[merrion13]

I've been using Blackberries in one form or another for about 5 years. My primary requirement for my phone had been dependable and reliable email access (on a BES at work).
But with the advances in the Android OS, I decided to put down my Bold 9000 and pick up the Samsung Captivate. Here is a subjective list of my experiences with the Captivate from the perspective of a BB user. For reference, I've had the Captivate for 10 days.

The Good:
-Screen: I think every review out there applauds the Super AMOLED screen, and for good reason, it's gorgeous. Additionally, I think the 4" size is the sweet-spot for mobile devices. Large enough for media/web browsing, small enough where you can still easily navigate typing.
-Power: This thing is pretty fast. I have heard some people complain of lag between applications (and I did experience it once) but otherwise it has been able to close and open and switch between programs very quickly.
-Design: I wish BB designed the Storm with this form factor. I realize it is subjective, but I think the Captivate is the perfect size/feel/weight. Feels solid without being too heavy.
-Web Browsing: BB gets a lot of flack for their browsers, and rightfully so. I find myself using the internet so much more often on my phone because it is blazing fast and renders web pages perfectly.
-Call quality: Good clarity on calls I've made, although the speakerphone is not as good as my Bold (sounds a little tinny). Also, I have not experienced any of the signal drops some users have described.
-Android OS: See further discussion under 'The Bad'

The Bad:
-Battery Life: I've tried many of the fixes suggested online, but I can't even get the phone to get me through a whole day of moderate use (mostly writing emails, some phone usage, some web usage). My Bold kills the Captivate in battery life and this is a serious problem.
-Android OS: I've seen mentioned that Android's greatest strengths are also its biggest weaknesses, and I agree with this. The open nature is great for developers, but it also means the hardware manufacturers can put their own skin on the OS, sometimes for the better (HTC Sense UI), and sometimes for the worse (Samsung TouchWiz).
-GPS: This is a well documented problem for many users of Samsung's Galaxy phones, the inability to get a decent GPS lock. I experience this as well. Although I don't use the GPS to a point I need it, I do appreciate that a modern smartphone should be able to perform this task easily.

The Ugly:
-Email: My Captivate is setup to Exchange 2010; it's not that my phone doesn't send/receive emails well or sync with Calendar/Contacts (it does all of those). A huge gripe of mine is that it imports all of my Outlook folders and organizes them alphabetically and then requires me to scroll horizontally through all of them. It even shows subfolders along with the primary folders with no differentiation between them. So, if I want to go from my Inbox to Sent items, I have to scroll through over 100 folders to get there. Absolutely unforgiveable.
-Notifications: They suck. I can't customize notifications for SMS to be different from Email or MMS. And the default color for Outlook appointments is dark purple, with the Calendar in Black. When viewing outside, it is very hard to see these and you can't change the color.

That's all I can think of for now. If anyone has any questions about the phone or the experience from the viewpoint of a BB user, let me know.

[Retrokid223]

this is some good info you gave. i think touchwiz is pretty bad android skin, best android skin is HTC sense. and yea i wish there was a way to have notifications set up like blackberry but maybe theres an app for that. but how did the phone feel in hand, is it easy to use with all of the touchwiz bloat on there, and what do you think of the camera? one of my friends wants a captivate and i wanna give him some tips before telling him to get one :/

[xliderider]

I agree that the form factor of he Captivate is pretty much perfect. It just feels so smooth and sexy, and just fits perfectly in one's hand.

I will take a serious look at this phone if it comes out on Verizon sooner, rather than later.

[DolfanCole#CB]

Thanks for the review. I'm thinking about going to T-Mobile and checking out the Vibrant (not to buy yet, just to try it out for a little while).

A few things ...

How was typing on an this touchscreen device versus your Bold? Did you try swype?

How was the calendar in relation to what you're used to with the Bold?

I have a Tour and am thinking about jumping ship. I do a lot of email and rely heavily on the calendar. So, these are things that I'm really interested in as far as how they are handled with Android and the different phones.

Thanks!

[merrion13]

Can't believe I forgot to mention the camera in my original post...it is great. Pictures are much more clear than my Bold, and the different picture modes really are great for different subjects. People complain about it not having a flash for the camera, but that isn't a big deal for me since most camera phone flashes are pretty harsh (I have a Nikon DSLR for real picture taking!)

Phone is easy to use. Obviously, a big transition for most BB users will be going from a physical keyboard to a touchscreen. I found using the Android option (not the Samsung) touchscreen very easy and accurate, although there are a new nitpicks I have in regards to the way they lay out some keys. I did try Swype for a day, and quite frankly, wasn't impressed nor did I feel the need to 'learn' that way of input. I am still not as fast typing as I was on the Bold, but then again, I am supernaturally fast typing on the Bold, so that's not a knock against the Captivate.

The Calendar is just not good compared to the Bold. Far less ability to customize notifications/inputs, and as mentioned above, no ability to customize the display.

And I just though of another thing: my Bold would wake up for the alarm after being powered off for the night; with the Captivate, I need to leave it on for the alarm to work.

[DolfanCole#CB]

Can't believe I forgot to mention the camera in my original post...it is great. Pictures are much more clear than my Bold, and the different picture modes really are great for different subjects. People complain about it not having a flash for the camera, but that isn't a big deal for me since most camera phone flashes are pretty harsh (I have a Nikon DSLR for real picture taking!)

Phone is easy to use. Obviously, a big transition for most BB users will be going from a physical keyboard to a touchscreen. I found using the Android option (not the Samsung) touchscreen very easy and accurate, although there are a new nitpicks I have in regards to the way they lay out some keys. I did try Swype for a day, and quite frankly, wasn't impressed nor did I feel the need to 'learn' that way of input. I am still not as fast typing as I was on the Bold, but then again, I am supernaturally fast typing on the Bold, so that's not a knock against the Captivate.

The Calendar is just not good compared to the Bold. Far less ability to customize notifications/inputs, and as mentioned above, no ability to customize the display.

And I just though of another thing: my Bold would wake up for the alarm after being powered off for the night; with the Captivate, I need to leave it on for the alarm to work.

Thanks for the feedback! Very nice to have a BB user perspective on these devices.

[bigbadwulff]

Does anyone notice when someone that has had a BB and does a review on another device that there is usually an analytical viewpoint? Meaning......honest and objective and IN REAL ENGLISH! And relatively no geek-speak mumbo jumbo to try to make the reviewer try to sound smarter than he is.

OP: Good job and thanks.

[merrion13]

Ha, thanks! I hate reviews where someone just says "the phone is awesome" and leaves it at that. Switching devices can be a pretty significant step especially when you rely on it heavily for work so I just wanted to communicate what I think is useful info for users like us.

[vitesse10]

Merrion, I didnt see you mention no LED light for notifications.

I have had my Captivate for about a week now, its a great phone but I will need to go back to blackberry.

Things I like:

Screen/graphics, camera/video, interface is good but sometimes confusing., customizable desktops, app market, I am really liking Swype.

Things I miss from my 9000:

Customizable notifications, easy to use and reliable email, LED light, BBM, facebook and uber twitter, keyboard.

With the Captivate, i find myself trying to find options that I "noticed before" and was trying to find again.

[Retrokid223]

Merrion, I didnt see you mention no LED light for notifications.

I have had my Captivate for about a week now, its a great phone but I will need to go back to blackberry.

Things I like:

Screen/graphics, camera/video, interface is good but sometimes confusing., customizable desktops, app market, I am really liking Swype.

Things I miss from my 9000:

Customizable notifications, easy to use and reliable email, LED light, BBM, facebook and uber twitter, keyboard.

With the Captivate, i find myself trying to find options that I "noticed before" and was trying to find again.

oh yea i forgot all about the "no led light" situation. i seen a post on androidcentral.com that gives an app name that can help out.

EDIT: here it is http://www.androidcentral.com/galaxy...-phones-asleep

[sfjon918]

coming from 9700 to captivate had the phone since launch day, i can agree with most people that i miss the push email and the led light... gtalk has been working fine for me in place of bbm, the first few days with the captivate was challenging because the battery would only last 14-15hrs, but after about 4 charge cycles i'm getting 2 days now so far so good....

[cobra302]

good review, but just fyi, you can have customizable notifications. i have one for sms, email, gmail, facebook, twitter, etc.. you have to open each application, hit the menu button, then scroll to notifications. then you can set each one to be different. but you have to be in the specific app for it to take. if not, it will use a global one. i found that out after a few days. i will also say that battery life although not the greatest, has gotten alot better for me. i also agree about the gps, i dont use it that much either, but when i do, i want it to work properly. makes apps like yelp, maps, poynt all kinda worthless.

[kilted thrower]

Can the Captivate do mass texting? I coach a couple different sports and quite often need to send a mass text to all the athletes. I can do this on the BB by grouped contacts. Can the Captivate do this?

I have a couple upgrades ready to go. I'll wait a couple weeks and then go play with the 9800 and the Captivate and see which one I want to purchase.

[Ag4vr]

I've had 'Berries for about 5 years--started with the 6280, went to the 8700 and then the 9000. It was time to upgrade and the 9700 was too small. I wasn't using BES either, so I wasn't married to the BlackBerry ecosystem--I liked having a physical keyboard and having a phone with a good multitasking OS that could handle e-mail. Once the Aria and Captivate came out on AT&T, it looked like they were finally getting serious about supporting Android in their phone offerings. Having an iPod Touch eventually sold me on the idea that touch screens and virtual keyboards were ready for prime time.

I started out with an HTC Aria and then went to the Captivate. I have just a couple of things to add:

The HTC Aria's Exchange support (they use a customized e-mail application) was much better in my case. Once I set it up, I had no issues accessing our company's Exchange (2007) e-mail. I didn't like the physical size of the Aria (more difficult to type on) and the way the back cover of the phone started to deform around the headphone jack. It looked like a cosmetic issue at that point, but the antenna is built into the back cover, so the back has to be on in order to work properly. If AT&T had an HTC Android phone closer in form factor to the Evo, I'd probably be using that phone instead.

The Captivate uses an e-mail client which looks more like the stock Android client. It works fine for a while, but would then give a cryptic "connection error" eventually when I would try to open my Exchange e-mail box. The workaround for me was to spend $20 and get the Touchdown Exchange application for Android. It works flawlessly with our Exchange server; unfortunately, it's not as well-integrated into the phone as the stock client.

For that matter, I was using BIS to access our Exchange e-mail (too cheap to spend the extra $15/month to connect to BES). There was no synchronization at all for the contacts and calendar, and I had to use OWA to connect to Exchange.

I also love the Captivate's form factor, screen and processor. In my mind, it's closer to what the iPhone and Storm should have been. If you're used to upgrading your 'Berry's OS on a regular basis, you'll want to look into how to root your phone, enable sideloading (which AT&T has disabled on the phone) and flash non-stock ROM's. My Captivate now has the international Galaxy S (I9000) firmware, which omits the "non-removable" AT&T bloatware and seems to perform better on the phone.

Many Galaxy S owners are reporting issues with the GPS on their phones. I'm not sure whether it's dumb luck or the international firmware, but it seems to be working fine for me at the moment (after getting the initial fix). Samsung says they're looking into the problem but hasn't announced if/when they will address it.

So the Captivate has its warts, but all phones do.

[njbianco]

Can the Captivate do mass texting? I coach a couple different sports and quite often need to send a mass text to all the athletes. I can do this on the BB by grouped contacts. Can the Captivate do this?

I have a couple upgrades ready to go. I'll wait a couple weeks and then go play with the 9800 and the Captivate and see which one I want to purchase.

Im pretty sure the captivate can(if not theres apps in the Android Market that do this easily such as the app Hancent SMS) I no my HTC Evo can stock but that might be a Sense UI thing I dont remember if my Samsung Moment could with Vanilla Android when i had that.

coming from 9700 to captivate had the phone since launch day, i can agree with most people that i miss the push email and the led light... gtalk has been working fine for me in place of bbm, the first few days with the captivate was challenging because the battery would only last 14-15hrs, but after about 4 charge cycles i'm getting 2 days now so far so good....

theres apps in the market that do push email such as k-9 mail(never tried it although)

[darreno1]

For reliable exchange email on Android I'd highly recommend Touchdown. I can't stress that enough. It is simply the best and most reliable. As for the Captivate not having an led, well that's a mystery to me considering almost every other high end Android phone has one. I think it's at&t's doing though since the vibrant has it. I'd give anything to know who the moron was that came up with that decision.

[Simba501]

I think you're spot on with everything about the Captivate. I recently owned one and decided to return it, due to the non-functioning GPS. The email capabilities are laughable (However, I did find a way around this). I was able to get a full day out of the Captivate (using a TK, disabling most automatic background updating, and taking the screen brightness all the way down). I think it's a great phone, but it's not ready enough for me just yet. Once they fix the GPS, I think it's the best smartphone available, anywhere. For the time being though, I'm back to the functionality and reliability of the 9700....

[knjeru]

I think you're spot on with everything about the Captivate. I recently owned one and decided to return it, due to the non-functioning GPS. The email capabilities are laughable (However, I did find a way around this). I was able to get a full day out of the Captivate (using a TK, disabling most automatic background updating, and taking the screen brightness all the way down). I think it's a great phone, but it's not ready enough for me just yet. Once they fix the GPS, I think it's the best smartphone available, anywhere. For the time being though, I'm back to the functionality and reliability of the 9700....

The GPS has been fixed in the newest firmware! Thats what everyone is reporting over at the xda forums though I personally haven't had any real problems with mine. Locks fast and stays.

[sallenthornton]

I have to admit that I still like the looks of this phone. With my 9700 possibly getting 6.0; maybe I should think about using my upgrade on the the captivate instead of the torch. I'm just so conflicted. The android os interest me, but I know the blackberry is what in my best interest and the better choice for what I need out of a phone. Personally I don't want to purchase a phone just to swap back and forth. I'm looking to upgrade from what I already have, not split time between phones, depending on the situation.

The screen on the captivate was like watching an LCD Mitsubishi television playing a blue Ray movie. It was amazing!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Simba501]

The GPS has been fixed in the newest firmware! Thats what everyone is reporting over at the xda forums though I personally haven't had any real problems with mine. Locks fast and stays.

Yeah, I've been following the situation at the Android forums....I have heard that people are reporting better GPS, but some were saying they couldn't get it on their phone....I'll be keeping up with the situation, because I really did love the phone.....I'd like to have it again...

[flashman03]

I upgraded to the JH2 firmware and although I don't use GPS often it seemed to work fine for me. I had no issues before hand either so I can't be a good judge. And the alert situation is figured out if you go to the market and load NOled. It works great if you must have an alert indicator.

[Jonneh]

I've read in reviews that Samsung's UI they put on the Captivate, called TouchWiz 3.0 or whatever it is, has widgets that can't be resized and take up an entire homescreen I also heard the touchwiz causes the phone to be slightly laggy at certain times (although not all the time). The widgets are what bother me though... I want to be able to resize them and move them around & stuff. I also wish they had one for flickr like the HTC Sense UI phones do (I think?). I don't have a facebook or myspace, or even twitter...I know, hard to believe huh. But I do use flickr.

[flashman03]

Some widgets do take the entire screen, but not all. You don't really need to resize because you can have so many screens if you want. TW isn't as bad as most people say, its just different from the Sense UI which many people are used to. I am not sure what you mean by move the widgets around though because you can move them where ever you want.

[Jonneh]

Oh okay, so you can move them around, just not resize them.
Well, you make Touchwiz not sound all that bad. I know you have 7 homescreens and all but still, not being able to resize the widgets on this device due to touchwiz made me rethink the purchase. I guess if I bought this and applied the new GPS fixed rom, I'd be good to go. Still wondering if I should wait to see what new phone comes out though...but whatever it is, probably won't be AT&T lol. They have 2 good android phones, Aria (mid-range) and Captivate (high-end), not even going to include the backflip...they really need some more! Verizon's Android lineup is so crowded.

[Totalimmortal363]

You can also download LauncherPro for free and never look at TouchWiz 3.0