love this phone!!! July 23, 2010

Reviewer:  Shandel Odom "55679"  (55679) -

im not a big phone geek but this phone is sooo user friendly and easey to use!! i have always gone with samsung phones because of there pressure sensitive screens instead of the usual heat sensitive screens. i do love pressure sensitive screens because there easey to use with my nails. the captivate is NOT pressure sensitive but the sreen is so huge that texting is not a problem for me! It also has the cool talk to text feature on the android keyboard witch means i dont have to type at all!!!! this phone is sooo fun i havent put it down!!!! love it buy this phone!!!

The little phone that couldn't January 1, 2011

Reviewer:  Adam Jackson "Nameless"  (Booneville, MS United States) -

I wanted to like this phone. I really did. In my mind Samsung has become synonymous with quality. They dropped the ball on their Galaxy S series phones though. But for today, let's look at the Captivate. First and foremost: No Frozen Yogurt (android 2.2) update. Even older, less powerful phones are getting this update and we are being left out to wolves. To clarify why this is important: The froyo update allows your phone to play moving .gif files, allows for flash, speeds up performance tremendously, fixes bugs in the keyboard that cause 'fat fingers' so to speak. The update was promised many many months ago, but month by month has been pushed back. Samsung just doesn't care to keep this (or any Galaxy S) phone updated.

Now lets get to the problems of the phone: See that 512 MB ram? No, you don't. because the phone bottlenecks it at this point. They don't tell you that part. It's maxed out at 300 some odd megabytes until a later Android update (not even 2.2 though) can unlock it. The thing is, we're only promised 2.2. So the entire 512mb may never be unlocked. Sneaky eh? I though so too. You know that 5.0 megapixel camera it raves about? That would be awesome, if it had a lens flash. Now let me tell you what that means. Flash not only lightens up a room so you can see in low light, it also 'crisps' out a picture to look smooth and genuine. This is absolute fact. Professional photographers can attest to this. Without flash every picture, every single one, will come out fuzzy. "What about swype, that new typing feature Samsung is pushing?" I wanted to give this a good review, but I just can't. It's horrible. It isn't accurate in the slightest even if you spell a word correctly. And God forbid you don't know how to spell a word. The original Android keyboard is quite literally 100x better than Swype. I forced myself to use it for a majority of my ownership, finally I couldn't take it anymore. There is no 'getting used to it,' it just does not function well. While the main screen is very responsive, the bottom buttons (also touch based) are not. And I'm not talking about low responsiveness here, I'm talking near 'throw your phone against the wall' low responsiveness. They will not click for anything in the world.

The Good: I had to to dig deep for this. The phone is like any other Android smartphone. Look at the specks it brags about. All those are excellent. Wifi? Awesome! 1Ghz processor? Great! 5.0 megapixel Camera and video? Absolutely wonderful! The thing is: these can be found on almost ANY of the latest smartphones. Really. Go to another product page, open it up and compare the two. Now see if that phone has the cons I listed. Now make your choice.

Before I go, I would like to say this phone has ONE thing others do not. The Super AMOLED screen. And brother, this screen is beautiful. Absolutely lovely. AMOLED technology is like LED LCD on steroids. It will just blow you out of the water. Bright colors, dark darks. Vibrant and beautiful. It will make movies look more stunning than watching them on your HDTV, and this is no exaggeration. This technology is more advanced than that new $1800 3D tv you bought.

With that being said, it just doesn't warrant all the problems this phone has. I say again, I wanted to like this phone. I really did. But I can't recommend it. Please, please, save yourself the trouble and find another suitable phone. Samsung has really dropped the ball on this one and they frankly do not care. Our voices have been screaming for answers ever since this phone has come out, and they provide none.

samsung captivate .Didn't captivate me. October 23, 2010

Reviewer:  Berry happy 

This phone is great in concept but falls short of it's impressive stats due to many features that are unusable or what i would call un configurable.I mean lets look at the lock screen no way to adjust or control it period.
The phone does have a great screen but another nagging issue is when you are talking on the phone and recieve a text or new phone call and you look and notice the screen has locked ARRRGH what a pain.
Plus volume is so low you need to be right near the phone or you will miss calls,also people the other end have reported crackling and low speech from my end which i was also experiencing my end.Luckily amazon was nice enough to let me trade out and i think it was a big trade up to the wonderful Blackberry torch which i highly recommend .see my review Oct 23rd.

don't scan the score, read the review August 24, 2010

Reviewer:  Stone Phalanges 

I have given this phone a 3 because it is the doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde of phones. At times scrolling through screens will be seamless and at others it will lag to an unsettling pace and become unresponsive.

This phones speedy processor works very well with the most cpu intensive android apps, plays just about any type of video codec you can throw at it (if you don't know what a codec is stop here and just buy an iphone), and my personal favorite, it has 16gigs onboard storage for media etc.

This thoroughly generous storage is further expandable by 32 gigs for a total possible capacity of 48gigs, great if you have a large music library and you can't stand to part with even a single .mp3 watch out though because just as you get into musical heaven with the captivate Mr Hyde comes by to ruin your day as you realize the stock music app cannot handle north of 25gigs of music. luckily there are apps in the market that will return you to musical heaven but the experience is frustrating none the less.

I have not experienced problems with the GPS on this device and the internet browsing is top notch. The performance of the captivate ranges from exceptional to quite frankly bad. The bad moments are few and far between but they DO occur and many users just do not have the patience for that no matter how disillusioned they have become with apple.

The realest review straight to the point November 20, 2010

Reviewer:  Joseph 

First off this phone is one of or the best android phones around at the moment but I think the htc evo takes the crown.

The good: very fast almost computer fast
Pictures ok not great
Video good
Music listening is good
Swype
Amoled screen
Speaker is pretty loud

Now the horribly bad: no led flash, I thought it wasn't going to be a big deal but trust me it is.
The lag on the phone can be a bit dissapointing even with ryans lag fix.
Android market sucks when it comes to entertainment such as games etc.
And the reason why this will be my first and last samsung phone!!!! I don't know what kind of nerds samsung has in korea making the firmwares for there phones but they are definitly not the best.it's been a year since froyo 2.2 came out and I still haven't received my update that's just ridiculus!!!! Now gingerbread 3.0 is coming out and I haven't even received froyo 2.2 and to make that even worse everybody else gets the updates before we do and when I say everybody I mean everybody!!! Uk korea china india even the damn canadians what kind of #$*~ is that! I'm not the type to write reviews but this phone made me do it never again will I buy an other samsung phone. All I can say is that this phone in no way no how better then iphone.

Great performance and solid design September 29, 2010

Reviewer:  nbarras 

An all around great phone, solid design, snappy, and absolutely beautiful screen. Samsung has created a true I phone competitor and it resides on AT&T.

Wow...But September 26, 2010

Reviewer:  FTH  (USA) -

Pro:
Screen
Customization
Speed

Cons:
Battery
no Flash
no Front facing camera

Best phone I have ever had.

very good phone, with a few flaws... September 5, 2010

Reviewer:  Don Lee "Don"  (Dayton, OH) -

they really needed to look at placement of the camera lens because I get so many shots with my finger in it, many great moments lost because the need to take the time to make sure your finger isn't in the shot. so far its a pretty good phone, but it is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH SKYPE MOBILE so if you want an android phone that lets you use skype mobile look for something else!
The display is beautiful and bright, picks up wireless very well but some of the AT&T apps will only work on the 3G so beware of this! Lucky for me there are many alternatives in the android app store. Battery life is comparable to that of a typical laptop or netbook type computer don't expect this thing to go days without a charge, but if you charge it daily, you should be fine.

Worse phone ever September 10, 2010

Reviewer:  Laisa  (Abilene, TX) -

I bought this phone about a week ago and completely fell in love with it. It stood up there with the iphone4, until I started to have problems. It would restart on its own SEVERAL times a day in mid-text or mid-conversation. It would lag and shut down the programs it was running. With the apps always running in the background too, the battery wouldn't last AT ALL. I had unplugged the phone for night since it said that it was fully charged (it peeps at you) and then in the morning it barely had an battery life left over. I had to download an app killer so it would kill all the apps running in the background. In the end I took it back to At&t for a full refund and was told that they were going to do a recall because of the battery life and that every phone that was bought from them has been returned due to issues.

Jury still out for me August 11, 2010

Reviewer:  Charlie Stock  (Homer, AK USA) -

I got this phone new on 9Aug2010 and had to place an order for a replacement the next day. Maybe I got a bad one...I don't know. I do know it was frustrating to try to navigate through the screens as it kept reverting back to the home screen, no matter what I did. Behavior just seemed erratic. A replacement phone is on its way, so the jury is out still on how well this phone will perform. I will update my review after round two...
Chas

Not as Good as All these reviews say August 17, 2010

Reviewer:  Online Buyer "JC"  (SoCal) -

First Off Amazon should only allow reviews from people who purchased the items from there site.
I usually will only review items that I have purchased directly from amazon as verifiable proof of my purchase for the people reading the review, But all these bogus reviews made me want to add my 2cents. I have been using an Iphone 3g for awhile now and the cons for me have me looking for an Iphone replacement. So far I have tried the n97 mini which I would still own if it wasn't for the battery life. also tried the X6, the Backflip, and the Captivate. I bought and returned the captivate from best buy. Amazon has better pricing.

Ok now for the Captivate
PROS
Display
Battery Life was good (equal to Iphone 3g)
Android was easy to use and figure out

CONS (for me)
No in box software
bad manual
Lack of help on Samsung site
file transfer to phone
not outlook compatible

I returned this phone because there wasn't anyway to transfer files to phone without an external memory card. I downloaded drivers and Kies program from Samsung. Neither would work in getting the phone to connect to my computers <--- notice the s I have 5 computers from xp to vista to windows 7 and none would connect. To get my 400 or so work contacts to the phone I had to create a gmail account, go to outlook and export contacts to comma separated value, then import those to gmail----what a pain, after that the phone syncs with gmail on its own. I would have loved to keep this phone but this just wasnt an easy thing to deal with. I actually use my phone all day at work and I expect to charge a battery with the amount of use I an doing. But I really think they released this phone just to get it out there.

Great Web Tool, Lousy Telephone September 1, 2010

Reviewer:  Sheldon Aubut "Biker451"  (Wisconsin USA) -

My wife and I both got new Samsung Captivates two days after they were released. We were incredibly excited to get them but it turned out to be a nightmare. The micro-USB charger/USB cord is a joke. It simply will not stay plugged into the phone which made charging or downloading my music from my computer almost impossible. If you held the cord pressed into the socket it would sometimes connect, but most often when you set the phone down even the weight of a couple of inches of the cord was enough to unplug it. It was the same with both phones and both micro-USB cables. A phone that you can't keep charged isn't much of a phone. Then the reception in areas where before we had no problems was terrible. Lots of dropped calls, and even the opposite: At times the phone would not hang up correctly. One would hit the "end call" button for a busy signal and the phone would go black so you thought it had disconnected, yet a minute or five later when I'd pick up the phone it would still be at a busy signal eating up minutes. The camera was awesome, the display and the panels feature was easy to use, the Internet was clear and all those features seemed to work well. Applications that are available are amazing, but the thing is a crummy phone. Not being able to sort contacts by last name alone almost killed it for me. I've a couple of hundred business contacts that were sorted by last name or company name, but this phone can't even do that. I know you can do a "search" for a contacts but one shouldn't have to do that. It is the simplest of things to sort a database by last names and it is wholly beyond me why this feature isn't in the phone. Lots of little bugaboos like that plague the phone features and I'm afraid it won't be till version 5.0 that they get it right. Ours are going back in tomorrow's mail and we are downgrading to simpler non-Android phones, because we need a phone that actually works as a telephone.

Service for this phone in San Juan P.R. August 30, 2010

Reviewer:  Jorge Perez 

Greetings!

I just call AT&T costumer service from San Juan Puerto Rico asking why they don't have service for this phone buying through amazon store. They tell me that they have service for this phone in Puerto Rico. My question is, Why amazon tell me that At&T don't have service for this phone when I enter my zip code number for San Juan?
This offer is sponsored by AT&T and is valid in the United States and Puerto Rico.

I just don't understand. Please clarify this. Thanks.

JEPR...

Dont buy cell. from Amazon September 27, 2010

Reviewer:  cocoun 

Dont buy any cell from amazon. it takes very slow to process order, and no one knows what is going on my order when i contacted them. Buy from other phone websites.

Good phone. Where's the Samsung accessories? September 6, 2010

Reviewer:  Stuart C. Heinemann 

It has been very disappointing that Samsung released this phone without giving much thought, if any, to the demand for any of the accessories - like the docking station and other "official" Samsung accessories. Had I known that week after week would go by without being able to order any of the accessories I'd really like, then I would not have purchased it (I bought it on the first day it became available).

It's a good enough phone, but it could be better with an LED flash for the camera. The screen looks great, but that is really the only thing that sets it apart from some of the other Android devices. Other than that, between Samsung's horrible planning on the availability of accessories and the lack of a flash, it is nothing really special. If I had it to do over again, then I may have gone with an iPhone.

OVERPRICED September 19, 2010

Reviewer:  Luis E. Esparza 

this phone is overpriced. I cant believe that at&t and other phone companies treat new customers better then their existing loyal customers.
its $50 for a new customer and $179 to extend a two year family contract. Ive been with at&t for SIX YEARS!! what a ripoff!
i am part of a family plan one day I noticed this phone was $100 with a two year contract extension on a family plan. $100 is reasonable but the next day it shot up to $179.00 with a two year extension on a family plan. that isnt worth it!!!

this got the short end of the stick with all of the other Galaxy S devices for example Verizons version the fascinate is the exact same thing it just looks different on the outside..the fascinate looks more round instead of looking rectangular like the captivate. they have the same software and same specs for example they both have a 5 mega pixel camera and can both shoot video in 720p HD and both have a 1 gigahertz hummingbird processor (faster than iphone 4 in every way)
its the same thing as the captivate but they added a FLASH to the camera.
and Verizon lets it go for free!!! WTF!?

i dont want to pay almost $200 for a phone without flash..
the phone with flash (fascinate) is FREE!!! with a two year contract over at Verizon.

The Pros: This phone is On Par with the iphone 4..better color contrast than iphone 4 (thanks to the SUPER AmoLED screen), capable of shooting HD videos in 720p
its camera is better than the iphone 4, its faster than the iphone 4, better customization than the iphone 4
all in all its just better

what the iphone 4 has on the captivate is that the iphone 4 has a front facing camera and flash thats it! everything else the captivate is better at doing

if i could of purchased this phone for $100 i would realisticly give it 4 stars because of the missing front facing camera and no flash features

if this phone had a front facing camera and flash i would gladly pay $199 and give it 5 stars..

im gonna wait until the price goes down because anything over $100 right now is just not worth it