(Original review: http://forum.androidcentral.com/t-m...brant-review-coming-vzw-droid-incredible.html)
Summary: The performance and stability of the Vibrant have steadily degraded since my initial reviews. And since then the problems I was experiencing with the Droidinc seem to have been resolves and then some but ~I~ no longer have one for myself, just work.
Configuration: My Vibrant is updated, rooted, and lagfixed. I've tested in stock updated form too and my results are much the same (but overall performance slower).
Details:
- TouchWiz annoyances are actually longer term dangers to your data and sanity.
1) The Calendar application was very obviously limited (e.g. no configurable alert sounds) but I didn't think it was dangerous. Then I started having strange issues syncronizing with Google Calendar which turned into things disapearing which turned into strange entries that appear to be debug messages being made as calendar entries which turned into a Calendar load time of forever which turned into consistent FCs, etc. etc. Reset the Calendar app and Google Calendar online, put in the most important basic appointments, and slowly but surely the same thing happened.
2) I use Maildroid because, as previously noted (link above), the TouchWiz mail application is horrible. Little did I know it's also very VERY persistent. Somehow is decides to launch itself and even without a configured account causes problems. Most notably that it seems to decide to switch to itself and prompt me to configure it at the most inopportune times.
3) The TouchWiz notification bar was one of my highlights and I still like it in general but over time it decides to bring back certain notices for no reason. For example, a SMS that Chomp notified about hours ago and has since been deleted will suddenly get notified on again. A missed call notice or VM notice that is DAYS old and cleared will suddenly appear again.
4) TouchWiz spontaneously decides if it doesn't like my volume settings and either changes them itself, with no indication of any application activity in the logs, or just drowns ALL sounds to the inaudible.
I guess the best way to summarize my TouchWiz problems is that it does not scale well. The busier I got the more buggy and annoying it got. At least bugs with HTC Sense apps and customizations were consistent for me regardless of loads (and it was far far less buggy).
- Swype, and this is not Samsung or T-Mobile's fault, needs to respond to customers better. In another thread I collected lots of comments and submitted them to Swype. I also found any matching tickers on their site and added our comments there too. However Swype has not responded and their application's system for adding words to the dictionary has made Swype completely unusable for me in most emails and CLI functions now. They really need to let you turn off the auto-addition feature, let you manually edit the dictionary without re-entering the words first, etc. I now have any number of regular expressions, awk, sed, etc. UN*X commands, Cisco commands, etc. in my dictionary along with passwds and other undesirables. Shapewriter really was much better for me and I hope to see it return soon.
- The quality of the display is still rock ROCK solid. They have addressed the color saturation and crispness issues well. And the video ghosting and tracking seems to have been fixed quietly in this past update. So this is still a huge win for Samsung IMO, it's just a beautiful display.
- Something about the GPS update has improved performance of maps but drastically degraded ~stability~ of Maps. Maps just doesn't want to stay open or on-task for longer drives (greater than a hour).
- The Media Scanner application and associated TouchWiz applications do not scale (a running theme here). Once you hit many hundreds of images it starts losing count, displaying the wrong thumbnails, etc. A quick deletion of the claris and cache files rebuilds everything clean up until you add another hundred images and voila. At thousands of images this takes forever and makes using the Gallery application very difficult. I can't use it at all for attaching files to emails and SMS anymore because it frequently adds the wrong file vs. the thumbnail it shows.
- Root or not nobody who writes 'cleaning' applications can seem to get the Galaxy S line right. Some hit some apps, others others, but ~something~ about the way Samsung decided to store all app information is weird and none of the developers seems to be able to do enough just with logs to fix it. So there is a lot of junk settings, files, histories, etc. that I can't get at to remove without going into each application itself.
- The same thing applies to the Contacts. Samsung stores them in a way most applications that try to get to them either get a list with dupes, no list at all, or a full list of contacts but each contact is missing something.
Anyhow.. that's enough. I'm very impressed w/ the hardware and how well it works and holds up to "Industrial" use. The Camera continues to impress and w/ lagfix the performance is great. But TouchWiz tries and tries again to ruin it for me and finally I lost my patience.
I'm looking to replace the phone and leave Samsung behind. Cheers, -Pk
Summary: The performance and stability of the Vibrant have steadily degraded since my initial reviews. And since then the problems I was experiencing with the Droidinc seem to have been resolves and then some but ~I~ no longer have one for myself, just work.
Configuration: My Vibrant is updated, rooted, and lagfixed. I've tested in stock updated form too and my results are much the same (but overall performance slower).
Details:
- TouchWiz annoyances are actually longer term dangers to your data and sanity.
1) The Calendar application was very obviously limited (e.g. no configurable alert sounds) but I didn't think it was dangerous. Then I started having strange issues syncronizing with Google Calendar which turned into things disapearing which turned into strange entries that appear to be debug messages being made as calendar entries which turned into a Calendar load time of forever which turned into consistent FCs, etc. etc. Reset the Calendar app and Google Calendar online, put in the most important basic appointments, and slowly but surely the same thing happened.
2) I use Maildroid because, as previously noted (link above), the TouchWiz mail application is horrible. Little did I know it's also very VERY persistent. Somehow is decides to launch itself and even without a configured account causes problems. Most notably that it seems to decide to switch to itself and prompt me to configure it at the most inopportune times.
3) The TouchWiz notification bar was one of my highlights and I still like it in general but over time it decides to bring back certain notices for no reason. For example, a SMS that Chomp notified about hours ago and has since been deleted will suddenly get notified on again. A missed call notice or VM notice that is DAYS old and cleared will suddenly appear again.
4) TouchWiz spontaneously decides if it doesn't like my volume settings and either changes them itself, with no indication of any application activity in the logs, or just drowns ALL sounds to the inaudible.
I guess the best way to summarize my TouchWiz problems is that it does not scale well. The busier I got the more buggy and annoying it got. At least bugs with HTC Sense apps and customizations were consistent for me regardless of loads (and it was far far less buggy).
- Swype, and this is not Samsung or T-Mobile's fault, needs to respond to customers better. In another thread I collected lots of comments and submitted them to Swype. I also found any matching tickers on their site and added our comments there too. However Swype has not responded and their application's system for adding words to the dictionary has made Swype completely unusable for me in most emails and CLI functions now. They really need to let you turn off the auto-addition feature, let you manually edit the dictionary without re-entering the words first, etc. I now have any number of regular expressions, awk, sed, etc. UN*X commands, Cisco commands, etc. in my dictionary along with passwds and other undesirables. Shapewriter really was much better for me and I hope to see it return soon.
- The quality of the display is still rock ROCK solid. They have addressed the color saturation and crispness issues well. And the video ghosting and tracking seems to have been fixed quietly in this past update. So this is still a huge win for Samsung IMO, it's just a beautiful display.
- Something about the GPS update has improved performance of maps but drastically degraded ~stability~ of Maps. Maps just doesn't want to stay open or on-task for longer drives (greater than a hour).
- The Media Scanner application and associated TouchWiz applications do not scale (a running theme here). Once you hit many hundreds of images it starts losing count, displaying the wrong thumbnails, etc. A quick deletion of the claris and cache files rebuilds everything clean up until you add another hundred images and voila. At thousands of images this takes forever and makes using the Gallery application very difficult. I can't use it at all for attaching files to emails and SMS anymore because it frequently adds the wrong file vs. the thumbnail it shows.
- Root or not nobody who writes 'cleaning' applications can seem to get the Galaxy S line right. Some hit some apps, others others, but ~something~ about the way Samsung decided to store all app information is weird and none of the developers seems to be able to do enough just with logs to fix it. So there is a lot of junk settings, files, histories, etc. that I can't get at to remove without going into each application itself.
- The same thing applies to the Contacts. Samsung stores them in a way most applications that try to get to them either get a list with dupes, no list at all, or a full list of contacts but each contact is missing something.
Anyhow.. that's enough. I'm very impressed w/ the hardware and how well it works and holds up to "Industrial" use. The Camera continues to impress and w/ lagfix the performance is great. But TouchWiz tries and tries again to ruin it for me and finally I lost my patience.
I'm looking to replace the phone and leave Samsung behind. Cheers, -Pk
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