros and cons of ICS and reflecting on my personal experience with several ICS ROMs on my Sensation. What I've come to realize is that ICS lacks the stability of GB and many things don't work. As Sony has pointed out, there is a huge structure difference between the 2 versions of Androids, and ICS is the more resource intensive one. Consistently, my battery on ICS is always poorer than on GB, including on idle. What really bugs me is that many basic functions such as video hardware acceleration malfunctions, my videos now become choppy and looks weird. If you manage to get your hands on a HTC One X, you can try watching a youtube HD 1080 mp4 on it and see how blurry the video rendering has become. At the same time, on ARHD ROM, there is the problem with wifi auto turning on, some sound problems as well.
All in all, this reminds me of the public outcry when iOS 5 was released and it was full of bugs. I am fully aware that ICS is a major update, thus bugs are inevitable, but I can't help feeling that ICS is not polished enough, or at least it needs some major public testing before officially released. I don't think there were as much problems of upgrading from Froyo to Gingerbread.
This is just my own opinion as an end user rather than someone with programming knowledge. I haven't managed to find any functions that is exclusive to ICS that GB lacks and I also don't see much value added by upgrading to ICS. Can I anyone enlighten me on this topic? What are the practical benefits of upgrading to ICS?

Face unlock?
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DangKid said:
Face unlock?
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Face unlock is not really useful at all. I think most people will just stick with other methods like PIN lock instead.

huy_lonewolf said:
I wrote this after reading Sony's developer blog about the pros and cons of ICS and reflecting on my personal experience with several ICS ROMs on my Sensation. What I've come to realize is that ICS lacks the stability of GB and many things don't work. As Sony has pointed out, there is a huge structure difference between the 2 versions of Androids, and ICS is the more resource intensive one. Consistently, my battery on ICS is always poorer than on GB, including on idle. What really bugs me is that many basic functions such as video hardware acceleration malfunctions, my videos now become choppy and looks weird. If you manage to get your hands on a HTC One X, you can try watching a youtube HD 1080 mp4 on it and see how blurry the video rendering has become. At the same time, on ARHD ROM, there is the problem with wifi auto turning on, some sound problems as well.
All in all, this reminds me of the public outcry when iOS 5 was released and it was full of bugs. I am fully aware that ICS is a major update, thus bugs are inevitable, but I can't help feeling that ICS is not polished enough, or at least it needs some major public testing before officially released. I don't think there were as much problems of upgrading from Froyo to Gingerbread.
This is just my own opinion as an end user rather than someone with programming knowledge. I haven't managed to find any functions that is exclusive to ICS that GB lacks and I also don't see much value added by upgrading to ICS. Can I anyone enlighten me on this topic? What are the practical benefits of upgrading to ICS?
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I feel the exact same way as you about ics vs its predecessors... I currently use a optimus 2x handset and came from a se x10i. I always viewed sony as a bit behind the rest when it came to software/hardware releases, but after using the two handsets mentioned above, I now realise that se just spent a bit more time to release a better all round experience for their customers.
I have always run cm7 on them both and been happy, now ics is out I have been trying it out... and I am sadly very unhappy with it. I know that rom development takes time. so I used a friends stock nexus s for a few days, and its was even worse due to lack of root among other things. I will always stick with android, but at the moment ics is far from anything I would like to use.

kemmo123 said:
I feel the exact same way as you about ics vs its predecessors... I currently use a optimus 2x handset and came from a se x10i. I always viewed sony as a bit behind the rest when it came to software/hardware releases, but after using the two handsets mentioned above, I now realise that se just spent a bit more time to release a better all round experience for their customers.
I have always run cm7 on them both and been happy, now ics is out I have been trying it out... and I am sadly very unhappy with it. I know that rom development takes time. so I used a friends stock nexus s for a few days, and its was even worse due to lack of root among other things. I will always stick with android, but at the moment ics is far from anything I would like to use.
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Yeah, I definitely agree with you. You probably have to wait until CM9 becomes official.

hmmm, not sure about other phone makers. My experience with custom rom ics is good. Undeniable when I first flashed the early version of ICS custom rom, it gives me nightmare with many things not working. But after the great custom rom developer put their priceless efforts to solve the issues, it is quite stable for the latest build right now. Haven't face any frustrating issues using it during working days or weekends.

ics on evo is getting better and better as each day passes. it started out super buggy but getting stable. still prefer gb tho

I have no problem with but a few apps that aren't compatible which makes my tablet reboot.

huy_lonewolf said:
I can't help feeling that ICS is not polished enough, or at least it needs some major public testing before officially released. I don't think there were as much problems of upgrading from Froyo to Gingerbread.
This is just my own opinion as an end user rather than someone with programming knowledge. I haven't managed to find any functions that is exclusive to ICS that GB lacks and I also don't see much value added by upgrading to ICS. Can I anyone enlighten me on this topic? What are the practical benefits of upgrading to ICS?
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Click to collapse
pure ics runs fine. its fast, battery is good if not great, gb compared to the overall feeling and handling of it is a hackjob. its not about functions, of course gb can do everything that ics can, did you seriously think it'd do more? its still a phone after all and the hardware didn't change that much, but the sum is more than its parts and ics - for the first time on android - is what i would call a mature os. adoption is a nightmarish clusterfuck because manufacturers and providers alike are out there insisting to disfigure it, push fragmentation because they are lusting after revenue and your money. of course its slow now, full of bugs and looks like crap - what do you expect, they didnt simply write modular extensions as they've could, they made dead sure you won't be able to de-install it by cracking up the framework whatever the cost and stuffing their rotten bloat into the poor thing.
the practical benefits? if you own a nexus you'll experience a modern, sleek operating system that is definitively a step into the right direction. something that feels good, looks good and operates like putty in your hands. on every other system you are f****d. call it "ics" what they've dished out but you're fooling yourself. gb is probably better than that indeed. and if you're fed up with the good ole' fragmentation game all together simply do not buy sony, samsung, htc or whatever, buy nexus where android is allowed to be itself.

molesarecoming said:
pure ics runs fine. its fast, battery is good if not great, gb compared to the overall feeling and handling of it is a hackjob. its not about functions, of course gb can do everything that ics can, did you seriously think it'd do more? its still a phone after all and the hardware didn't change that much, but the sum is more than its parts and ics - for the first time on android - is what i would call a mature os. adoption is a nightmarish clusterfuck because manufacturers and providers alike are out there insisting to disfigure it, push fragmentation because they are lusting after revenue and your money. of course its slow now, full of bugs and looks like crap - what do you expect, they didnt simply write modular extensions as they've could, they made dead sure you won't be able to de-install it by cracking up the framework whatever the cost and stuffing their rotten bloat into the poor thing.
the practical benefits? if you own a nexus you'll experience a modern, sleek operating system that is definitively a step into the right direction. something that feels good, looks good and operates like putty in your hands. on every other system you are f****d. call it "ics" what they've dished out but you're fooling yourself. gb is probably better than that indeed. and if you're fed up with the good ole' fragmentation game all together simply do not buy sony, samsung, htc or whatever, buy nexus where android is allowed to be itself.
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Personally, I can understand what you mean, but I still prefer HTC Sense to stock Android (including ICS) as there are many features that the Galaxy Nexus lacks (Internet-pass-through and text reflow in browser). Moreover, if I want pure ICS, I can just install a custom ROM on my Sensation. I will be installing custom ROM anyway, so fragmentation is not my problem as well. My bug with ICS is this: ICS is specifically optimized for TI OMAP 4 (which is the worst SOC I can think of for my phone compared to Snapdragon S3 or Samsung Exynos) and currently all of my devices running ICS (HTC Sensation, HTC One X, ASUS Transformer Prime) have video rendering problem when hardware acceleration is on (either the videos become choppy (snapdragon S3) or blurry (Tegra 3)). No other version of Android I have used has this many problems when it was launched.

This phone is still being sold?

Anyone have any idea why they are still producing this phone? It just seems strange they would still be making new ones when most early adopts are already up for an upgrade.. and the hardware itself is getting old(while still running ICS thanks to our great community, it raises the question how much farther will the phone be able to be updated..)

a cheaper alternative maybe? or its just that good..

That's exactly what manufacturers wants to hear from consumers. Why buy phones that have lasting dollar values and gets frequent software updates when you can buy a new expensive one every year that doesn't have great built quality and with zero to almost no software update?
Android can use a bit cleaning up on the performance side, even the Galaxy Note stock rom have hiccups because of the bloatness, with quadcore phones they'll have more excuss to bloat and put animations in. Windows Phone 7 seems to do fine with single core. It's not like my Galaxy S is struggling with any of the new games at 800x480 resolution.

Well we already know Samsung said "Nope, ain't gonna happen" for ICS on the Captivate even in spite of builds being made available by the talented folk here at XDA and at other places online. The excuse that "the hardware isn't capable of running ICS adequately" is always a crock because I'm running Doc's Master v8 right now, ICS 4.0.3 based, and I get higher benchmarks with this ROM than the stock KK4 AT&T Gingerbread 2.3.5 ROM with:
- Quadrant
- Antutu
- Vellamo (with Vellamo I actually get slightly higher scores than a Galaxy Nexus, unbelievable)
and several others I've tried recently. So much for being "inadequate" or an underpowered device...
So, Samsung, stop whining and making excuses and just give us some ICS source so people can make a pure ROM I suppose.
Doc's v9 is nice since it's currently a beta and completely unthemed, but a lot of stuff won't install properly on it from Play (although I can install them from the APKs if I remember to manually save them in between ROM swaps).
It's a great phone, it has a beautiful design overall (one of my all time favorites, with the HD2 still being the king of all smartphones to me), USB and headphone connections on the top - I hate it when they're on the sides or bottom, and the main draw being the Super AMOLED display.
People still buy 'em, so Samsung keeps making 'em and AT&T keeps selling 'em.
Works for me.

Snow_fox said:
Anyone have any idea why they are still producing this phone? It just seems strange they would still be making new ones when most early adopts are already up for an upgrade.. and the hardware itself is getting old(while still running ICS thanks to our great community, it raises the question how much farther will the phone be able to be updated..)
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The R&D and tooling have long been paid for and there are still people buying. It's practically free money for them. The longer they're made, the cheaper they can get. The cheaper they can get, the more they're sold.
I sought this phone out actively because I liked my Epic and knew how to root & fix it easily. I didn't want a contract and for $250 brand new vs $600 for a Note it was a no-brainer.

Snow_fox said:
Anyone have any idea why they are still producing this phone? It just seems strange they would still be making new ones when most early adopts are already up for an upgrade..
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Simple, it sells. And with it running 2.3.5, it's very much up to date OS wise. It's not ICS, but at this point what is?
The early adopters are a rather small crowd of people that seems large to us because they are the tech obsesses folks that make xda what it is. They count for next to nothing compared to the "average user."
This phone is exactly what Samsung aimed for it to be, a Flagship. It was way a head of the curve when it first came out, and is still a great phone. It's been muddied by the early releases but, the fact that Samsung still won out (and is the top selling android manufacturer) means it really was an excellent device (and family of devices).
It's time is almost up though, because ICS really is beyond its abilities.
br0adband said:
The excuse that "the hardware isn't capable of running ICS adequately" is always a crock because I'm running Doc's Master v8 right now, ICS 4.0.3 based
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But it can't. We don't even have half the features, almost everything new to ICS has been stripped out because we don't have the hardware for it. Sure, the core OS can be made to run on our phone, but even at that we can't run it properly. The things your comparing against are to that of 2.2, ICS is not some dinky internal tweaks. It's a whole new OS, it's 4.0 not 2.4. Now I'll admit that most of the new parts to ICS are little more then shiny buttons that don't serve us much good. But it's rather easy to dismiss things you've never been able to do before. Once you get your hands on a phone actually built for ICS, that is then made future-proof like the ours was, you'll look back at the cappy and laugh at it.

DaNaRkI said:
Once you get your hands on a phone actually built for ICS, that is then made future-proof like the ours was, you'll look back at the cappy and laugh at it.
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Had a Galaxy Nexus - the flagship Android 4.0 device - and couldn't stand it so I returned it and decided to wait on something better. Then the Galaxy Note came out and I can't wait to see what ICS can really do on that device, but since I can't actually afford one I guess that won't matter anyway.
Found this Captivate on craigslist for $60 and it's been fantastic since the moment I bought it. I swear the SGS feels more responsive and stable running a "hack" ROM of the same OS than the Nexus did/does. Yes it could just be some placebo effect, I suppose. A benchmark using Vellamo puts this SGS running an ICS ROM (at 1.2 GHz) outpacing the Nexus, go figure - a single core device running an unofficial hack of an OS besting the dual core flagship device for that very OS... ain't it cool?
There may be some aspects of ICS that the SGS can't do (NFC, etc) but they just so happen to be features I don't give a damn about, either so... it all works out in the end.

phone is sold
as long as ppl buy it.
u can get iPhone3gs u know - @ great price.

br0adband said:
Had a Galaxy Nexus - the flagship Android 4.0 device - and couldn't stand it so I returned it and decided to wait on something better.
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The Galaxy Nexus is not a flagship, just like the Nexus S was not. It's a debut phone and like the other Nexus phones, a developers phone. It's mean to showcase the abilities of ICS, not push the limits of a phone. Our phone came out before the Nexus S, yet that phone has a lot of the exact same internals. Why? ours was made future-proofed, nothing better was needed for GB. The Galaxy Nexus was also not top of the line at it's release, just compare it to an SGS2. Future proof would have meant that LTE was designed into the phone at start, not added later.
But you do bring up a very good point that I already admitted to, most of the new abilities are rather unnecessary for a phone. But I don't doubt that once a good ICS phone comes out we'll find ways to work them into our daily life. Just like we have for all the unnecessary things that the Cappy can do now.

The Captivate is a pretty solid phone still. I still have mine kicking around that I use now for playing music since my Galaxy Nexus doesnt have external memory (and apps are getting bigger and bigger in size so I need all the space I can get) so this phone does quite well for that.
I think I would still be using this phone if it had a bigger screen (I got big hands) and if Samsung was continuing to update this.

i use my spare captivate as a skype phone (between rom tests).
and where is the phone still being sold?