4 ms·

I don't like replacing my gadgets all the time. My first, and only, smartphone is an original Galaxy. I hate it. I especially hated it when I got it, now I just

by latch 14y ago

I don't like replacing my gadgets all the time. My first, and only, smartphone is an original Galaxy. I hate it. I especially hated it when I got it, now I just...endure it. However, when it dies, I'm definitely not buying a Samsung product, and probably not buying Android. I cannot scream the word "brand" loud enough. There's so much choice available, that when your customers feel ripped off, they'll go elsewhere. GPS has never worked. Updates were very slow to be available. Using their official tool my phone bricked when an update finally was available. Until I put cyanogenmod on it, it stuttered and apps crashed. Even when it was still relatively new, there were apps that it couldn't run (Lionheart). My carrier put a porn-buying app on it (yes, I hold Samsung and Google at least partially responsible for that). Brand, brand, brand, brand, brand. The fact that, 2 years later, I still get upset when I see the words "Samsung" or "Galaxy S", tell you something about consumer behavior...it isn't just me...US car manufacturers went through it too.

jvc26 14y ago
Sounds like you've got a faulty handset - my first reaction to non-functional GPS would be to take the phone back?
- ippa 14y ago
  Right. When I first tested it.. it kind of worked. It was probably slow then too, but I didn't have much to compare with at the time. As I started using it more regularly later on it became more clear it was slow and that sometimes it didn't work at all. There was tons of talk about this on various forums... there was some fixes released and I always assumed this would get fixed in an later update. But time and updates went by and it never got good. Then it was too late to return the phone. If they even would have accepted a "sometimes very slow GPS" as a return-argument in the first place.
  - andybak 14y ago
    I agree. I still feel bitter about the GPS and I swore to 'punish' Samsung by boycotting them in future. However - when I broke my phone, the Galaxy S II was by far the most suitable phone for me short of switching to iOS which I didn't want to do for a few different reasons. 'Punishing' Samsung was less than rational and so I took a chance on them again. And I've been extremely happy with it. It's way way better than the Galaxy S and I have no real complaints about it. So - Samsung screwed me on the GPS last time. I'll have to let them off - or rather - stop anthropomorphising a large corporation in ways that don't really make much sense...
- latch 14y ago
  Samsung made official statements that they were aware of possible issues and looking at possibilities of fixing it. To the best of my knowledge, their attempts never succeeded. It was not a specific handset problem...it was a problem with the phone in general, and I just assumed they'd fix it.
ippa 14y ago
Amen to this. I also got the first Samsung Galaxy when it was hyped on engadget and other techblogs, especially for the amoled screen. The screen was always pretty good I guess. But aside from that, no more Samsung. GPS has always been ultra-slow, if working at all. The home button started glitching after 1-2 years. Micro-lag. The crap that is KIES. Kind of cheap plastic build. Each android update I hoped for things to get better, but they never did. I'll probably never trust Samsung with my smartphone-money again. Might just test out Windows Phone just to get the ungodly build quality of a Nokia :).
dublinclontarf 14y ago
I got an unlocked S1 in China...about a year ago, my first smartphone (my previous phone being a Nokia which disappointed me soo much, I've always been a Nokia user, not anymore). GPS didn't really work, but then GPS wasn't accurate in China anyway. I now use my S1 as a wireless access point with an all you can eat data connection living in the UK. I do all my working (from my kitchen table) using this. It's not perfect but by god it's a workhorse of a smartphone, and if I have the money would get an S3. As long as Samsung keep making phones like this I'll keep buying them, it's the smartphone nokia.
k_bx 14y ago
+1, but with HTC Desire. It's small amount of memory, stupid non-fixed bugs in HTC apps that cannot be removed -- I hate those small things. Really.
theone 14y ago
I also had Galaxy S for a brief period of time (until I switched to iPhone 4). Similar experience though: - GPS didn't worked, those who say it works should first see iPhones' GPS performance. - The biggest problem which I feel is the update process. As soon as they release a new version, they leave older one like a bastard child. - Even when they release its update why can't that be global. Why some countries gets a preferencial treatment. I am not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again.
- viraptor 14y ago
  Keep in mind that you're comparing old Galaxy S to a fairly new iPhone 4. S2 gets gps lock in <1s with assist and <5s without wifi assist (I guess gsm helps anyway to some extent). I mean, it's fair to say Galaxy S was pretty bad, but I don't get the "not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again". Why not "iPhone 1 has no apps or 3G or ..., I'm not gonna buy or recommend iPhone ever again"? Products improve in newer releases, there's no reason to drop the whole line because version 1 was bad.
toemetoch 14y ago
S galaxy I here, too. Had the same issues you had, but these turned out to be software, not hardware. CyanogenMod is definitely not the best distro for this device, ran into GPS problems due to a config file that needed manual changing. Micro-lag: same thing. Now on Darky Rom and it runs without issues.
GFischer 14y ago
I have a Galaxy Ace and a Nokia N86. I dislike the phone experience (and awful battery life) on the Ace, and I use my Nokia as my phone, but the assisted GPS on the Ace works extremely well and quite fast (a LOT faster than the Nokia which also has GPS). My Nokia can't compete on the internet and apps experience, though (probably the Windows Phones will... too bad Nokia won't do Android, I'd buy Nokia over Samsung).
EnderMB 14y ago
I also owned an original Galaxy. It was by far the worst phone I ever owned, and I vowed to never own another Samsung phone again. True to form, when the Galaxy Nexus came out I bought that. It's definitely streets ahead of the original device and I have faith that this one will receive updates during my contract. However, that first Galaxy phone will always be in the back of my mind, and I truly believe that the first Galaxy would have turned a lot of initial Android users over to the iPhone.
wslh 14y ago
Same experience. I had the first iPhone and I was happy when it was upgraded by Apple very often and with new features. I depended only on Apple. Now I wait for the Android 4 upgrade for Movistar! Movistar depends on Samsung and Samsung depends on Google. Ah! and we need to wait because Movistar is branding the UI. For Android 3 they even removed the browser icon! if you want to launch the browser you need to go to the search page first. btw I am not an Apple fan.
dguaraglia 14y ago
Before my Galaxy S2 I owned (for about 3 weeks) a Samsung Infuse. My experience was pretty much what you describe: terrible GPS, 0 updates (that's mostly an AT&T issue though), slow as molasses... But the S2 is head and shoulders over it. Fastest phone I've ever used (yes, even faster than the iPhone 4S), the GPS precision was the best of all the devices we own at the company (we develop a product that requires GPS so we keep tabs on that), and the new version of TouchWiz is as good as anything else. Still, I'd love to have it updated to ICS at some point (and AT&T has promised they'd do it), but all in all it's a great Android phone.
bookwormAT 14y ago
The original Galaxy S is indeed not a very good device. It was great for hackers, but otherwise you got a bad experience. The Galaxy S2 was the first device where Samsung really delivered.

by latch 14y ago

jvc26 14y ago

Sounds like you've got a faulty handset - my first reaction to non-functional GPS would be to take the phone back?

ippa 14y ago
Right. When I first tested it.. it kind of worked. It was probably slow then too, but I didn't have much to compare with at the time. As I started using it more regularly later on it became more clear it was slow and that sometimes it didn't work at all. There was tons of talk about this on various forums... there was some fixes released and I always assumed this would get fixed in an later update. But time and updates went by and it never got good. Then it was too late to return the phone. If they even would have accepted a "sometimes very slow GPS" as a return-argument in the first place.
- andybak 14y ago
  I agree. I still feel bitter about the GPS and I swore to 'punish' Samsung by boycotting them in future. However - when I broke my phone, the Galaxy S II was by far the most suitable phone for me short of switching to iOS which I didn't want to do for a few different reasons. 'Punishing' Samsung was less than rational and so I took a chance on them again. And I've been extremely happy with it. It's way way better than the Galaxy S and I have no real complaints about it. So - Samsung screwed me on the GPS last time. I'll have to let them off - or rather - stop anthropomorphising a large corporation in ways that don't really make much sense...
latch 14y ago
Samsung made official statements that they were aware of possible issues and looking at possibilities of fixing it. To the best of my knowledge, their attempts never succeeded. It was not a specific handset problem...it was a problem with the phone in general, and I just assumed they'd fix it.

ippa 14y ago

Amen to this. I also got the first Samsung Galaxy when it was hyped on engadget and other techblogs, especially for the amoled screen. The screen was always pretty good I guess. But aside from that, no more Samsung. GPS has always been ultra-slow, if working at all. The home button started glitching after 1-2 years. Micro-lag. The crap that is KIES. Kind of cheap plastic build. Each android update I hoped for things to get better, but they never did. I'll probably never trust Samsung with my smartphone-money again. Might just test out Windows Phone just to get the ungodly build quality of a Nokia :).

dublinclontarf 14y ago

I got an unlocked S1 in China...about a year ago, my first smartphone (my previous phone being a Nokia which disappointed me soo much, I've always been a Nokia user, not anymore). GPS didn't really work, but then GPS wasn't accurate in China anyway. I now use my S1 as a wireless access point with an all you can eat data connection living in the UK. I do all my working (from my kitchen table) using this. It's not perfect but by god it's a workhorse of a smartphone, and if I have the money would get an S3. As long as Samsung keep making phones like this I'll keep buying them, it's the smartphone nokia.

k_bx 14y ago

+1, but with HTC Desire. It's small amount of memory, stupid non-fixed bugs in HTC apps that cannot be removed -- I hate those small things. Really.

theone 14y ago

I also had Galaxy S for a brief period of time (until I switched to iPhone 4). Similar experience though: - GPS didn't worked, those who say it works should first see iPhones' GPS performance. - The biggest problem which I feel is the update process. As soon as they release a new version, they leave older one like a bastard child. - Even when they release its update why can't that be global. Why some countries gets a preferencial treatment. I am not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again.

viraptor 14y ago
Keep in mind that you're comparing old Galaxy S to a fairly new iPhone 4. S2 gets gps lock in <1s with assist and <5s without wifi assist (I guess gsm helps anyway to some extent). I mean, it's fair to say Galaxy S was pretty bad, but I don't get the "not gonna buy or recommend samsung ever again". Why not "iPhone 1 has no apps or 3G or ..., I'm not gonna buy or recommend iPhone ever again"? Products improve in newer releases, there's no reason to drop the whole line because version 1 was bad.

toemetoch 14y ago

S galaxy I here, too. Had the same issues you had, but these turned out to be software, not hardware. CyanogenMod is definitely not the best distro for this device, ran into GPS problems due to a config file that needed manual changing. Micro-lag: same thing. Now on Darky Rom and it runs without issues.

GFischer 14y ago

I have a Galaxy Ace and a Nokia N86. I dislike the phone experience (and awful battery life) on the Ace, and I use my Nokia as my phone, but the assisted GPS on the Ace works extremely well and quite fast (a LOT faster than the Nokia which also has GPS). My Nokia can't compete on the internet and apps experience, though (probably the Windows Phones will... too bad Nokia won't do Android, I'd buy Nokia over Samsung).

EnderMB 14y ago

I also owned an original Galaxy. It was by far the worst phone I ever owned, and I vowed to never own another Samsung phone again. True to form, when the Galaxy Nexus came out I bought that. It's definitely streets ahead of the original device and I have faith that this one will receive updates during my contract. However, that first Galaxy phone will always be in the back of my mind, and I truly believe that the first Galaxy would have turned a lot of initial Android users over to the iPhone.

wslh 14y ago

Same experience. I had the first iPhone and I was happy when it was upgraded by Apple very often and with new features. I depended only on Apple. Now I wait for the Android 4 upgrade for Movistar! Movistar depends on Samsung and Samsung depends on Google. Ah! and we need to wait because Movistar is branding the UI. For Android 3 they even removed the browser icon! if you want to launch the browser you need to go to the search page first. btw I am not an Apple fan.

dguaraglia 14y ago

Before my Galaxy S2 I owned (for about 3 weeks) a Samsung Infuse. My experience was pretty much what you describe: terrible GPS, 0 updates (that's mostly an AT&T issue though), slow as molasses... But the S2 is head and shoulders over it. Fastest phone I've ever used (yes, even faster than the iPhone 4S), the GPS precision was the best of all the devices we own at the company (we develop a product that requires GPS so we keep tabs on that), and the new version of TouchWiz is as good as anything else. Still, I'd love to have it updated to ICS at some point (and AT&T has promised they'd do it), but all in all it's a great Android phone.

bookwormAT 14y ago

The original Galaxy S is indeed not a very good device. It was great for hackers, but otherwise you got a bad experience. The Galaxy S2 was the first device where Samsung really delivered.