Bye-Bye Apple and its dictatorship November 19, 2010

Reviewer:  Wes Watt "wattanator"  (Kentucky) -

After using my iphone 3g for nearly two years, I decided it was time for a change. I loved my iphone, but with the problems the Iphone 4 was having and Apple's restrictiveness, it was time to move on. And the Captivate is making it an easy transition. I am free of Apple's chains and can move my phone from computer to computer.

Pros-
Email-I put three email accounts, one was a pop 3 account (I had the server and port numbers with me) and it was a breeze to set up. I left each account separate, but I could combine them into one box if I wanted.

Ringtones-You can make your own ringtones from the songs you put on there and all it takes a a simple application.

Contacts- When you put in your contacts it will link to that person's twitter account and google. It will automatically put the pictures and email in if they are listed.

Signal- The call quality seems to be good, no complaints.

Widgets- Still playing with these, but it pretty cool. You can set up different home screens with clocks and weather on them.

Price- Why pay $199 for an iphone 4 when amazon could give me a phone that is just as good for $19.99, plus you can add insurance with it.

Data transfer- You can plug in your phone to any computer and then with a USB just transfer them to your phone. You can email them or open them and work on them.

Cons-
Ease-This phone is not as user friendly as the iphone and it takes some getting used to.

Cutandpaste- The cut and paste feature is awful. You really have no ability to cut and paste.

Battery- Battery life is not that great, but the good news is it is a replaceable battery, so if its gets too bad you can get a new one.

GPS- I have not used this feature that much yet, but so far it is pretty terrible.

So far I am loving this phone!!

Loving it!! October 31, 2010

Reviewer:  jacob  (TX) -

This is my first smartphone ever. In fact, the three days I have had this phone is the longest I have ever been in contact with a smartphone. Before purchasing, I drowned myself in research on the Captivate, visited website after website, read review after review until I finally took the plunge. I will admit I not intelligent or experienced enough on these phones to give an informative, tech-savvy review. But I will do is tell everyone what I have experienced with this phone these past few days in regards to some of the issues I've read about. Some of the major gripes about this phone in my journey through reviews regarded "GPS issues", battery-life, and call quality. On battery-life, since my first charge upon receiving the phone, I've charged the phone only twice. This leads me to believe charging this phone every other day will be the norm - not bad IMO considering some Captivate owners complain about charging twice a day with minimal use. I do about 1-2 web browsing hours and 15-20 minute calls per day. On GPS, upon my first try at navigation it successfully pinpointed my location and lead me to my destination. None of the stalling, freezing, mislocation or anything else I've read about with using GPS. On calls, I have noticed the slight muffle of the voices on the other end at times, but this is far from a deal breaker. Call quality is decent. I have no major gripes of my own with this phone - not even with the bottom keys lighting up at random times, like I've also read about. Perhaps everyone's Captivate is different, but my short time with it has been a blast. captivated.

How did I live without this?? October 10, 2010

Reviewer:  WestGrl  (New Jersey) -

I was holding out to get an Android. I wanted to make sure I got one worth the money & new contract. After hearing all the amazing reviews of Samsung Galaxy S I decided to go for it. I've owned this phone now for about 2 months. It was easy to set up, set up my email, use Facebook, and connects to my wireless internet at home with no problems. I've browsed the web, shopped for apps, and never have problems. The phone works great, no issues there. There is an unlimited amount of options to set up this phone to how you would like it when it comes to settings, displays, sounds, etc. Videos look amazing! The phone is very responsive, scroll through the screens with a quick flip of the finger with no freezing or delay. My favorite part is Swype! How did I ever text without this? I watched the little tutorial and was a little intimidated, didn't think I would be able to get it down or that it just wouldn't work. Within about a minute of practicing I was flying through text with no problem. Long texts take just a second now & I don't have to abbreviate to save time... it's amazing! Not sure I will be able to go back to the old way. I use the alarm to get up in the morning & it hasn't let me down yet. I haven't had any of the issues I have seen in other reviews with the phone shutting down or locking up. Battery life was a little bad at first, I looked around on some forums & found tips that worked out well. To save on battery life make sure you don't have the brightness on the screen set too high, if you use Live wallpapers that will drain your phone, I also have the vibration shut off for when you touch the screen, etc. Since making these little adjustments battery life has been fine. I always charge my phone at night no matter what the battery level is so I can't say how long it would last beyond a day. Great little phone, I would definitely buy this again!

Great phone if it didn't lock up so often! September 30, 2010

Reviewer:  Lance  (New Hampshire) -

I have had the phone for 10 weeks and lately, one of the major problems I am dealing with is that this phone "freezes". Several times a week the screen will not shut off. I have to reboot it. That is a problem within itself, but the even bigger problem is that when it locks, it becomes hot and uses up all the battery life within 1/2 hour. You have to constantly check the screen to see if it shuts off correctly. I still give it 3 stars though because it has a lot of really nice features already enumerated by many previous reviewers.

Would buy again, but... September 22, 2010

Reviewer:  Leonard Baker 

After nearly a month and a half with my Captivate I love it, but there are some issues. When I press Call to phone a contact, waiting 5-15 seconds is the norm to hear the other parties phone finally ringing. And sometimes it takes up to 30 seconds to actually start dialing a number after you press the Call button. Seldom, if ever, has it dialed the number immediately after pressing Call (maybe I got a bad apple?). What if I needed 911 NOW?

When the screen is off, to get back to the home screen on the phone you have to press the right side button, then swipe across the screen as the phone becomes locked (for security reasons I assume). Still, the HTC Aria I tried before getting the Captivate did not have that little glitch.

Speaking of the HTC Aria, I much preferred the HTC Sense droid interface to the Samsung TouchWiz interface. The HTC Sense experience just seems much cleaner with many more options/apps/and widgets to further customize the Android experience. The Aria was a little sluggish at times, but then so is the Captivate, which is quite shocking to me. However, the Captivate is not as sluggish as often as the Aria by a long shot. One thing I measured that by was a great game I bought when I had the Aria, Homerun Battle 3D. After the game loads up and on the first pitch, the Aria would always cause me to miss that same pitch by freezing for a split second after the pitcher throws the ball, which would have it sliding over home just as I gained control again. The Captivate runs the game flawlessly from the get go.

Today, my Captivate started rebooting over and over for no apparent reason. The only thing that would stop it was a hard reboot, me pulling the battery for a few minutes. This is the first time this has happened, but I will be keeping an eye on it.

I'm in no way as dissatisfied as this review seems to indicate, on the contrary, I do love the huge 4" screen, and as everyone has already mentioned, the AMOLED screen gets everyone drooling for the Captivate. The internal memory is more than ample to allow downloading of different apps to try out and further customize the droid experience. The light weight of the phone is very welcome to me, as using a light phone after being on a computer all day at work is great on my hands.

I will update my review in a few months, and hopefully some of these items I mentioned will have been addressed and fixed. Maybe the next Android update will fix some of the TouchWiz bugs, or even have the option to cut it off and use the stock Android interface built into all Android phones. But the slow dialing has me perplexed and just about ready to ask for a replacement Captivate.

very good, but... September 20, 2010

Reviewer:  DanG 

awesome phone, but it has a few issues.

positives: great, vivid, quick responding screen, very fast, great quality, thin
negatives: GPS doesn't work. They say they have a fix that they will distribute soon, but they've been saying that for a while and it still hasn't shown up. battery life is a little annoying. Some apps try to access the GPS, then run the battery out in hours while they keep trying to find a GPS fix. The only way around the battery drain is to turn off GPS completely. I hope they fix it soon, because I would like to use the GPS features.

The phone is great, but... September 11, 2010

Reviewer:  Average Guy "Average Guy"  (Ocala, FL) -

UPDATE AFTER ALMOST 6 MONTHS:
While I still love this phone, I am EXTREMELY disappointed in Samsung and AT&T (mostly Samsung). After being told in August of 2010 that the update to the Android software was coming soon, I still have not seen it. After contacting both AT&T and Samsung (it is called the run around), I was basically told wait and see. Research led me to the fact that it is Samsung who is holding up the process. While they state they are testing to ensure it is a positive experience for all customers, they are releasing new versions of their phones (while not Galaxy S phones, almost the same)with the Android 2.2 software. For those of you not familiar with why this is a big deal, Android 2.2 (called Froyo) adds the capability to use Adobe Flash on your phone. Flash is what makes most sites content so dynamic, as well as powering the majority of online video content. Translation: if you want to watch video from your favorite sites, you NEED Flash. I must say that at this point, unless Samsung remedies this VERY SOON, I will switch back to using Motorola as they seem to really care about the customer. No, I won't go to the iPhone as they do not want Flash on their mobile product at all. Thought everyone should know!

Original review:
Having been an iPod touch user for a while, I was almost sold on buying an iPhone. While I am sure that is still a great phone, I hesitated when I heard of a few issue. After reading about the advances in Android phone operating systems, I researched and found this phone on Amazon for $49 (with new contract). This phone is awesome. It is easy to use, powerful, fast and has tons of possibilities. I have become the envy of my friends and have convinced them to buy Samsung Galaxy phones as well.
One of the things that stopped me from getting the iPhone was the inability to add memory. The Captivate allows 16gb cards to be added (access is easy, right under the battery cover and phone does NOT have to be powered off!).
Great Points:
-Super fast processor
-Plenty of memory
-Great stock applications
-Wireless N wi-fi
-etc, etc, etc
-While the Android Marketplace is not as varied as the iTunes store, there is still plenty to choose from.

I have owned the phone for a little over a month now and love it more each day. I hardly use my laptop any more as this can do almost everything. And trust me, this is the BEST price you will find anywhere for this phone. It is not a refurb or open box, this is brand new. Thank you Amazon for a great product at a great price. Received it in 2 days as promised and ready to use. My only wish is that you had a better process at Amazon to port your existing phone number. AT&T was very helpful, but it did take an hour on the phone and a trip to the local AT&T store for a new SIM card to get the number ported. No big deal, still very happy.

UPDATE 11/30/10
After several months of using this phone, I like it even more than I originally did. It takes excellent pictures (although a flash would be much better), good HD video and is quite fast on 3G. Also, the reception on the handset is better than most. Areas in my town where my other Samsung AT&T phone gets poor to no reception, this phone still gets a signal.
A couple of cons that are AT&T related, not Samsung. Still no Android 2.2 update available and no date announced by AT&T. The main reason this is such a big deal is the addition of flash to play online video. Also, I too receive the error on network when trying to update, however, this is easily overcome by downloading the Samsung Kies mini application (available on Samsung's website for free) to accomplish your updates.

Pros:
-still an extrememly fast phone
-multi-tasking
-excellent reception
-ultra thin and light
-great battery life (2-3 days between charges for me)
-good picture and video quality
-replaceable battery and micro-SD card for additional memory (iPhone can't do that)
-overall great phone

Cons:
-Amazon needs to work on better process to port number
-no flash for camera
-(AT&T)error when update phone from handset
-(AT&T)STILL no 2.2 update and no date for when we can expect it.

As I said earlier, if you are in the market for a new phone, don't hesitate to buy this one. Especially now when it is on sale for $0.01 for the holidays. Get this before they are all gone. You will love it!!

5 STAR phone with a 1 STAR Issue September 8, 2010

Reviewer:  Ross 

I'll get right to it...I love this phone (hence the ***** rating) BUT, there is a SERIOUS issue with the phone turning itself off. I'm not going to go into all the things that make this one kick @ss phone 'cause you can read what all the other posters have written (they're all true...this phone rocks). BUT, this "turning off" issue is a serious flaw that Samsung has GOT to get fixed. I've had it 6 days now and the phone turns itself off (or doesn't wake up) 5-6 times per day...VERY annoying!!

On the plus side, Amazon has been great at returning the phone. I'm just crossing my fingers that the next Captivate doesn't have this issue!

Great phone except for a critical flaw October 16, 2010

Reviewer:  F. Doyle 

As a long time smart phone owner (original iPhone, iPhone 3GS, Moto Droid for 1 month and Nexus One for 8 months), I was very excited to get my Samsung Captive. The screen was fantastic as expected. It was incredibly responsive. Calls were crisp and clear. Even the AT&T issues I'd experienced with my iPhones were either fixed in the last year or a problem with the iPhones themselves. The captivate was the best phone I'd ever had. Until I needed to use the GPS.

There were three problems with the GPS. 1) it took too long to get a location 2) the location just wasn't very accurate and 3) it wasn't very reliable: it would just "lose" you while driving. I used my iPhone and Nexus one GPS all the time, for driving, runnning, and golf. For driving you actually don't need a super accurate GPS. Usually if it's within 100 feet, the navigation software puts you on the correct road and you don't notice the error. But for golf, when you need to know within a few yards how far away the green is, 100 feet just doesn't cut it. The iPhone and Nexus One would always get within 10 ft very quickly. I never saw the Captivate get anywhere near there, and even when it could get within 30ft accuracy, it took way too long to get it. You couldn't take the phone out of your pocket and look at the distance, you'd take your phone out of your pocket and wait 2 minutes for anything.

Those problems were more related to speed and accuracy. The reliability issue was even more frustrating. You'd be driving down the road using the fantastic android navigation software, and all of a sudden it would just say "GPS signal lost". I only used the Captivate for navigation once, and I had to pull over three times to look at a map directly, and pull two U-turns since it didn't tell me to turn until way too late (1 mile after the turn it would regain signal and give me new directions based on the missed turn). Needless to say I was furious and wanted to throw the phone out the window.

Luckily, Samsung announced there was a fix coming for these issues. Even luckier, I got the fix before my 30 day return window had passed since the fix did absolutely nothing to help. I had to return the phone even though it only had the one flaw, since that flaw was such a fatal issue. I have to give the phone a single star since it was missing one of the most important smartphone features in gps and navigation. Also, Samsung handled this issue so horrifically that they've lost a customer for life.

Best At&t phone July 21, 2010

Reviewer:  bballer "E" 

Great phone, slim and the display is great 4 in., bigger than the Iphone. Very fast processor and with a 16 g SD card probably faster. Android market has soo many free apps it's ridiculous. Great display nice and bright, you can notice it outside on brightest setting. Call quality is pretty good, loud speaker with even better sound with the ear-buds on. Love the Swipe keyboard! Once you get the hang of Swipe you won't go back to regular texting. Wifi enabled so i don't have to use all of data use from my plan.
Only negatives is no flash on camera, home buttons at the bottom of Samsung logo are a little hard to press at times, only get one day of use out of the battery better install Task Killer and invest in car charger.
Overall great phone, big screen display but very thin makes it comfortable in your hand or pocket. Android 2.2 upgrade is coming which will make the phone even more responsive and fast.
Powerful hummingbird processor.
Google voice recognition.
Light weight yet solid build.

Great for business users September 29, 2010

Reviewer:  A. Chen 

So Im a business user there are several things that are critical to me as a business user. The captivate does not do some of the things natively but because of the flexibility of android you can download apps which do things the way you want. The issue with the iphone is that you cant replace the native apps. I had an iphone but it was weak for the things I do the most which are around calendar, reminders, phone calls and conference calls. The captivate is awesome for business users.

1) ease of dialing - I had an iphone (slide, tap, tap, scroll through numbers), but dialing numbers on it was a nightmare. Windows mobile smart dial was awesome you could just enter the letters of a name and they would get filtered automatically so you could always get a name within a few letters. It isnt quite as nice as windows mobile - there is one extra tap required and the matching doesnt match any part of the name, just the first name. But generally it works well

2) dialing from calendar entries. On the iphone a calendar entry pops up you can dial from it, but getting the conference call dial in was a nightmare. On my windows phone or blackberry the system was smart enough to know that it was an extension and would autodial the extension. The samsung captivate calendar does NOT use the default google calendar and is missing any capability to dial from the calendar. Download a free program called "jorte" which has the dial from calendar functionality. You can hold the home screen button after you dial to switch back to jorte which will have the calendar entry still up. You will have to memorize the conference number and switch back to the phone dialer. The switch is fast enough that I can typically do ok with a 9 digit conference bridge id without forgetting it.

3) I need the calendar on the front screen - the default front screen has nothing. I downloaded an App called FlyScreen (dont get te flyscreen wallpaper, get the app). It has the capability to load widgets on your front screen. Load it with the jorte 4x2 widget (comes with jorte) which will show appts on the front screen so you dont have to do anything to look at your calendar. It can turn off the default screen which means your phone has no security, but Im ok with that. You may not be. The flyscreen app also makes it so you dont have to swipe to access your phone. you can just hit the home button. So now I can hit the power button, hold the home button down, select the phone option and get to my dialer in 2 taps. (vs hold the power button down, a swipe and a tap). I find the swipes to activate the phone annoying and hard to do while driving.

4) battery life - I downloaded an app called juice defender which does a great job of saving the battery. I was at the point where I was out of battery around 8pm-10pm at night with a couple hours of talking and various other usages of the phone. I still need to recharge everyday, but am not in danger of running out of battery in the evening.

5) swype keyboard - the default mode is the android keyboard. The swype keyboard really works and allows you to enter text really fast. The keyboard also lets you hold down a letter to get numbers so you dont have to switch to a number keyboard.

6) reminders- this is a big deal. When I had the iphone I was constantly missing reminders because the system was so poor. the default captivate system is really bad, but I downloaded a program called calendar snooze that gives me reminders better than Ive ever had before. My typical scenario is I either ignore the reminder or want to snooze until 2 minutes before my next meeting. Calendar snooze lets you customize reminder buttons, how many reminders you get when you ignore a reminder and the spacing of those reminders. Now the reminder comes up and I can snooze for 2 minutes before my meeting.

7) ringers - I like my phone to just ring once so I dont have to turn it off in meetings - I havent been able to do this so far. I did get a pretty quiet ring tone that is a low modulation ping that is not too obtrusive.

8) Visual voicemail. You can sign up to google voice using your normal number and get google voice voicemail support only. Instead of ATT voicemail you will use google voicemail which will give you visual voicemail. Plus your voicemails can be transcribed so you dont need to listen to them you can read them. Finally you can have them emailed to you or texted to you.

WORST PHONE!!! February 9, 2012

Reviewer:  Trace 

I am writing this to save anyone from making a huge mistake. I've had this phone for over 1.5 yrs and have gotten so mad at it that I've thrown it across the room. I've had to replace it... It stalls A LOT! When you need it to unlock fast it takes forever, it will stall while playing music, surfing the internet, doing more than one thing at a time on it is impossible. For example, if you want to talk on phone and look something up on internet it doesn't work. It will also randomly stop receiving text messages and you won't know until someone calls you because you didn't respond to their text. I've called AT&T several times, took it down to one of their stores and they don't know why it does it. Customer service basically told me to get a new phone. This phone is a complete piece of s#@*! I hate it so much!!!! Please get something different, a can with string is better then this piece of s#@*!

Pretty Awesome August 18, 2011

Reviewer:  H. A. Usmani 

Alright, first off: The AT&T store prices are much more expensive, so I went to Wal-Mart and see what prices they had. They had it for 0.97 cents! (Plus the 15 monthly) It's great for that price that I got it! It has a beautiful screen, great touch screen, and is practically weightless. 2 things that I didn't like: 1) You can't download anything out of the market due to AT&T's Restrictions. 2) For some reason, it lags sometimes when unlocking the screen (this happened to me three times in the past 2 weeks). If you get past that, its a super-awesome phone that I got for a dollar!!

Amazing Phone August 14, 2011

Reviewer:  DJ 

This is a amazing phone and it is the best android phone for at&t. Camera is takes very good pics and hd video.

Not the Best Phone Experience July 12, 2011

Reviewer:  Peetzaa  (NY, NY) -

Man...I am an iPhone hater, but I gotta agree about the Captivate. It has very poor battery life (less than 12 hours without talking). I probably use 500 minutes a month, and use the phone primarily for e-mail and Apps, and I cannot go 24 hours without charging the phone. That's about 20 minutes on the phone a day, and the phone cannot stay charged. Bear in mind: I have an auto-killer that kills everything hourly, so I don't have data or battery sucks, though I can't imaging how long the battery life would be otherwise.

The phone is quite buggy, and has displayed the following behavior on a regular basis:

1. Apps like Pandora with cause the phone to hang, and not allow you to power down. You need to hard reboot by removing the battery.
2. Pushing the power button does not light up the screen when in power save mode.
3. Screen brightness jumps to full after being manually turned down, and the auto-adjust option disabled.
4. Going into power save mode while downloading apps will cancel the download.
5. After switching to the camera, you cannot return home and need to reboot the phone.
6. Phone stops receiving data. This happens with no warning, so you will go hours without e-mail, decide to check manually and then realize you need to reboot the phone. In the meantime, you may have missed an important e-mail.

Oh, how I wish I hadn't sold my 3GS for this. I thought, Android 2.2 solves a bunch of problems, so it can't be all bad. How little did I know.

A little background:

- I have been using the phone since March 2011.
- The phone is not rooted, and using Android 2.2

Great phone but lacks accessories April 8, 2011

Reviewer:  Q 

This is very feature rich phone, you can do a lot with it.

I don't miss LED for camera as low light picture are good if taken in appropriate mode.

First couple of days battery was drying up pretty fast. But then I turned off the auto brightness adjustment feature and set the brightness to lowest level also moved from moving wallpapers to static once and saw a marked improvement in battery life.

I have used it for a week and i am impressed with it.

Replacement for my Blackberry Torch April 7, 2011

Reviewer:  newtosmartphones 

I bought a Blackberry Torch last November on Amazon and did not like it at all simply because it had way too many freezing problems. I did my research and found the Captivate suited my needs.

Pros:
The screen is a good size and I really like the deep blacks.
Call quality is exceptional and I haven't dropped any calls.
Battery life was really good...until I updated to 2.2
Camera takes good pictures
Speaker volume is really good and also on speakerphone
I love the customization that the phone comes with such as wallpapers and widgets.
The Android market further expanded customization.
WiFi works really well especially since my Blackberry always had problems connecting to WiFi
My favorite feature is swype and I was really picky in getting a phone with either a keyboard or swype.
E-mail setup was very easy.

Cons:
There is some occasional screen lag
The speakerphone is on the back of the phone which muffles the sound when it's on a table and found this annoying when I wanted to listen to music without headphones.
The volume rocker buttons are very sensitive and I kept hitting them until I got a case which remedied the problem.
GPS only worked for me once.
No camera flash
I found the TouchWiz user interface outdated in appearance in comparison to HTC's Sense.
Syncing music is very difficult and I bought a five dollar app for it to sync and it doesn't even work most of the time.
Battery life isn't good since I upgraded to Froyo 2.2

I am satisfied with my phone and hope Samsung makes improvements in their next Galaxy Series Phones. I am however, looking to upgrade next year and keeping an open mind to other brands and platforms.

NO Bluetooth Voice Dialing March 28, 2011

Reviewer:  RobM 

I purchased this phone last fall when the price on Amazon was 39.99. and $200 at AT&T stores. I was surprised that Android does not support BT voice dialing. Then I read that FROYO would fix the lack of BT Voice dialing. WRONG! Maybe on other Android phones or other Galaxy S phones on other carriers but not the Captivate on AT&T.

If you need a phone that will work with your blue-tooth device so you can make hands-free calls find another phone.

Touchscreen can be good and bad. March 10, 2011

Reviewer:  GaryS  (St. Louis, MO United States) -

I'm annoyed with the phone right now...so I'm going to start with the bad things.

All touchscreen makes it difficult to text like a normal qwerty keyboard that you can feel. I can't seem to buy apps on m phone. AT&T transfers me to Samsung who tells me to call Google who has no phone support. I look on their support pages and find that tons of people are having the same error that I am getting trying to buy an app. One would think that a marketplace that allows you to buy things would be good.

I often touch my face to the screen accidentally activating or deactiving something. If the phone gets hot, I might pull it away from my face making it difficult to hang up (since it's reliant on the touch screen). What I mean is it detects when it's against your face and shuts off the display to save power I guess. But when you pull it away, the screen will shut off too. And since you won't be pulling it away from your face, it won't activate the screen easily to allow you to hang up. I have to hit the power button to get the display to come up again.

AT&T blocks you from buying apps outside of the Android Marketplace. And since I can't buy apps in the Android Marketplace...that means no apps for me...except the free ones.

I do like how android phones have a bigger marketshare which means there is the potential for greater variety of apps available. I'm being optimistic that someday I'll be able to buy one.

I have good phone quality. the MiniUSB connection or whatever could stay in the phone better. It seems to fall out easily. Especially if I don't use the exact one provided in the box...like a car charger.

Great phone February 25, 2011

Reviewer:  Rhaspun 

This is my first touch screen phone. I wanted the larger buttons that touch screens offer. At first I wasn't that impressed with this phone. But after using for the past week and getting use to the where things are at. I can finally say that it is a great phone. The reception is good, sound quality is good. I wished the blue tooth would connect up on it's own instead of me having to turn blue tooth on for connecting. I had upgraded the Android system to 2.2 and it was very easy to do. Just a couple of clicks and waiting for the download to finish was all it took. The only suggestion I would have is to have a larger capacity battery to give it longer battery life.

March 10: Let me add to my review now since I've received the phone. After I've gotten to use and remembering where things are at I really like this phone. In fact I'm going to give it the full 5 stars. This phone is easy to use. Switched over from a Nokia which I've always liked. I just had to go through a learning curve with the Captivate. I'm pretty comfortable with the phone but I know I will still learn something new about the phone in the future. As mentioned in my original review I wished the battery in the phone had more capacity. It's not terribly short battery life but my just wanting something perfect. I've seen others complain about the GPS, but for my phone it has been good for me. I've only used it for tracking and it seems accurate. WiFi works just fine.

Aug 13: After looking over some of the comments about some of the problems I guess I must be lucky to not have any of the problems that others have had. The big thing I would agree with is the rather short battery life. I just top it of nightly after daily use.

Oct 3: I did end up having to replace my phone. The problem with random shut downs showed up in my phone. The replacement phone has been working fine for the past 5 months. Went to the local AT&T office and they replaced it without any problems. Great service. The biggest problem I see so far with this phone is the lack of software connect to my computer. The program Samsung program Kies doesn't seem to connect to my phone. After much use I do have to complain about the battery life. After one call the battery uses quite a bit of the battery. If you talk a lot with this phone you will be need to recharge frequently. I have changed my rating to be 3 stars now and it is due mainly to the poor ability to connect with a PC. This is why I bought this smartphone.