[Captivate General] Saftwear:
Howdy XDA

First off, just want to say "Woa" this community looks great and this forum is priceless. Thanks.

Went to pick up my Captivate on Sunday to replace the Iphone4 that kept wonking out on me.

I'm a linux guy and have played around with Android for some time, but due to my geographic location, ATT is really the only choice for me.

So needless to say this has been a long time coming.

Screen:

The screen is very nice, as stated before. The blackness of the screen took me by surprise. It's big, but not too big and looks great. I do have to say the retina display offers a very crisp look to text and images, but the Samoled has a vibrance that just makes viewing very pleasurable, plus it's 4 freaking inches, so I can forgive the differences.

Feel:

This phone feels great in your hand, the weight is perfect and the balance works great. Compared to Iphone4, This phone feels more a part of me than it. The metal backplate is a nice touch, but that foe carbon is definitely coming off quickly the way I use phones.

Buttons/Ports:

I do have to say the touch screen portion is just as sensitive as what I've grown accustomed to, but the home buttons below the screen leave much to be desired. In low light, the lack of backlight makes going back a bit hard, plus they never seem to respond to my first touch.

The charging port looks like it may crack at any minute which is my biggest concern at this point.

All the other buttons seem to work as good as expected.

GPS:

I really havn't had any issues, it is responsive and picks up my location very accurately, I will have to keep trying this feature a bit more before I can truly give it the thumbs up.

Call Quality:

Needless to say this is easier to make and finish calls on than the Iphone4. The overall volume level is a bit low for my liking, but I usually am talking to people who use Skype or other Cells so I can't confirm that this is truly the case.

But I will say the Speakerphone does not sound loud enough in my noisy junker of a car due to the speaker being on the back of the device.

There is no noise cancellation, so I will be sticking with Bluetooth.

Bluetooth:

Works as expected except for A2DP playback, I find that the phone has issues when broadcasting Stereo and gets jumbled. I often get disconnected every 10 or so minutes.

Speed:

While not as polished as IOS, the speed has been pretty comparable when switching between and using apps. There is some general lag when flitting about and animations seem a bit rough when the device is doing some heavy lifting. The GPU is amazing and I am able to do things on this device that I couldn't even dream of on my Apple.

Browser:

I know most of you are used to Android browsers, but I have to say this browser is exactly what I've been missing. Where safari excels at brute speed, this browser makes up for better memory usage and it's ability to resize text upon zoom. Plus when compared to my Wife's 3gs, this thing takes it every time.

Battery:

So far I've been zooming through charges, but I think that is because I can't put it down. I'm downloading too many apps and tweaking the live wallpapers and even watching full length movies(Yes I'm watching them with my 60" TV turned off right next to me). I'll give the Battery a bit more time to calculate daily usage. But it seems to get a good 4 hours of nonstop "me being nasty to it".

Overall:

This is without a doubt the best phone I have ever owned, even with the small amount of time I've had it. The only thing that frightens me is the charging port as stated before, it just isn't sturdy enough for the amount of times I will need to charge it. The look and feel is amazing, yet due to it's size I'm afraid that it may break in my front pocket if I'm running up stairs or moving awkwardly with it.

Still I would definitely recommend this phone for those who are stuck with ATT. The integration of all things Google is finally making all the work I've sone with GVoice and GStuff worthwhile.

To those using Outlook, I feel you, but for anyone who has kept up with gmail and Gvoice, contacts just appear on this phone.

Welp hope I didn't bore you, and thanks again to this great community.

I'm hoping I can use your knowledge when I try to root this sucker.

Peace :)