EVO to Captivate and Back- in 24 Hours- Ouch!

[Verdes8891]

I just wanted to come and do a quick follow-up.

My aunt had to go to AT&T today because her iPhone was acting up and kept giving her a sim error. While I was in there, I thought I would take a look around. I ended up coming across the Samsung Captivate and I must say, it was the most irritating thing ever! I couldn't figure out how to turn the screen on and then when I finally got it on, I felt like it was nowhere near as lovely as my Evo. Everyone says how awesome the AMOLED screens are but eh, I wasn't too impressed.

The funny thing is when I was talking to the rep, she said "I see you have the Evo". Then she points to the Captivate and says "This is our version of it". LOL! It was the funniest thing and I immediately thought about this thread. I also took a look at the iPhone 4 and still, I just couldn't get a good feel for it. It's alot smaller than what I thought it would be.

I walked out of AT&T proud to have my Evo in my hand. I don't even think i'm going to check out the Epic after what I experienced with the Captivate.

The captivate is a nice phone, well, the nicest Android that they have so far. The aria is alright, but way to small for my fat fingers to work on it. And just screw the backflip with their "MOTO Blur"



Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

 

[deaofly]

The Evo has become a very hard phone to beat. Engadget done a review and they gave the new Droid 2 a 6/10 Verizon has been pushing Droid phones out to compete with the evo but the evo always comes out as a better phone with better features. At&t Only have the iPhone and that's it. The evo has become such a huge, and I mean Huge success. I have friends and family who play with my evo and love everything about it. Some of them are stuck in the middle of a contract with another carrier and others can't find any evos in stores. I just hope that a lot of people don't buy the epic Only to say how much better it is and then find flaws with the phone and try to take it back for a Evo.

 

[eldub1]

I have an Evo. I'm gonna get the wife an Epic. This way we can argue about something else beside dinner. LOL!

 

[eldub1]

I love my Evo so much, it makes me want to buy stock in Sprint and HTC.

 

[SkyG]

My friend got a Captivate on Friday and on Saturday called me that he made a mistake. I ask him why and said he's going with the EVO for the exact same reasons the OP said. On top of that in just 1 day he used 300mb of the 2gb, so it was safe to say that he was going over fairly quickly. I remember in my first month with the EVO I used 14gb... after that I'm averaging 9gb a month. Thank God for unlimited data, which I wouldn't have in AT&T.

 

[Cobravision]

The reason the Epic and Captivate are different is because they are running different versions of Touchwiz. The Epic is running 2.5 while the Captivate is running 3.0. That's why you can't change the dock icons on the Epic. That's also why it's missing puzzle lock and the nicer music player. On the upside, the Epic isn't as laggy between screens and doesn't freeze up as much. But this also means that Samsung will have to create two different froyo versions, so there may be different timeframes for the 2.2 upgrade.

 

[Cobravision]

I'm rocking the Evo (I'm posting from it right now). I read about the Touchwiz version info from another forum, and it explains everything. But the complaints about the unresponsive capacitive buttons are still evident on the Epic according to people who have demoed it. I have read that the 4G antenna is better on the Epic, but we'll have to wait until the end if the month before that's confirmed. It would be nice if the reviews actually tested stuff like this extensively.

 

[sj808]

I have the Fresh ROM on my Evo which has Touch Wiz and that joint sucks pure balls.



After seeing this thread and several reviews, I have lost all curiosity about MAYBE switching my Evo to a Epic. I might go play with it in the store when it comes out... but sorry, HTC and Android is a match made in heaven.

 

[jamex]

Double idiot I am! I started this thread. Now I am going to show you just how dumb I am. I actually went this week, again, and went back to the Captivate. Maybe I had been unfair, so I needed to give it a second chance. Four more days with the Captivate. Yes, in four days I grew to accept some of its flaws. But... in the end it was just plain inferior to the EVO, no ifs, ands or buts about it. There were too many comprises.

Which leads me to the Epic. I know it has the slider and the front facing camera, along with the flash. Of these, the slider is mildly interesting (although I really prefer on screen keyboards now). I never use the front facing camera on the EVO, so that really does not matter. The flash- that's a little more tempting, but not hugely so.

Which leads me to this:
1. Epic display identical to Captivate.
2. Touchwiz largely the same as Captivate, and really annoying. The more I used it this week the more it drove me crazy.
3. There is a lag between clicks on the Captivate buttons and the Epic.
4. Email same problems on both.
5. Same processor.
6. Epic has 4G (but so does my EVO).
7. Cannot customize (except by rooting) the bottom buttons on the screen on the Epic, but can on Captivate.
8. Cannot customize (except by rooting) the individual screen positions on the Epic, but can on Captivate.

In short, at least to me the Epic's additions do not attract me, while its negatives make it even less attractive than its Galaxy S brother the Captivate.

Which leads me to this: There are so many gushy, overwhelmingly positive reviews of the Epic that one would think it was manna from heaven. The hype is enormous, but I wonder if a lot of the reviews are just that- hype. Maybe it is the keyboard that people really want that makes reviewers so happy about the Epic. But it seems, at least to me (and I realize it is based on my needs- others may differ) the Epic is not that great and certainly not much better than the Captivate. Why, then, was there not as much overwhelming hype about the Captivate?

Oh... and to end the story I am back to the EVO!

Did you use the Epic? My bet is you did not. Every review I read said the phone is really fast with no lag and it has touchwiz 2.5. All 2.5 has is the 4 icons on the home screen and side scrolling list which is about it.

 

[caliskimmer]

I make lots of dumb, impulsive moves, and this is about one of them. In another thread here I talked about planning to move my family from AT&T to get a cheaper Sprint family plan and about getting them to get either the Epic or Evo to replace their iPhones. NOT- as in not a chance. While I could have forced it the next two years would have been living hell with 3 daughters complaining all of the time- life is too short. I was on Sprint already with the EVO, so if I was to cut costs I had to bite the bullet and move to a family plan at AT&T to join them. Thus, I had to replace my Evo with a suitable Android phone on AT&T (I have had all of the iphones over the past 3 years and wanted to stay on Android).

Enter the Samsung Captivate, part of the Galaxy S series... The beautiful super Amoled screen and the specs looked good. I threw caution to the wind and made the switch.

Dumb move. A mere 24 hours later I am arranging to port my number back to Sprint and to the EVO I miss. While the Captivate might be a perfect choice for many, for me it was awful. Here are just a few of the many things in that 24 hours I found out I just not live with:

1. The sensitivity of the buttons at the bottom (home, back, etc)- Sometimes they are easy to activate, but frequently I had to practically pound on some of them multiple times to get the desired result. I even took the phone back in the first few hours thinking it was just a dud, but the next replacement one was just the same, as were the other live ones in the store. It drove me crazy. By contrast, the EVO buttons are easily touched and always react like they are supposed to. Ignoring all my other comments below, this one single factor alone is a major reason for me to go back to the EVO. If an EVO did this I would change phones to something else.

2. Email- The stock email program is awful. Mail can't be moved between folders and the folder heirarchy is in a long line across the top of the screen. The program is almost non-usable for daily business use. Yes, I could get touchdown or others, but on the EVO the HTC email with the phone worked perfectly and great. Also, email was much slower on send or receive on the Captivate.

3. Browser- Text Reflow Takes an Extra Step- The one thing I really love on the EVO is the ability to text reflow to resize the text by simply pinch and zoom. On the Captivate they've added a whole extra step each and every time to reflow anything. You first have to pinch and zoom the section to the size you want. Then you have to double tap. This may not sound like much, but it adds up to a lot of extra effort in just a few short minutes of browsing and reading. Even the Dolphin browser could not eliminate this step. Also, on the EVO you can use text reflow to scale up a small, mobile formatted web page. This is not the case on the Captivate at all.

4. The AT&T Data Cap- With the EVO I could browse, stream and download to my heart's content and never give it a second thought about what I did, with no data cap. Not so on AT&T- I felt paranoid every time I decided to hit something data intensive I was adding numbers towards that 2GB limit (yeah, I know AT&T says 98% or so will never hit 2GB, but just moderate streaming could easily put one over the limit). I takes all the fun out of having the phone. I know this is not a Captivate issue, but it is part of the package you buy into to get one. My daughters don't have this issue on AT&T since they are grandfathered in on the unlimited plans with the iPhones, unlike those that get a new iPhone and plan there now.

5. Lots of services to pay for (an AT&T issue, but a part of the package)- A lot of the things Sprint adds on for free cost extra money on AT&T. The Captivate's program menu is loaded up with all kinds of things that you click on where AT&T is selling you additional features.

6. No visual voicemail- While not a deal killer, I would miss it.

7. The touchwiz interface- At least to me, it is really clunky and much slower than the Sense interface on the EVO. To do things on the Captivate often involved extra steps or the screens lacked the kind of effortless feel in moving around that one gets with the EVO. Also, it appeared much less customizable than Sense.

8. Earpiece Sound Level- The sound level for hearing when talking on the phone, while "adequate," was much lower than the EVO.

I admit the screen was nice on the Captivate, but I feel just as happy with the EVO's. Plus, although the EVO screen is only 0.3 inches bigger (I think), I really found myself noticing the difference in size, as petty as that may sound. Positively, the Captivate is much thinner and feels much lighter than the EVO.

However, at the end of the day (and meaning this literally), I knew the Captivate was not a match made in heaven for me. The phone had to go. I'd rather forego the savings of being on an AT&T family plan and keep my individual Sprint plan for my EVO. I am sure there are many Captivate lovers out there who disagree about the phone and that's fine because there will be features that are right for them. However, for me the EVO is the place to be. Before this experience I had also thought about getting a Samsung Epic 4G when it comes out on Sprint. Since it is a Galaxy S phone, however, given my very unhappy experience with the Captivate I would now be very unlikely to do so.

Don't worry. I'm loyal to the Epic 4g sub-forum, but you have indeed made a good choice. The Captivate is plagued with many problems and add AT&T on that and...well...you'll be preparing a grave for your wallet and cash. Doesn't it feel nice to be with your nice EVO and Sprint and away from that awful company they call AT&T? Oh, don't forget the control they try and have over their Android phones. It's a brutal life. Trust me, I know. I've lived with an iPhone for a year now, and I will never, NEVER go back to that despicable phone and company. I used to have an EVO, but due to app crashes and problems with gaming, I got rid of it. That's just me though. You probably don't care much about gaming.

 

[caliskimmer]

BTW, the Epic is COMPLETELY different. If you are curious, I do suggest you guys try it out before completely dumping the Galaxy S series. The Captivate and Vibrant are basically the same, but the Epic is a different experience.

 

[jamex]

There are endless amount of videos, reviews etc that say the Epic is really fast compared to the other Galaxy S phones and almost all of them saying it is better than the Evo 4g.

YouTube - Samsung Epic 4G for Sprint - Unboxing