I will **never*** buy another Samsung

[Chris3D]

Sorry for what is admittedly a rant, but I'm really at the end of my rope.

Out of the blue, and for the second time, Windows just stopped recognizing my phone. Not as a phone, not as storage, not as anything. No da-ding when I connect it, nothing. I look in the device manager, and it's sitting there as an unknown USB device. Nice.

So, I proceed to remove any trace of the horrible drivers from the Windows registry, and find it littered with literally upwards of 600 keys who's permissions and/or ownership is screwed up, making them inaccessible. I had to jump through this complicated and repetitive series of settings to finally claim ownership of the keys so I could then successfully delete them. I even set up some macros to automate the task (as much as possible), but it still took a good 5 hours of sitting here, removing 600 some odd keys, one by one.

Why... on earth... should Samsung have to write upwards of 600 keys to the registry? No reason other than the fact that they are the most incompetent, shoddy programmers on the face of the planet.

Never again will I buy another Samsung product. Ever.

/Rant

 

[kinster02]

Ok.

 

[voghan]

By chance are you rooted and flashing roms? Just curious.

 

[jack22182]

I agree. This phone is a total debacle. I'm pretty happy with it right now, but it sure took a lot of work to make things right. Going forward, I'll be reluctant to touch anything from Samsung, or anything that Verizon has gotten their grubby little hands into.

 

[18annu18]

I don't mind the phone so much after I rooted it and got Froyo. It's a really nice piece of hardware. Great specs and slim. People drool over the Super AMOLED screen. My reluctance is with Verizon. They've done a lot lately to make it easier to switch carriers. Beyond the delay of the ota update they've gotten rid of annual upgrades, 1-year contracts, and last but not least, BING!

 

[ryken229]

I'm with the OP, after countless hours of flashing ROMS and testing out kernels etc, I still can't get my phone's bluetooth to successfully work with my vehicle's, which is brand new. I also just found out the the Fascinate's bluetooth isn't compatible with my Motorola Xoom, which is also brand new. I'm done with Samsung, what a disgrace of a company.

 

[Chris3D]

I actually like the phone, hardware-wise - it's a good size, weight, it's sturdy enough. It's just the software where it completely falls apart.

I had been using EB01, but reluctantly flashed back to DL09 to regain acceptable battery life. Went through all the steps to get the phone set up the way I like it, everything was good and then out of the blue, connected it to the computer and it refused to be recognized. That kicked off, as I said, easily 5 hours of digging through the registry to remove the drivers.

Unfortunately, this phone has really good hardware that's been totally ruined by lousy software. I just don't see these types of problems from other manufacturers. I don't care what Samsung might have out at the end of my 2 year contract, there's just no way I'll buy another.

 

[Clak]

I feel about the same way. Samsung has great hardware, but their software is absolute crap. They either need better coders or need to give them more time to refine things.

 

[Johnly]

Sorry for what is admittedly a rant, but I'm really at the end of my rope.

Out of the blue, and for the second time, Windows just stopped recognizing my phone. Not as a phone, not as storage, not as anything. No da-ding when I connect it, nothing. I look in the device manager, and it's sitting there as an unknown USB device. Nice.

So, I proceed to remove any trace of the horrible drivers from the Windows registry, and find it littered with literally upwards of 600 keys who's permissions and/or ownership is screwed up, making them inaccessible. I had to jump through this complicated and repetitive series of settings to finally claim ownership of the keys so I could then successfully delete them. I even set up some macros to automate the task (as much as possible), but it still took a good 5 hours of sitting here, removing 600 some odd keys, one by one.

Why... on earth... should Samsung have to write upwards of 600 keys to the registry? No reason other than the fact that they are the most incompetent, shoddy programmers on the face of the planet.

Never again will I buy another Samsung product. Ever.

/Rant

Being android is fragged pretty hard, what brand UI are you going to next?

 

[ITF36059]

Sorry for what is admittedly a rant, but I'm really at the end of my rope.

Out of the blue, and for the second time, Windows just stopped recognizing my phone. Not as a phone, not as storage, not as anything. No da-ding when I connect it, nothing. I look in the device manager, and it's sitting there as an unknown USB device. Nice.

So, I proceed to remove any trace of the horrible drivers from the Windows registry, and find it littered with literally upwards of 600 keys who's permissions and/or ownership is screwed up, making them inaccessible. I had to jump through this complicated and repetitive series of settings to finally claim ownership of the keys so I could then successfully delete them. I even set up some macros to automate the task (as much as possible), but it still took a good 5 hours of sitting here, removing 600 some odd keys, one by one.

Why... on earth... should Samsung have to write upwards of 600 keys to the registry? No reason other than the fact that they are the most incompetent, shoddy programmers on the face of the planet.

Never again will I buy another Samsung product. Ever.

/Rant

Have you checked for ghosted USB ports?

Another Round Fired from Tapatalk

 

[jackmei2]

agree with this completely. I always hear arguments about how great the samsung hardware is, but without good/decent software to run on it, it's crap...

 

[MrSmith317]

I'll dump my defacto argument here. Granted you have to be ok with rooting/ROM'ing a phone but what else is there besides hardware? The dev community has given us masterpieces from messes, usable sensible software when the manufacturers(pretty much all of them) gave us useless bloated garbage. I've played with Blur, Sense, and TouchWiz and quite frankly they all suck. I prefer the stock android experience and since I can't get that I change my launcher. Since most manufacturers seemingly underclock the cpu's I load a new kernel and change the speed.

My point being that the hardware is our only limitation. The dev community for Android phones isn't going anywhere and seems to get better at their "job" by the day. I know that regardless of what phone I buy I'm going to wind up with a custom ROM on it so I can squeeze every bit of juice, fun, and enjoyment I can out of the phone. No manufacturer has been able to stop that from happening yet. When they do, that's when I'll take your stance on condemning them.

 

[Chris3D]

Being android is fragged pretty hard, what brand UI are you going to next?

I'll have to see what's available when my contract is up. I like Android overall, I came from an iPhone 3 and I'll never again buy another Apple product, so who knows. But I'll be much more likely to buy a Nexus branded phone as opposed to the monstrosities that the manufacturers assemble with their own lousy programmers.

Have you checked for ghosted USB ports?

Don't know what that is, or how to check. But I have it all working again. The issue is that the drivers can't be completely uninstalled... or the uninstall program fails to remove all the registry entries, so it needs to be done manually. Once it's all clear, Windows instantly recognizes the phone as an Android device and reinstalling the Samsung drivers gets everything working again.

This time, after cleaning out the registry, I made a backup of the entire registry that I can restore if/when it screws up again, instead of the insane task of clearing out the registry manually. It's just that none of this should be necessary and it's all due to incompetent programmers and/or management.

 

[Johnly]

@Chris3D.....awesome. I am considering an iphone 5. I would only consider a nexus with pure google otherwise. I didn't care for the iphine 3 model. If the 5 model doesn't have led notification, I may just go nexus. I admit, if Motorola made the nexus 3, that would persuade me more. Off topic, samsung has it nailed when it comes to TVs.

 

[Chris3D]

The dev community has given us masterpieces from messes, usable sensible software when the manufacturers(pretty much all of them) gave us useless bloated garbage.

I'm not dumping on the developers here at all, without them I'd have demanded a different phone by now - they're the only ones that have made the phone at least useable.

I know that regardless of what phone I buy I'm going to wind up with a custom ROM on it so I can squeeze every bit of juice, fun, and enjoyment I can out of the phone.

I agree, and that's a big part of my issue with Samsung - that their shoddy programming and inability to release updates in a timely fashion hinders the developer's own work. Honestly, how long do you expect the devs here to continue working on this phone? Most of them have already started developing for other phones. And I wouldn't blame them if/when they do - why would they want to waste their time trying to get a stable Froyo out when most other phones are already going to Gingerbread?

So that's why I said I won't buy another Samsung - because they can't develop the software on their own, and their lack of knowledge/experience/interest/whatever makes their phones unattractive for independent developers to do so themselves. I just don't see these issues from other manufacturers.

 

[freeoscar]

the galaxy S line may be the single biggest selling android handset, so that helps attract developer interest. also, given that samsung has already put out the gingerbread update for euro S phones, among other things, it is abundantly clear that the froyo issue is a verizon thing (and I'm guessing it is particularly a bing thing)

 

[mjt1265]

Correct me if Im wrong but isnt the Nexus made by Samsung?

 

[jrs1035]

Correct me if Im wrong but isnt the Nexus made by Samsung?

The hardware is made by Samsung. The software is completely stock android: no bloatware, custom software interfaces (sense, touchwiz, blur), etc.

 

[ITF36059]

Ghosted USB ports is a phenomena that started with windows XP. You never had a flash drive your PC would not recognize?

Another Round Fired from Tapatalk

 

[RodoBabbins]

It's the issue between SamsungUSA and US carriers. Froyo has been pushed out a while ago to the euro galaxy s phones. Its the greedy/lazy/whatever the issue is with the US side of things. Personally I love the hardware and having 2.2 on my phone makes it much better. The Fascinate has and was the last one to be released so it only fits in the minds of Verizon to keep it up regarding the update.