Forum Members Initial Thoughts & Reviews of the Fascinate

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
My wife and I have had our phones for about two weeks now. Hers is stock with lots of APPS loaded but I have loaded Launcherpro and HTC clock and I am in love. Auto task killer is a great APP too.

Wife told me that she loves this phone. Coming from a PALM 700 you can see why. She has the cradle charger and uses that at work. I think I could get two days out of one charge but I don't push that.

The GPS leaves a bit to be desired if you are looking for an exact location but I am sure I will find software to correct that.

Overall both of us love this phone.

George:cool:
 
Hey, Baron, if you go download NoLED from the Android Market (it is free!), it handles all LED notification issues except when charging.
 
First time poster here! I've been using a blackberry storm 2 for a year and received my Fascinate yesterday. Said a million times I'm sure but the screen is beautiful. On the downside, it was a big pain to sync my outlook contacts and calendar. I finally figured it out but I had hoped it would be more seamless. I was also disappointed that email isn't push email. These two problems are non existent if you use gmail and google calendars, which I don't. Swype is awesome! I rooted my phone this morning and got rid of Bing and all the bloatware. The process was easy enough thanks to this forum. I'm still going to keep my eye out for the next 30 days in case something better gets released for xmas but I'm keeping it for now!
 
? Aesthetics - looks a little to iphone-esque for me, but the backdoor is kinda cool, cheap plastic that scratches really easily.
? Screen - Probably my favorite part of the phone.. so rich and beautiful.
? Hardware - Fast enough, seems to struggle with certain tasks that my DI's Snapdragon made light work of.
? Phone - It works.. sounds cheap, but works well enough.
? Overall User Interface & Samsung TouchWiz - Use LauncherPro, TW seems ok, but again, too iphone-esque.
? Signal quality - This is really where things start to go downhill.. it sucks.. thats all there is to say about it. Compared to 3-4 bars on the DI, i usually have 0-2 in the same places with the Fascinate.
? GPS - again.. more fail, the aGPS sucks, can't find itself in the wide open spaces with a decent signal. Using the GPS Status app is a solution, but a terrible one, as a Foursquare player.. this really is a deal breaker for me.
? Social Networking - not tested
? Email/Calendar - Gmail works great, the TW standard email app is terrible and clunky.
? Battery Life - considerably better than the DI ! makes it through a day very easily with plenty of left over juice.
? Performance - kind of disappointed in benchmarks out of the box on this thing.. my 2.2 DI puts it to shame. Except in the 3D rendering obviously, but pure smoothness and power, its meh.
? Media (music, movies, DLNA) - I use Pandora, thats about it.
? Samsung Widgets -Kinda whatever.. don't use any of the TW widgets because they're social network based.
? Swype vs. Android Keyboard - Swype is cool for hammering out a long email or message in proper english, but trying to write abbreviations and acronyms is troublesome. The TW Android Keyboard also just doesn't feel as smooth as HTC's on the DI.
? Camera (both still & video) - 5MP is more than enough, always had my DI cranked down to 5 from 8. Sharp, but not as sharp as the DI's sensor, the stock camera app is clunky and not very well thought out.
? How the Fascinate compares to your previous smartphone - the Fascinate is a nice device, but its missing alot for me to want to keep it in comparison with the Incredible.. just isn't solid enough, lacks the weight to it, and doesn't have the simplicity of raw processing power that the DI does.
? Likes/dislikes - no notification LED.. the DI has one its not great, but its there, the GPS is horrible, Bing is there, it shouldn't be, but honestly that is the least of my issues with the phone. Also like the look of the Captivate much better than the Fascinate.. why did we get the Vibrant clone instead of the Captivate?
 
I'm a former Blackberry Curve 8830 user. I really loved that phone. My biggest complaint with it was the fact that I dropped it and cracked the screen. Otherwise, I probably would've hung onto it beyond the 2-year contract time.

So, I got the Fascinate after comparing it to the DX and DInc. I would've gone BB again, but wanted the bigger library of apps and the better A/V capabilities. Ultimately, they all seemed to have their own pros/cons, but the Fascinate just looked so nice. The screen is amazing and ultimately what got me to bring it home.

I haven't done anything to it yet (rooting, LauncherPro, etc.) except add a bunch of free apps. I've been very happy with it in most respects. I'm listening to Pandora at work right now with headphones on and it looks and sounds incredible. YouTube videos load right up and play even better than they do on my computer. The bluetooth worked well and synced right up with my car and it auto-connects every time I get in. The camera on my BB really sucked (by far the worst feature of the phone), so I'm much better off with the Fascinate.

I'm really disappointed that I cannot just sync the phone calendar/contacts up with my Outlook. BB was perfect for that. Handled conflicts, notifications, recurrences, etc. very well. I'll probably have to investigate a 3rd party app (a costly one too) to meet my needs there. I don't like Bing, but Verizon dropped it onto my BB Curve too. I can use Google bookmark for searching w/o any problems. I also miss the LED notification for emails/texts/voicemails, and don't like that I don't get notified of new emails from my primary (non-gmail) email account.

If anyone can recommend a good Outlook calendar-sync program that prompts for conflicts and all, I'd appreciate it.
 
I've had my Fascinate about 5 days now. I'm coming from 3 previous Blackberry's - Pearl, Tour and Bold. I thought they were great and I got to the point where I could type quite fast on that BB keyboard. Thus, I was a little (read: a lot) hesitant to switch to a phone with no hard keyboard. My initial plan was to get the Droid 2 Global so that I'd have a hard keyboard if I wanted it, but everyone that I talked to that has a Droid says that they never ever use the hard keyboard, so I figured no need to get a heavier, thicker phone when I wasn't going to use half of it. Thus, I ended up with the Fascinate.

So as a hard fought Blackberry convert here is what I have to say to any apprehensive BB users: Have no fear about losing the keyboard. After a few days I'm able to enter text just as fast or even faster than on my BB. There is no going back.


* Aesthetics: The phone very much reminds me of an iphone and would probably fool the casual observer. I wish the back was made of something other than shiny plastic. Give it a rubberized or anodized finish that won't scratch and would be easier to hold on to. I don't know when phone companies will figure this out. The phone is not crazy oversized like the Droid X although I think I would prefer maybe a slightly shorter phone, perhaps the size of the upcoming Continuum. The phone is super thin though. Very sleek.

* Screen: The screen is certainly one of the selling points of the phone. Its large and its gorgeous! What can I say, its rich, colorful and responsive.

* Hardware: See above. Its very light and sleek. The screen is made of Gorilla Glass, same as on the iPhone, which is quite scratch resistant. I wish the back was made of a different material or had a different finish.

* Phone: Haven't used BT yet. The speaker phone is ok. When the volume is up, quality is a bit on the scratchy side. Holding it to my ear, the sound quality isn't quite as clear as my BB, but its certainly not bad.

* Overall User Interface: Touchwiz was fine, but I installed LauncherProPlus. Seems worth the $3. It makes it a little closer to the HTC Sense which I think I may prefer over Touchwiz. With LP installed it works great. Coming from my BB where there was an LED to let me know that I had a message, missed call, etc I was annoyed to find that the Fascinate didn't have one. However, having installed NoLED it is now better than my BB because now I can know what type of message/call/text I have missed based on the icon floating around the screen. I just installed Vlingo today and its amazing! Definitely a must have!

* Signal quality: Not good. I always had almost full bars with my BB. With this phone I usually have 1-2. This seems to be a known issue. It hasn't really affected calls or anything yet. We'll see.

* GPS: Also not as good. This is apparently a known issue. My friend's Droid1 gets GPS stuff inside the hospital where we work somehow and can search things using Places. I get nothing. I haven't tried having it navigate me to somewhere yet. Sitting in my house though asking it to find nearby places it does seem to know where I am.

* Email/Calendar: gmail is obviously very well integrated. I also added a Hotmail account, which isn't as well integrated. You can set it so each account makes a different sound when you get a message. I wasn't really thrilled with the stock calendar because it was a little more cumbersome to add and sync things to the google calendar, but I've downloaded the Touchdown Pure Grid Widget calendar and it seems much better and more customizable.

* Battery Life: So-so. I would usually come home with my BB almost fully charged at the end of the day. That's never going to happen with this phone. Granted I've been using it quite a bit these first few days. If I take it on trips I will definitely buy a second battery (which I'd also done with my BB). The pictures I've seen of the extended battery are horrible. It looks like a pregnant hippo. :eek: I won't go that route.

* Performance: No complaints so far. The Verizon rep put ATK on it, but everyone seems to say not to use it, so I've stopped and we'll see how it goes.

* Swype vs. Android Keyboard: I could never figure out the swype thing in the store, but now that I have I can go quite fast with it. I rarely actually type something in.

* Camera (both still & video): I've tried it a little bit. I'm annoyed that I can't send a 11mb video that I've taken to a friend via email, while my iPhone friend can. The camera doesn't seem to be quite as clear as the iPhone camera but is certainly better than my BB camera which was only 3.2mp. There are certainly a lot more options with this camera as far as settings. Its super easy to switch back and forth between camera and video.

* How the Fascinate compares to your previous smartphone: See above. There is absolutely no comparison. I could never go back to my Blackberry after having all of the functionality of this phone.

* Likes/dislikes: I hate Bing, but apparently that can go away if we ever get Froyo. I really wish I could delete all of the crap that Verizon puts on the phone like Blockbuster and Skype, etc.
 
Coming from a Palm Pre Plus this phone BLOWS out out of the water.

The camera is way beyer than I was expecting.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
 
jeremy1960 said:
Traded in my DX for the Fascinate yesterday morning!
I miss the LED so trying NoLED.
The mic is disabled when I have it connected to the car stereo via the 3.5mm jack. Is that a bug? It was nice on the DX to just answer the call with the phone in the center console, hear the caller through the speakers and they heard me fine through the phone mic.
The keyboard in portrait mode is smaller than the X but Swype to the rescue!
The screen does feel better. Just played the matrix divx on it and it looks awesome!
The size was the reason why I switched. The x is very nice but just does not fit in pants front pocket well. The Fascinate slides in easily and does not feel like you have a brick in your pocket.
Click to expand...


I am about to trade my droid X in for the fascinate and was wondering if you seen a difference in call quality??? I have heard alot of negative, should this be something I worry about??
 
brackett5 said:
I am about to trade my droid X in for the fascinate and was wondering if you seen a difference in call quality??? I have heard alot of negative, should this be something I worry about??
Click to expand...

I did the same thing and I'd have to say that the X was slightly better as far as call quality goes. I don't talk on my phone much at all, so it's not that big of a deal to me. If you spend a ton of time on your phone making phone calls, I'd probably think twice about the switch.
 
Picked two of these babies up on Black Friday for free. Had to get to BestBuy at 5am, but it was sooo worth it. Still trying to learn the phone, but absolutely love it already. Gotten tons of good info here, thanks to all who post!
 
Finally upgraded from my OG Droid I've had since last Nov. Initial impression was great. Screen is unbelievable, very fast, camera I can actually take pictures with (only real complaint I had with the Droid) and I actually like Touch Wiz.

That being said....dislikes are mainly the battery and unknown status of future updates 2.2/2.3. My phone has spent far more time on the charger than actually with me. With very little use I am getting 6 - 7 hours before its down to 10 percent. With the new phones coming out I may take it back before my 30 days are up.

I have not rooted yet but plan to give it a try before I switch back.
 
simp10 said:
Finally upgraded from my OG Droid I've had since last Nov. Initial impression was great. Screen is unbelievable, very fast, camera I can actually take pictures with (only real complaint I had with the Droid) and I actually like Touch Wiz.

That being said....dislikes are mainly the battery and unknown status of future updates 2.2/2.3. My phone has spent far more time on the charger than actually with me. With very little use I am getting 6 - 7 hours before its down to 10 percent. With the new phones coming out I may take it back before my 30 days are up.

I have not rooted yet but plan to give it a try before I switch back.
Click to expand...

if you're having trouble with the battery, I'd take it back to vzw and get a new one. at stock, I was getting at least a day's use out of it (as long as I wasn't playing angry birds for a few hours). Now I'm using JT's superclean ROM and I can get through 2 days of normal use. I believe JoeBob had the same issue as you and then he put on JT's superclean ROM and it improved his battery life greatly. you could probably try that out if you don't want to take the phone back to swap for a new one.
 
Been reading the forums while deciding which new phone I wanted to get (coming from Storm2). I ended up getting the Fascinate a couple days ago, and so far I'm really enjoying it.
Swype is awesome, and I'm already typing faster than I ever was with my Blackberry.
TouchWiz seems fine to me. Knowing how I am with phones though, I'm sure I'll get sick of it at some point. Then maybe I'll give LP+ a try. For the moment, though, there doesn't seem to be any lag or anything bothering me about it.

One thing I don't like - I hate having all of VZW's bloatware in there. I'm hesitant to root at the moment, but I might have to do that eventually. It'd be great if there was even just a way to add a folder so I can move all of their useless programs in there just so they don't take up my entire applications menu..

I think that's about it though. I was trying to hold off until some of the LTE phones came out (IncHD, Merge, etc.).. but I decided might as well go with this one for now. By the time I'm up for another upgrade, LTE should really be going strong with a lot more phones to choose from.

As soon as we can get FroYo (and maybe even Gingerbread eventually), I think I'll be really happy with this phone for a while.
 
Hi
I've had my fascinate for a couple weeks now and am really happy with it. I was surfing the wirefly site and they had it for free and I figured what the hell save $200 and went for it. Never looked back. Always bought phones at the carrier stores, but after doing it online will never buy in store again. Sale and porting ATT number to VZW went seamlessly. Only downer is having to wait, but Wirefly shipped Fedex 2nd day for free so wasn't too bad.

I came from an att prepaid moto krzr phone. Wanted to see what all this smartphone buzz was all about. I am constanty amazed by what this phone can do. Read thru the screenshot sticky posts and I think I have my phone pretty jazzed up. The Beautiful widgets, Zedge, Audio Manager, Shoot me apps are wicked.

Like most agree, the screen is awesome. I really like the form factor...perfect size, easy to hold plus no bulges like the Dinc and DroidX. Only downside is battery life...kinda not so good. When I first got it was constantly being fiddled with you know how it is. Now that the "newness" has worn off a bit its not fiddled with as much so battery life has gone way up. lol

Being a first time smartphone person I really can't compare it to anything other than my previous Krzr. You can imagine what a quantum leap that is...or maybe you can't haha.

Anyways just wanted to say I love this thing and don't know how I got along without it.

One day soon I wil build up the courage to root and rom and all that stuff, but for now I'm good!

:}
 
Picked up this phone about a week ago, upgrading from a Droid 1.

Overall, I like this phone much more than my D1 (and that's saying a lot because I loved my D1). The screen is absolutely beautiful. It makes other phones look almost washed out. It's also very responsive and doesn't slow down with Launcher Pro + or live wallpapers. I've heard of people having problems with the GPS but that hasn't been my experience so far. It's been dead accurate for me using google maps. I also really don't see a huge difference in battery drain from my old phone, but then my D1 went through the battery in a day also. It's not a big deal for me since I use my phone as an alarm clock and it goes on the dock every night. The back does attract a lot of fingerprints but I have it in a case most of the time. I have a Zagg Invisible Shield on the front which I'm very impressed with because of the lack of fingerprints.

I guess my only gripe would be having to go from a 2.2 phone back to 2.1 and no indication of when 2.2 is going to be out. Also, The whole Bing fiasco...I don't mind Bing but to leave out an option to default back to Google is unforgivable.
 
Loving it so far. My facinate runs smooth & fast. My only complaint is the missing led indicator. But no led has been a good substitute. :cool:
 
well, im pretty disappointed. the screen is, yes, beautiful. no doubt about that. but, when it comes to functionality, im not impressed. i use my phone constantly; it's basically glued to my hand. when i get a call and need to get somewhere, the navigation can't get me there. (i refuse to use the verizon navigator, i mean i got a android phone, i want to USE it. not verizon) bing sucks. plainly. it cant seem to lock my location. besides that, its great.
 
  • Like
Reactions: SSmaster
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Trending Posts

Members online

Total: 6,532 (members: 9, guests: 6,523)

Forum statistics

Threads
963,182
Messages
6,992,801
Members
3,164,986
Latest member
ruatahmar

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom