yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Epic 4G General] J3ff:
That's what really has me surprised. I'm coming from a touch diamond and a touch pro 2. Both probably the biggest POS phones that were ever in sprints line up. I mean Random reboots on a stock phone happened all the time for me. Also, I couldn't figure out how to keep the screen dark. It seemed like every other minute I was pocket dialing because the phone wouldn't GO TO SLEEP!

Anyway, the gps on both of them were flawless and here I am with a TOP OF THE LINE android phone and right now if I opened up google maps it wouldn't be able to find my position!
[Epic 4G General] 8525Smart:
TC, my heart is with you. Truthfully, though, I wonder if its not so much an issue of it being okay to release phones with major issues today...so much as its an issue of Samsung not testing their phones well.

The phones described in this topic are Samsung phones. Furthermore, if you remove the word 'epic' from your post, you actually describe my phone (Samsung Captivate). I'm actually a big fan of Samsung for their progressive attitude with smartphone technology, but I wonder about their attitude towards software sometimes.

Man, I fear for Bada OS.
[Epic 4G General] mcmexican:
Please do not make personal attacks in your comments. I have let this thread go because it is in the General section and I like discussion. I ask that you please from making personal attacks in expressing your opinions if you cannot I will close the thread. If you have an issue with this please PM me.

-McMex
[Epic 4G General] gTen:
It boils down to this, HTC has been working with windows mobile for ages...M$ before updating make sure that partners are up to speed before going into next version thus HTC and M$ work together to make the GPS work and generally use M$ licensed components in doing so....the first HTC phone with GPS I think was the Mogul and they had GPS locked for a year or so..only then did they release 2.0 bootloader which made GPS work..and it had its set of issues...by the time they got to the Diamond they have already gotten around the issues and helped with QuickGPS software(I think it was on the diamond dont remember).

Google on the other hand lets partners do whatever they want and upgrades to next version whether partners are ready or not..the components they chose they have to write drivers and firmware for from scratch. On things like GPS you have to do extensive live tests as unlike most other features that can be tested in a lab multiple external conditions effect GPS thus taking them time to debug...imagine every revision you do to the GPS you gotta send someone to test all around the country lol (and yes I know thats not the case as they just flash it remotely to multiple testers in different locations but these tests take time)

I personally think Samsung just plans to do a major fix of things grouped up with their Froyo release.
[Epic 4G General] zelendel:
Ok this is becoming a flame war and I am putting a stop to it. We all understand the need to vent sometimes but Like the Forum mod stated lets not start attacking people, and please watch your swearing.

Fair warning.

Ok after talking with the OP I have decided to reopen this thread. But the warning stands. Anymore flaming and I will close it for good and start handing out Bans to the offending member. If you are asking what will get you banned then I would check out the rules again.
[Epic 4G General] greengoldmello:
Man, I can definitely understand what the OP is saying. It does seem like some people just are like "well it doesnt work, but thats OK" but in reality its not.
[Epic 4G General] J3ff:
I just have a real issue with paying 270 dollars for a phone that:

A) cannot lock onto my location with it's gps.

B) freezes while I upload pictures (on 3g) to anywhere. I mean the phone is NOT usable.

I was just making an observation about technology in general.
[Epic 4G General] FrankCummings:
I am w/ the OP here. We are not asking for anything to be perfect b/c that'll be just stupid. What we are asking for is that the product performs what it PROMISES, what it is supposed to do. If you buy a new car and the brakes don't work, do you just go, "well, it's not perfect but it's ok, I'll just wait for the recall."?

My company uses a major software by a major developer. U know what, I am scared to death everytime there's a version update from them. Why? b/c the ****s don't work. And what worse is that the ****s that don't work are the "new features." Now, you would think that b/c these are new features, they would test it after they write the codes, right? And if they do, they'll know it doesn't work, right? So, why are they releasing it? Well, b/c of competition, companies rather to release the ****s now and fix it later so that they'll be ahead of the competitors out of the gate. This kind of things never happened in our grandfather's generation, even our parent's generation. But now, it's the norm.
[Epic 4G General] SeanFloyd:
+1 to the OP. It's the general sense of apathy and downright gullibility that allows MULTIBILLION dollar companies to get away with gauging their consumers like this.
[Epic 4G General] othan1:
huh-huh-huh-heh-heh-heh

You said member.

(sounds like that would be painful)

:D
[Epic 4G General] javahead76:
Cross Fire

haze haze blaze blaze. There's more crossfire in here than Medal of Honor. I personally stopped reading it after about 2 pages and skipped to my input. Sorry, but it gets laborious and who wants to spend that much time reading paragraphs long debates by people that can't see two sides of a coin or that just want to point an accusatory finger.

To answer the original question with my personal opinion. I think recent history (within the scope of my individual experience) can point to Microsoft being the culprit. They were, and still are, the flagship for paid end user's (post-)beta testing their flagship product(s) for them after release day. It's pretty much lowered everyone's expectations. Although, you could make a good argument for it being the American automobile manufacturing industry. They've sure taken a good wallop for it too lately. I've a relatively long list of companies I'd like to see receive the same wallop.

Allllllll that said, I think it sucks; but, I'm still keeping the Epic and will continue to test out new mobile companies yearly until I finally get a really really great experience....it may be a really really long time from now. Funny enough, but I think the competition is actually driving the quality down as these companies race to put out the newest greatest thing to compete with the newest greatest thing that just arrived from their competitors.
[Epic 4G General] rufflez2010:
If you want a phone without problems, buy a dumb phone. Last I checked, all of the ones I've owned have done exactly what they said they would do, make phone calls. Some "smartphones" can't even do that effectively. Thats kind of a catch22 when you stick a full-functioning operating system on a mobile device. Get used to it and wait for fixes, either by the manufacturer or the dev community, or you go back to dumb phones.
[Epic 4G General] DevilDogVIKING:
First of all I never said my phone is flawless, I don't know why you quoted me on that. I said it is perfect, lol. Its all personal preference. I'm sure two years from now thee will be another phone that comes out that I think is perfect and will then see the flaws in this one. I don't have any grips with this phone because it does everything I want it to efficiently. How it does that doesn't matter.

Like I said, it's all personal preference. A 150 upload speed on 3g is fine with me. I have a screenshot of my speed test attached. Now let me see proof of that 600 upload you were talking about.
[Epic 4G General] J3ff:
Are you paying your bill? Or does someone else pay it? For 10 extra dollars a month you have got to be the only person I know who is "fine" with 150k upload.
[Epic 4G General] DevilDogVIKING:
It's not that big of a deal because I don't upload big files from my phone. 20 mb at the most and they upload in the background. And yes I pay my own bills.

Once again it comes down to personal preference. I'm paying for download speed. That's what matters to me.
[Epic 4G General] rufflez2010:
I honestly don't care about the upload speed either, at least not until my gf gets either an evo or epic to video chat with her. most likely though, Id be at home where I have wifi n where it wouldnt matter either.
[Epic 4G General] Valeo:
To be fair, not everyone can just return their phone and live happily ever after. Some people, myself included, are now locked into long contracts because it took longer than a month to come to the realisation that $samsung_handset isn't all it was cracked up to be.

I'm from the UK as you might see, so I don't have an Epic. I do have an SGS (GT-I9000), though, which is of course very close in terms of hardware and software. In the first month I was absolutely chuffed - even though the GPS was practically useless, 3G speeds abysmal, plus the occasional hard lock-up. If I knew six weeks ago that the SGS would get slower and slower over time, drop a metric ****load of calls, crash constantly requiring hard resets (i.e. removing the battery), etc. I would have returned it in an instant. Instead I've gone through three I9000 handsets all from different manufacturing runs and each of them were duds.

I'm stuck with a phone that requires more attention than a mentally unstable, needy child. And I'm certain that I'm not the only one in this position...

I can understand why you're bored of these kind of threads, but when Samsung are refusing to acknowledge that some of these issues even exist, it's a little hard not to be pissed off.
[Epic 4G General] BrianDigital:
I agree my girl has a an epic. Now saying that she does not come to these boards for fixes.

And alot of people that have this do not want to openly fix their phone and void out warranty.

People are paying alot of money for these phones. And for her not be able to keep her phone on all day work is ridiculous.
[Epic 4G General] J3ff:
- or video chat, at all, on 3g.

- or upload ANY photo to ANYWHERE without the phone locking up for 2 or 3 mins.

- or have a dependable, accurate, gps that turns on whenever she wants.
[Epic 4G General] Baffles:
I get more than 150KB up on my Evo. It's about the same as what I've seen on prior phones I've had - PPC-6800, Touch Pro, etc. The moment, though, did get crappy speeds as well (but at least the Epic doesn't seem to have radio lockup issues like the moment did).

I didn't particularly like the keyboard on the Epic and I have no faith in Samsung, looking at their numerous smartphone blunders, which is why I went back to HTC and got the Evo. HTC has a history of problems too, but at least the core features tend to work correctly on their devices.
[Epic 4G General] Blitzpwnage:
You have in no way contributed to this thread, at all. Why not go post that in the Evo forums? Or are you really that bored to troll another forum, you dont see me going over to the Evo forum and posting pictures of my screen adn the Evos side by side and saying "HAHA MY SCREEN DISPLAYS 16 MILLION COLORS YOUR CAN ONLY DO 800000 NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH!"

**Update**

I recently Emailed Samsung and this was their reply, it is quite funny and pissed me off.
[Epic 4G General] gTen:
I dont see a response at all...did they accidentally hit the enter/submit button before typing anything? lol
[Epic 4G General] ptfdmedic:
I think thw problem is that Samsung and Sprint knowingly release them in this condition. The moment was one that had the same gps problems. Look at the other Galaxy phones on other carriers. All released prior to the epic and all with the same gps issues.
[Epic 4G General] Blitzpwnage:
There is actually a response. Look closely. It is towards the top of the image hahahaha I'm actually switching to the Evo soon haha I am able to go to radioshack and actually get the Evo plus 50 bucks back.

Sent from P3X231
[Epic 4G General] Jjday7:
Double post
[Epic 4G General] Jjday7:
Samsung took months before making the moments gps work and it still to this day is not great. Unfortunately samsung doesn't find these type out things important. Sprint is at fault also because they also took 3 months to even acknowledge the problem with the moment. I had the epic for a very short time and from what I saw, and from samsungs lackluster past history that was enough for me. If there are so many problems, which seems very apparent, then return the phone before it's too late.
[Epic 4G General] flyers2114:
Very simple fix though...return what does not work for you.....OP said he has bought multiple phones all with issues....why keep buying...

Best thing you can do....be a part of the solution...not just cry on a forum....

So what have you done to support anything that is wrong with America....just curious if you are ranting or actually doing something about it....ranting does nothing....action does....simple imho also.....

Why keep subjecting yourself to smartphone madness.....kind of seems like you are a part of the problem.....why keep buying them...lol...if you keep buying arent you supporting their logic that it is ok to build crap as you say.....please correct me if I am wrong here....
[Epic 4G General] Masterface7:
Really? My LCD TV has no problems at all i get all the channels coming in very clear and the video is gorgeous and the sound output is fantastic. The remote always works and responds well.

My a/v receiver outputs to all of my speakers evenly, there is plenty of crispness in the highs and boom in the lows. Every device I have plugged into it works flawlessly and sounds great.

My laptop is just awesome too. It can connect to the internet at very high speeds and I can upload a picture to the web in no time flat. The intel WIDI works great every time, and every other piece of hardware built in works exactly as it should.

The mindset that all new tech just has problems is the problem we are trying to stop all new tech doesn't just have problems, only certain, very specific markets are riddled with items full of problems. Why would you ever buy a computer with a capped upload speed? why would you buy a phone with a capped upload speed?
[Epic 4G General] J3ff:
Yup. I can name MANY pieces of technology that have been tested enough that they work. Let's start with technology that goes in airplanes, cruise ships.

We can then go to the classroom, smart boards, projectors, speakers. They work just fine all day long.

Then lets go to your kitchen. All my microwaves have done what they needed to do, my coffee maker is 100% on time all the time.

Let's go outside to my pool heater, guess what, it heats the water, as long as it has gas, and it turns on by itself everyday. My watering system works, my AC works, hell even my cable box works.

If any of these did not do what they were advertised to do I would be ranting about that too!
[Epic 4G General] jlbiad:
I agree with the OP, and also wonder where are the blogs who received units ahead of the dropdate with all of this? Didn't anyone notice the GPS and upload speed issues?
[Epic 4G General] jessep28:
Most of the products you listed are very mature in their product cycles. Microwaves and home coffee makers for example have been commercially available for decades. It's not fair to say that because my microwave is reliable out of the box, my new cell phone that was just released to the public a month ago should too.

Dealing with bugs in a phone this early in a product life cycle is to be expected. It's what we get for being early adopters.
[Epic 4G General] DevilDogVIKING:
I'll admit, there is one thing I don't like about this phone and that's the battery life.

Also now that I see so many people complaining about the upload speed, I'm starting to realize how bad it really is. I'm glad to see that sprint and samsung are working on a fix for that :-)
[Epic 4G General] westicle:
Whatever. If a god damn phone costs $500 it better do everything it claims it can do and do it well. There is absolutely no excuse for releasing a defective product, be it a phone, computer, car, etc. samsung has a terrible track record and they are probably gonna screw epic users like they did moment users and instinct users. All this "early adopter" stuff is BS, plain and simple. You buy a bad ass phone/mini comp/gps/portable tv....it better do all those things from the start or else its just a failure.
[Epic 4G General] badasscat:
I'm on 15 hours and 23 minutes right now and still have about 35% of my battery left. I can't complain about that anymore.

Really, the more I use the phone, the fewer problems I have with it. And as far as I can tell, it's working as advertised. I can talk, text, browse the web, use all the Android apps I've downloaded, upload at 4G speeds, I've been navigating using both Google Nav and Sprint Nav, etc. It might have some bugs that prevent it from doing everything *as well* as it otherwise would, but it's still doing those things, and it's doing all other things insanely well.

I'll be glad when Sprint fixes the bugs that there are, but none of them are showstoppers.

btw, I just want to answer someone else:

I bought a Toshiba 32" LCD TV a little while back and it randomly crashes every few days, in a pretty horrifying manner. (It jacks the volume up to 100% and punches out static through the speakers, then the picture on the screen "melts" and it will no longer respond to any remote control inputs. It's like Satan takes over the TV.)

I bought a Westinghouse 42" LCD TV a couple years ago (which I'm watching right now) that has three dark vertical bands through the picture - I've learned to live with it, as it's not considered a defect by Westinghouse. Early versions of this set would also power down spontaneously; luckily mine has an updated firmware.

Mine is notorious for overheating, and it shuts down when it does so.

Remind me to infect your computer with a virus next chance I get, as you've obviously never run Windows Update and seen all the security and other fixes that MS has been forced to release over the years. Hundreds of them.

Yes, all tech has bugs once it becomes sufficiently advanced. No, today's devices are not the same as devices 10 or 20 years ago that had 1/100 the number of circuits in them and didn't even run any real software. Not everything can be caught in testing because not everybody even experiences all the issues that might come up.

The only real question is how each manufacturer deals with these issues after the fact.
[Epic 4G General] us3rX:
Wow... I picked mine up on Sept 1st, Maybe I got the -second- batch. On avg, I unplug my phone from the charger at 2pm. Set phone screen to dim, turn on juicedefender, Drive to work, use it off and on while at work, web browsing, lots of texting *counts* upwards of 300, checked my email, Played some Angry Birds... (damn 3 stars -.-) Some robot defense, few videos on Youtube. Few photos here and there. Have some awesome sunsets here. =) When I leave work at Midnight, I am sitting at 40%. TBH Thats not bad... GPS/WIFI off, 4G only on for web browsing.

GPS has never been an issue, I turn on GPS, swiping down from status bar and toggling it on, Close it, Open GoogleMaps and almost instantly GPS is locked on and awaiting my command.

Maybe I am one of the lucky ones with a -golden- Epic. But I personally love it. =) Now to get the balls to root it so I can adjust the cpu to idle down to min while not using the phone. Should help with the battery life alot more. =)

~us3rX
[Epic 4G General] huntm856:
Motorola Q was released on Sprint early in 2007, over three years ago. And I don't think it was the first phone with gps.
[Epic 4G General] lordcyrus:
I have a consistent 16 hours of battery life. I've tried the staple JuiceDefender and it doesn't do anything to help me out there. While 16 hours isn't great, it's something I've learned to live with from my iPhone 3G and EVO.

As for the upload speeds, I have to agree. Looking at my speedtest history, I pull about 300-500 kbps average download, with about 30-120 up. I also notice that, when doing uploads, my connection locks up or something and only works in spurts. When I send an MMS, I have about a 10-15 second period where my phone does not respond to any actions. That is literally my only problem I've had with the Epic.
[Epic 4G General] jessep28:
Who concluded the Epic was fundamentally defective after only 4 weeks since its release?
[Epic 4G General] Doppler808:
Simple answer. People are too impatient to wait. They have to have it now. It shows with the updates. Some other device gets an update... Well they got it, and we should have it too attitude.

If manufacturers don't pull the devices out they'll lose out on customers. If people actually spent the time, waiting for the devices to roll out wish cash in hand and don't jump on the first flashy phone they see I honestly believe quality would be 1,000X better.
[Epic 4G General] badasscat:
Quality might be better but you would have a lot fewer phones to choose from and a lot fewer manufacturers making them.

This is a profit-driven business. If a manufacturer figures out that they need to release 20 phones this year to break even, then that's what they need to do. If they release fewer, they will lose money and at some point, it gets to be not worth it to even do it. This is true with any product, really, not just phones - every company has a break-even point, and given their margins they know how many of each product in total they need to sell, and how many models they might then need given what they've learned about the market. Release less than the target, and you still need to pay for all of your overhead involved in designing and producing them, you just don't pull any money back in to help offset that.

If you, for example, doubled the development cycle, you'd automatically cut the number of models available by half. But it would end up being more than that, because assuming this was across the board, you'd now be causing pretty much every manufacturer to lose money on phones. Some of them would simply exit the business entirely. So you'd end up with Apple and Motorola and maybe HTC making phones and that's probably about it, and they'd each be making a lot fewer models. You wouldn't have a Droid X and a Droid 2; you'd only have one of them. And it would probably cost more.

You can always say - in every industry - "oh, if they had just spent another six months developing this, it would have been a lot better". Sure, that's true of everything. Look at cars - car models stick around for 5-7 years, but they get constant updates every year because the manufacturers figure out what didn't work and what they could have done better. But if those manufacturers had instead held back those cars until all the good stuff they have at the end of a car's production run was instead there when a car is first launched, then they wouldn't be producing enough stuff to stay in business. And not only that, but there's no end to this - there will always be improvements and fixes to be made. So why just six months? Why not six more after that? You can go crazy playing that game if you're a manufacturer.
[Epic 4G General] serchend:
I think the time has come for the FCC to apply the Carterfone ruling to cellphones. That would require the carriers to allow any device on any carrier as long as it did not cause harm to the system. This would allow manufacturers to create a smaller number of phone that could be used across all carriers, allowing for better testing and easier updating. It would also allow more manufacturers into the game allowing for a wider variety of products and would be a boon to consumers as they would be able to take compatible equipment to a different carrier.