All Things Android - Apps, Phones, Tablets - Discussion

I posted this a while back, but it's still in action. Call and get another... your sister's sounds defective.

 

So it's a software issue?

 

Nope... there were several hardware revisions of Captivate's. Certain of those revisions have odd voltage issues where they just randomly shut off. It has to be completely replaced, either with new or refurbished hardware.

 

It doesnt randomly shut down. The SMS will fail, phone will freeze and needs to be rebooted. GPS is horrible, but seems like that is a case with all captivates. Think there is any chance of a swap for another phone?

Also I have no idea why, but screen protectors will NOT stay flat on the top and bottom edge of the captivate. Have tried 4 screen protectors, edges dont stick. Very annoying

 

^ Still sounds very unusual, at least the SMS failing. Many of the Galaxy S's have GPS issues, but i didnt think the Captivate was one of the bad ones for it, and there are ways to fix it too.

I would try to get something done, im sure that ones is defective in some way, either software or hardware wise.

 

How long have you had it? And is it on contract?

 

She got the phone in january, and yeah.. it's on contract.

Is the screen protector thing normal? Its annoying as hell lol

 

Right. I see. O_O Thank you sir!

*crosses one phone off the list on ebay*

(was a Roger's Captivate with intermittent shut off issues)

 

Yea, you can probably get something else. When you call you'll be transferred to the replacement dept, and they'll try to scoot you into a replacement of the same model. Tell them that you don't want that phone... that it's already caused it's major fair share of trouble and you wouldn't trust another. Hint that you might have to cancel the line if something else isn't avaliable... they'll usually bend over backwards. Trust me. Monthly subs are important. Just expect something refurb, but it will be different. They'll probably offer you an X10a, Bravo, Flipside, and probably a Samsung Focus WP7 device.

Yep. Roger's Captivate is exactly the same down to the radio freqs. The only thing is it's an i896 and ours is an i897. LOL. But yea, I wouldn't buy it if it's having those issues, as I'm not sure Roger's has initiated any kind of return at all.

 

So, the honeymoon wore off: The phone's (a Samsung Fascinate) is back to being a super laggy, stuttery mess.

I really don't know what's wrong, haven't done the lag fix that HAL outlined, but it's super bad. She'll/I'll swipe between home screens and it'll just freeze mid swipe, the phone just gets super unresponsive. Tap the apps button to open the drawer and the phone will hang for a bit before opening it. During these freezes, the capacitive buttons just don't work. Press them and the light under the button blinks once but that's it. Hitting menu to pop up a menu is similarly slow.

The odd thing is, the slow downs happen at just random intervals. Anytime on the homescreen, but sometimes in other places it can be fast.

I might just end up blasting away the stock ROM and putting something like CM7 or a different custom ROM on it and seeing if that makes a difference, along with HAL 9000's fix.

The whole thing's really soured her experience and she's pretty much swore off owning a Samsung device (or perhaps even an Android phone-She's strongly considering iPhone 5 now) period, even though I've told her that it's one of the fastest phones in VZW's lineup.

Honestly, I can't blame her.

"You must spread some Stig around before giving it to mrXniick again."

Yikes, hopefully she'll be able to get it sorted out

 

I OC'd my phone to 1.5Ghz for the hell of it lol

Definetly not keeping it there though

 

@ Hal

Do you know if more recent hardware revisions have fixed the GPS issue with the captivate? My sister loves the phone, other than the GPS issues and the other issues it is currently having.

ALso, have you heard of other people/ personally experienced issues with screen protectors sticking on the edges?

 

@booboo: sounds like my Intercept, except there are no random slowdowns...it's just always that slow

 

The Captivate, along with all the Galaxy S phones are known to have GPS problems.

You could give this a try.
If your rooting and installing custom ROM's, many of them have "gps fixes" in them, that actually work. thats whats been the biggest fix for me.

 

Yeah, another "helpful" Samsung feature: Apparently the option to save app settings and data to Google is unchecked by default in the stock ROM.

Guess who looks dumb for "losing" his stepmom's memos with "all my account info, school lunch passwords, bill pay names and stuff"? (she never told me she used that at all, I just backed up the SD card contents)

I'm REALLY hating Samsung. Seriously. Never will I buy one, HTC until I die.

EDIT: Perhaps i was a bit aggressive here...this is really annoying though..

Is there any way to see if I can access the contents of the Write & Go or Memo apps (it would be suicide for me to ask her now while she's PO'd) to see if it saved the memo's to the storage card?

 

Help! I think I bricked my Intercept >_<

I was trying to install CM01 custom recovery, but it wasn't cooperating. I could install it and boot into it once, and I applied a ZIP with it to de-ODEX my phone successfully. But inevitably, every time I reboot after entering recovery, it would somehow automatically replace CM01 with the stock Android recovery; it just wouldn't stay installed. I re-flashed CM01 and rebooted 8 times before trying the next optional step in the directions to try and get it to stay.

Here is the thread on sdx-developers I followed to install CM01 recovery: http://forum.sdx-developers.com/intercept-guides-and-tips/%28guide%29-manual-adb-tool-method-to-get-temporary-root/

Specifically, I followed the directions to get the installation to stick, which required me to boot into CM01, and then once I reboot after that, yank the battery and USB cable before the progress bar finishes loading on the Samsung boot logo, which I did. But now my phone won't boot!

If I try to boot it without the USB cable plugged in (like a normal boot) it stops loading halfway through the progress bar and tries to go into recovery, even though I didn't touch any keys, and says:

CM Recovery v2.5.1.0 & S
DX 0.3
Loading. Please wait...
........
...
Filesystems:
SYSTEM: rfs
DATA: rfs
CACHE: rfs

And it just stays there; I left it for half an hour and nothing happened. This also happens if I actually try to boot into recovery using the shortcut keys.

If I leave the USB cable plugged in while booting, it says this instead:

CM Recovery v2.5.1.0 & S
DX 0.3
Loading. Please wait...
......E:Error in CACHE:r
ecovery/log
(I/O error)
..
...
Filesystems:
SYSTEM: rfs
DATA: rfs
CACHE: rfs

I can't boot into Android OR recovery! I don't get what I did wrong; I followed the directions perfectly.

I still have the "eject hardware" option in Windows, and I can still connect to the phone with ADB (at least, it shows up and says it's in recovery when I enter "adb devices" in the prompt), so I tried going through the instructions to flash CM01 again, but it's still stuck booting halfway into recovery and then doing nothing. What the hell do I do now? Is my phone permanently bricked? :/

 

If you can get to ADB and get ADB to recognize your phone, you are certainly not hard bricked, just soft bricked. The recovery zip... what was it named? Was it "update.zip"?

 

Interesting, how do custom recovery installs work on Samsung devices? I would have went into fastboot mode and reflashed the recovery image on an HTC device. But obviously this is something else. O_O;;

^That to be honest, just sounds like a bad idea all around.

As HAL9000 said, your phone is not bricked.

 

Since that's not a Hummingbird platform, I'm not sure how the recovery process works on the Intercept...

On the Galaxy S series, you place the "update.zip" onto the internalSD and boot into Samsung's recovery and "flash updates". Then it reboots into the modded recovery.

 

Ahh right. That's kinda funky.

 

lol. How does HTC do it? My last HTC device was an HTC Kaiser.

 

Whew, false alarm.

When I forced the phone to reboot via ADB instead of removing the battery and powering on again, it booted fully into Android and I re-flashed CM01 from there. I figured I would only need to access it once to flash bROM anyway, so I'll just live with having to re-flash it every time I need custom recovery

The file I downloaded was CM01.zip, but all I used from that was the recovery.rfs file within it. I'll explain in a sec here.

I can't speak for any other Samsung phones, but on my Intercept, installing custom recovery went like this:

• Download the flash_image tool binary for the Samsung Moment (it's what the Intercept is partially based on; the Intercept was actually originally going to be called the Moment 2), and extract that to C:\InterceptADB
• Download CM01.zip and extract the recovery.rfs file from it to that same directory
• Start ADB and push flash_image and recovery.rfs from C:\InterceptADB on your computer to /data/local/tmp on the phone
• Use the "adb shell" command to access the "#" prompt, assuming you're rooted
• chmod 755 (whatever that is) flash_image, and do the same for recovery.rfs
• /data/local/tmp/flash_image recovery /data/local/tmp/recovery.rfs
• Kill the ADB server, disconnect the phone and boot into recovery

When I did that, it worked and I booted into CM01 recovery, but only on that boot. If I rebooted into recovery again, it would be the standard Android recovery.
^That to be honest, just sounds like a bad idea all around. [/quote]
I thought that was fishy too, but two or three other posts said it worked and got CM01 to remain permanently installed. /shrug.

Anyway, I got my custom ROM installed and working now. I'm using bROM 1.1, the one HAL took apart earlier. It's nothing terribly fancy, but the phone just flies now. I can't even comprehend how the original FroYo ROM could be so slow compared to this. Aside from a few visual differences (black notification bar instead of silver, and new icons, for example), there's not much different.

 

[For HTC devices] Nowadays the easiest way to do it is to install ROM manager from market and let it install the Clockwork Mod recovery directly from within the Android OS. How I am used to doing it was to boot into "fastboot" (bootloader), connect it to the computer via USB. Then just flash recovery image or radio imgae via command prompt (just like using adb).

Then I just boot directly into custom recovery with a certain button combo.

 

That's what I originally tried to do, but when I clicked the option to install the recovery, it gave me a huge list of phones to choose from, but the Intercept wasn't on it. I posted that a page or two back, I believe.

I don't think the Intercept has anything like that.

 

I can do it both ways also, but with the Galaxy S, there's the third way with the "update.zip" that I always do. That way I can install CWM anytime, anywhere.

The Intercept uses a modded CWM package, that's why it's not officially supported in ROM Manager.

EDIT: Glad you had patience, though, Mastershroom. The number one reason most people brick their phone is by freaking out and not having patience... you know what they say... patience is a virtue.

 

I dunno, I was not very graceful about seeing my phone stuck in a soft brick

 

I am now, technically, the proud owner of an HTC Desire S.

 

Very nice! It'll be a while before that one is offered over here. (at least in GSM form, VZW has the Incredible S.)

 

It's not the same as the Incredible S, it's the next step down.
It's a 0.3" smaller screen and a 5MP/VGA camera combo as opposed to 8MP/1.3MP.

Anyway, my sister likes it, which is the most important thing given it's her phone.

 

...........

 

Sony Ericsson posts a tutorial on building and flashing custom kernels – Android and Me

 

SE's quickly becoming my favorite phone maker...

 

AHHH.... android 3.1 announced for tablets and google TV. Android ice cream being shown!!


"We want one OS that runs everywhere."

sounds promising... exciting day for android

 

Where Are You Hal, Step And Booboo!?

 

Q4......have to wait so long. D: Looking forward to it though. Scrollable and re-sizable (official) widgets sure do sound nice.

Hmm new devices from (founding partners) select carriers/manufacturers will receive updates up to 18 months after purchase.

 

12:34PM New guidelines! Man, this is going to be huge. Google's laying out a timeline for how long it'll take a device to get updated once a new build is let loose, as well as how long it'll be updated beyond that.

Will receive timely updates for 18 months

Partners:

 

Right here.

I saw your post and dismissed it but after having a look on Engadget, what you neglected to mention ) and why I dismissed in initially) was that Ice Cream will be available for phones as well, not just tablets and Google TV.


edit: glad to see SE in there.

Not many UK networks on board, though it won't make any difference to me as I'd never buy a locked handset anyway...

 

Yes. Ice cream is looking very delicious.

 

"Open accessories" does look very interesting...

I don't see what's "inaccurate" about what mrXniick said. Android 3.1 announced/released for tablets and TVs, and Ice Cream Sandwich announced for Q4. Two separate things.


EDIT: Forgot to mention, official USB host support mmmmmmmmmm.

EDIT2: New music app, for those outside of the US. ^^

 

Ice cream was always known to be for phones. It's not the same thing as honeycomb /3.1.

 

Did someone say everybody at the Mountain View HQ will be getting a Galaxy Tab 2 from Samsung?!

 

All 5,000 of them. D:

 

I heard that when AT&T (and Apple) first released the iPhone, the official guideline was to let the customers have priority getting the phone rather than the employees...

 

Makes sense no? Considering the customers pays more for the device.

 

To a degree, yes But I would prefer what Apple did: the employees were all given an iPhone so that they can show their friends and relatives. AT&T's just... penny-pinching

 

@Johnny & mrXniick: from this text and image, I was under the impression 3.1 was Ice Cream...

 

Man I missed a lot, had (summer) class from 12-3pm. I love Android.

 

You rang?

I'm parsing through it now (was busy earlier) and had to do some stuff around the house.

 

soon it seems like we'll have little green androids running around our house doing the stuff for us

 

You misunderstood something I wrote.... do we really need to keep dwelling on this?