Samsung Captivate Review

It's been a few weeks since I got the Samsung Captivate and I think enough time has passed where I can share my honest opinions about my first Android phone.

Let's start with the things that I love about my phone. For starters, I absolutely love the 4" Super AMOLED screen. It makes watching videos on YouTube or videos that I have recorded a very pleasant experience. It's like always carrying a portable TV with you.

I also love being able to record videos in 720p HD quality. This is very handy when Daniel is doing something incredibly cute and I want to capture it without reaching for the hand-held camcorder.

I also love having widgets on my home screen. Widgets are like little windows to your programs so that you can quickly see the updates without actually opening up the full application. This is a must for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

As a self-professed nerd, I also enjoy the depth of customization that this phone allows. If you don't like a particular interface or feature, there are numerous options that you can download and use instead.

Another really awesome feature is Swype which allows you to enter in text by swiping your finger across the virtual keyboard instead of tapping the individual keys. Texting is much faster and it's no longer a pain to compose longer and more descriptive text messages. On top of that, it's looks so cool when you see someone using it! Can your Phone do that?!

I'm also thrilled that I am no longer providing any monetary fuel to the evil empire (i.e., Apple). I'm glad that I'm finally free from the bondage of the bloated iTunes program just to sync my phone with my computer.

Lastly, I am really impressed with the amount of community support for Android phones. If you have a problem or can't figure out how to do something, there's usually a thread on some forum that has a solution. Android users tend to be less pretentious than their Apple counterparts and are more apt to offer a helping hand.

Though there are a lot of things to love about my phone, there are a few things that I don't like or feel the iPhone does much better. One thing that really stinks about my phone and all Android phones in general is that the Android Market severely lacks polished games worthy of buying. I really miss Bejeweled 2 (Bejeweled Blitz). Currently, there is no equivalent for my phone. Android phones come in many models with varying features. This diversity is normally a good thing but a game designed for certain models may not work on others. Piracy is also a big problem facing the Android Market because it is really easy to copy applications from one phone to another one without having to pay for it. This discourages developers from wanting to develop games for the Android Market because they won't get paid for their efforts.

Another note about diversity, it is great that there are so many alternatives for many features on my phone. However, sometimes there are too many options for the same task, each providing their own benefits but may never get polished enough to be truly great. For example, my phone comes with 3 virtual keyboards. The Samsung keyboard probably looks the cleanest but it doesn't have corrective text. The Android keyboard is a little clunky but it at least automatically corrects my typos. Lastly, the Swype keyboard is blazingly fast but entering symbols is cumbersome. Also, none of the keyboard options provide a zoom feature when I need to precisely move the cursor.

Those who know me definitely know how OCD I am. However, due to the openness of the Android environment, apps do not have a standard way of closing/exiting and it drives me crazy. It is too easy for the average person to start an application and return to the home screen while leaving it running silently in the background, happily draining the battery until it's dead. This makes people completely paranoid about using task killers (whose usage is also highly debatable). Google needs to step in and clearly define the usage model that all applications must follow so that users know exactly how to properly close an app or how to leave it running in the background for later use.

Because so many applications can remain running in the background, the battery life isn't as good as I would like it to be. There are few apps that have true push notification so that means that most of the apps have to poll for updates. If you constantly get updates from email, Facebook, Twitter, and other apps, you can barely make it through a day without having a charger nearby.

I like that the Android phones allow for a great deal of customization but at the same time, not everything is customizable. For example, Samsung reskinned the default Android user interface and expanded the number of home screens up to 7. However, you cannot specify which home screen is the default one to return to when you press the "Home" button.

One problem I have and that I share with other owners of Samsung Galaxy S phones is the built-in GPS has problems getting a precise lock on my position. This is a major problem and I am surprised that the phone got through testing with such a glaring issue. It makes it impossible to use this phone as a Garmin replacement because it cannot get better than a mile's accuracy of my location. Samsung has publicly acknowledged the issue and has promised a fix but I and many other users are getting impatient for an update.

Another disturbing trend of Android phones, and my phone is no exception, is that they come pre-installed with bloatware from their wireless carriers. I understand that AT&T and other carriers want to pre-load their crApp(s) to make more revenue. Laptop manufacturers have done this for years. They have every right to do so. But what drives me crazy is that you cannot easily uninstall them. Of course any determined enough individual can gain root access to their Android phone and manually delete these apps. But the main point is you shouldn't have to.

In conclusion, I want to love this phone but it lacks polish in many areas. I still like my phone a lot and I'm glad to be out from under Apple's "death grip" *wink wink*. I am impressed with everything this phone is able to do. It is definitely a much geekier device than the iPhone and has a steeper learning curve. You will have to micro-manage your phone a lot more. Though the phone and by extension, its apps could use some cleaning up, the capabilities of this phone far outweigh the negatives of the platform. With time, future updates and phones should continue to improve in this area. The Android Army has its newest recruit.