Samsung Captivate Android Smartphone Impressions
I just posted the beginnings of my Android Survival Guide for iPhone Users and figured I should go ahead and take a moment to give some impressions about the Samsung Captivate I just picked up. If there’s anything true about small form factor computing these days, it’s that smartphones are all the rage, and this US version of the Samsung Galaxy S is certainly getting a lot of press right now. But is it really as awesome as everyone would have you believe?
This is my first Android phone, so forgive me if I make some comparisons to the iPhone as I’ve been using one of those since the first generation came out three years ago. That’s going to make for some difficult comparisons, and possibly unrealistic expectations, but I think they’re really quite fair considering the advances Google has made with Android (never mind how quickly they’ve been doing it — unbelievable!) and the claims you’re seeing on various commercials.
So, without further ado, here’s a quick and dirty of what you can expect to see about the Samsung Captivate smartphone.
Since the first thing you’re going to do is pop the battery and SIM card in (assuming AT&T doesn’t do it for you), you’ll notice the carbon fiberlike back. I don’t know whether it’s carbon fiber or not (I’m assuming it’s not), but it looks nice and has a different finish (unfinished?) from the rest of the glossy plastic that not only looks good, but feels good in your hand. Also, the “Samsung Galaxy S” that’s on the upper part of the back is embossed and raised just a bit from the back which gives you a nice indicator of which way you’re holding the phone should you pick it up without looking closely.
The design is ok, but nothing earth shattering. The top and bottom are curved in toward the face of the phone, which while nice on the bottom, makes the top look slightly awful when you plug headphones in because the plug doesn’t sit flush with the hole because of the slope. Also, just next to that is the micro USB port with a little door that can be opened and closed. A tip: if you’re finding the micro USB cable popping out of your Samsung Captivate a little too easily, it’s because you didn’t open the door enough. Trust me, shove it to the side until you feel it click open solidly. Put that cable back in and notice how it sticks. It took me days to figure that out. Sigh. Stupid design, that.
The right side of the phone has the power button which takes a long time to get used to, while the left side has the volume up and down buttons. The actual bottom of the phone (not counting the front at the bottom with the buttons — I’ll get to those momentarily) is sloped and solid. No buttons, no connectors.
The front of the phone is basically all glass, complete with an awful AT&T logo at the top that I wish I could be rid of. The screen itself is a 4″ Super AMOLED that’s absolutely gorgeous. Though it’s only 480×800, which is nowhere near as high res as the iPhone 4′s retina display (especially considering the iPhone’s screen is 3.5″), it looks good. Text isn’t quite as readable at full zoom-out as on the iPhone 4, but for the most part, it’s readable.
However, perhaps more importantly, colors are bright and vibrant. Everything just seems to pop when you look at the screen, making video a joy to watch (well, as much as it can be on a 4″ screen). The screen is also responsive, though I question the calibration as I sometimes activate things I didn’t touch, or at least I didn’t think I touched. This is one place the iPhone excels: the iPhone gets my touches right 99% of the time, while the Samsung Captivate gets it correct 75% of the time. Maybe.
Along the bottom of the screen there are 4 “buttons” that are just spots on the glass that, while they’re not part of the screen proper, are the standard Android function buttons. From left to right, you get the Menu button, Home Button, Back Button, and Search button. These are just touch-sensitive spots on the glass that do things in apps. Unfortunately for Android, the order of these buttons changes depending upon the phone.
While we’re looking at the screen, let’s consider the UI which is a Samsung custom job called TouchWiz. TouchWiz is likely a good choice for iPhone switchers because it gives something of an iPhone like UI to the phone. There’s a dock at the bottom that’s always there when you’re on your home page(s) that looks a lot like the iPhone’s. However, you won’t find all of the app icons littered over the miscellaneous pages because Android keeps them in the app locker.
Touching the Applications button will you give the locker, and unlike stock Android which scrolls the apps up and down, TouchWiz scrolls them left to right, just like the iPhone. A tip here: if you want to change the apps in your dock, do into your applications locker and hit your menu button. You’ll get an option for “View Type” and if you change this to Customizable Grid, you can drag apps in and out from the dock. Neat!
Back to the home pages, while there’s icons for apps, you can also add widgets to the screen. If you’ve used OS X or if you’re familiar with the sidebar in Vista or Windows 7, you have the basic idea of what widgets are. While some are better than others (the built-in Samsung widgets kind of suck — in fact I removed all of them from the various pages), you’re going to want to get a battery widget. Why? Samsung has opted to make the battery indicator lie. Yes, it lies. At the very least it’s incredibly deceptive. It may look like you have 4/5 of your battery, but when you look in the settings (or use a battery widget), you’ll see you’re actually at half. Shame on you, Samsung.
The rest of the phone is more or less what you’d expect, for the most part. The default Android SMS client is garbage and should be replaced with Handcent (or ChompSMS) as quickly as possible because the default one is limited and antiquated (it’s limited to 160 characters and can’t weld multiple messages together in-line). The phone functions are exactly that: they’re phone functions. The contact list syncs with your Google account, so if you use something else for contacts, you may want to sync that to your Google account first.
Also, Samsung’s email client is garbage and should be replaced with k9mail right away, unless you only use Gmail, in which the built-in Gmail client is good. Also, you’ll be wanting visual voicemail (who still dials in to get their email these days?), so go get yourself a Google Voice account if you don’t have one already and then get the Google Voice app. It’s nice.
The browser is fast and responsive. It’s not as fast as my iPad, but it’s remarkably faster than my iPhone 3G. Android 2.1 doesn’t have Flash support built-in, so you’re still without that in case it’s something you care about (and you shouldn’t because Flash is a scourge upon the internet). The same could be said of the system in general, that it’s fast and responsive. There are moments where things lag and it’ll sit at a screen for a couple of seconds before responding, but it doesn’t happen too often. There are some reports that Samsung’s TouchWiz interface may be the culprit here, so if this gets annoying, root your phone and stop using TouchWiz and see if that helps. If nothing else, Froyo seems likely to address this.
The camera, which I could have mentioned earlier is on the back of the phone and it’spretty awful. Yes, it’s better than the iPhone 3G’s camera, and you have a lot more on-screen controls available to you, but the actual quality of the photos it takes is still bad. This is no iPhone 4 camera, not by a long shot. Video is usable (it’s anything from the same to greatly improved over the still camera, depending upon who you ask), but it won’t replace your Flip MinoHD (or UltraHD) except that you’re more likely to have your phone with you all of the time.
A quick word about battery life: it’s decent, but not great. Granted, I’ve been using my phone heavily since I got it, so I haven’t been able to get a good read on what to really expect, but I’ve looked around and seen a lot of people talking about getting terrible battery life and losing a lot of power when the phone is idling. I can’t say for certain that I’ve experienced that, but a quick Google search should uncover some settings you can change that’ll help out. However, it’s also possible that if you’re in a location with poor reception (I know I am), you may not be able to do too much because the radio in the phone will be constantly communicating with the towers as it tries to hold onto a connection.
I’m sure there’s a lot more I could go into, but on the whole, I think I’m pleased with the phone, but I’m honestly not sure. There’s been a few problems, some small and some large, that I’ve been working to correct and it has made life better, but I’m still not feeling that “Wow!” factor I did when I first used the iPhone, and that continued with the iPhone 3G all the way up to OS 3 (not so much iOS 4 because the 3G struggles with it a bit and doesn’t do half the things iOS 4 implemented).
The fact is, Android is solid, but it’s nowhere near as polished as Apple’s iOS, and my guess is it never will be. Android is the Windows of smartphones: it runs on a bajillion different things, works well, and will get done what you need, but it lacks that je ne sais qoui that the iPhone has. Why? Because Apple, love them or hate them, are brilliant when it comes to UIs.
Still, for my first Android phone, I’m impressed. I still have a couple of weeks to use it and decide if I intend to keep it (I bought it outright — this is *not* a loaner), but at this moment it’s looking like it has a fair chance. If nothing else, I’m trying really, really hard to do things the Android way and to stop going, “But the iPhone does X!” Seriously, that doesn’t help.
But it is true.
Hi man,
Love this site – especially visually. Mind if I ask what blogging platform or what software you are using to create it? Great layout too.
Thanks,
Pierre