If you detected a hint of anger in our headline, please forgive us, but we’re sure many of you are going through the same rollercoaster of emotions — after all, Dell’s lovely portrait QWERTY Venue Pro has only been sold in ridiculously limited quantities through Microsoft’s seven retail stores so far, making them virtually impossible to buy for most of us. Anyhow, in the event you were lucky enough to get one, you’ll be pleased to know that Dell is aware of the problems you might be having connecting to secure WiFi networks, and the next batch won’t be afflicted — which might explain why they haven’t offered a steady stream of devices through the stores this week. They also mention it’s a “software glitch,” but there’s no mention of timing on an update for phones in the field.
There’s also been a problem with batteries on these inaugural devices being labeled as “engineering samples,” apparently, but Dell assures that they’re production-quality cells that have simply been mislabeled. They say that customers wanting an exchange either for the WiFi issue or the mislabeled battery can get one at their local store “beginning at the end of next week,” so we’d take that to mean there won’t be any stock filtering in for anyone until then. Patience continues to be a virtue we don’t believe in.
We aren’t able to reproduce this problem ourselves, but a bunch of EVO owners seem to be reporting this week that their handsets have started acting like fools while trying to browse the web, possibly related specifically to Google-branded sites. What’s everyone out there seeing? Has your EVO 4G been downgraded by a G or two?
We aren’t able to reproduce this problem ourselves, but a bunch of EVO owners seem to be reporting this week that their handsets have started acting like fools while trying to browse the web, possibly related specifically to Google-branded sites. What’s everyone out there seeing? Has your EVO 4G been downgraded by a G or two?
Ruh roh. Looks like Dell’s stepped onto its own toes real hard with the Streak’s Android 2.1 update — O2 just confirmed to us that due to some “feedback from users,” it’s decided to suspend said download while Dell gets cranking on a revised software release over the next two or three weeks. We weren’t given the exact reasons behind this quiet withdrawal, but our friends over at MoDaCo might have had the answer for some time — soon after the release, they discovered that the 2.1 firmware was in fact pre-rooted, thus leaving the Streak vulnerable to unauthorized access and modification (although handy for the seriously tech-minded). Yikes. On the bright side, such substantial time frame suggests that the upcoming fix should also address other bugs like incompatibility with the desktop suite, weird loading behavior in the browser, and missing WMV video playback functionality.
And here comes the inevitable question: what about Froyo? Well, neither Dell nor O2 could provide a date for the Streak’s scoop of frozen dessert, but we’ll bet you a white iPhone 4 that it won’t be out in October.
Rest assured this information was never meant to make it into the public eye (not all in one place, anyway), and from Verizon’s perspective, there’s a good reason for that — if you’ve got a Fascinate, you just know you’re going to be looking out for all these bugs now that you might not have noticed otherwise. Sorry to turn you into a nervous wreck, owners, but let’s have a look at some of the bigger problems Big Red has its eye on in Sammy’s latest incarnation of the Galaxy S: GPS lock latency is said to be abnormally long with no workaround available (sound familiar?), pressing the Search button while on a call can hang you up, calendar alerts can’t be changed, and the backlighting on the bottom keys is fixed at five seconds — something we’d complained about on other versions of the phone but is conveniently tied to the keyboard backlight settings on the Epic 4G. Nothing in the list necessarily sounds like a deal-breaker, but for a carrier known for testing the crap out of its phones prior to release, we’ll admit that the list is a bit longer than we would’ve expected.
Okay, so we’ve given you about a day to download, install, and tear iOS 4.1 into microscopic shreds. What’s the end result? We’ve been tipped on a handful of troublesome nuances in the update, ranging from unsolved proximity sensor woes to a sudden onslaught of voicemails — and we’re trying to get a feel for how widespread they all are. Care to chime in? Follow the break!
We know, half of you aren’t even going to read past the headline before you start angrily banging away about Apple’s admitted antenna gaff and the still-not-totally-fixed proximity sensor, but we’re urging you to look deeper. Think harder. Critique your criticisms. In all seriousness, Apple’s iPhone 4 garnered more attention (negative or otherwise) than any other phone released this calendar year, and for good reason — in fact, Apple itself had to hold an emergency press event just to announce what could’ve been announced in a PR blast: everyone’s getting a free case. That said, Cupertino has still managed to move millions of units in just a few months, and that demand doesn’t seem to be dropping off at any significant rate. If you’re one of the lucky (or unlucky) ones that have managed to procure Apple’s latest iPhone, we’re overly anxious to hear your thoughts on changing it. How would you have addressed the antenna issue? Would you have preferred a less drastic departure from the 3GS form factor? Would you have offered more colors than white and black? Thrown in Bluetooth 3.0 for kicks? Go ahead, the floor’s yours — just don’t abuse it, cool?
No word on what AT&T is communicating to its peeps regarding the similarly-afflicted Captivate, but it looks like T-Mobile fired off a communique to its sales reps in the past few hours letting them know that the Vibrant’s update to solve its GPS woes is expected in September, echoing earlier an statement from Samsung. Interestingly, the reps are being told not to refer to the September guidance, but to instead rattle off a variant of Samsung’s statement that says “the next few weeks” instead, presumably to give these guys some wiggle room in case it hits in August or — perish the thought — later than September. Keep your fingers crossed, folks.
If you own a Galaxy S anywhere in the world or you’re thinking of buying one, you’re probably well-acquainted at this point with the GPS issues it’s been suffering that prevent you from getting anything close to a precise lock on your location — it might not be a deal-breaker for some, but for anyone planning on using their phone for turn-by-turn nav or fitness tracking (for instance) it’s a big deal. Samsung’s already committed to updating released versions of the phone in September, but what about the upcoming Epic 4G? Our testing suggests that it’s functional — Google Maps was able to give us extremely precise positions very quickly — and a statement we’ve received from Samsung seems to corroborate that:
“We have tested and validated both Network Assisted (indoor) and Autonomous (outdoor) GPS on the Epic 4G. With regards to Vibrant and Captivate, we are currently testing software updates which will optimize GPS performance. We expect to be able to make the updates available in September and will communicate more information and download instructions in the next few weeks.”
In other words, the Captivate and the Vibrant have the bug and will be fixed next month; the Epic, meanwhile, should be good to go when it launches on the 31st. Cheers to that, we say.
Though we admittedly missed it in our initial review — this is the kind of thing you just expect to work — we circled back and amended our look at Samsung’s Captivate and Vibrant when we discovered that AGPS is completely busted. Not “sort of working,” not “flawed,” just utterly broken and non-functional; we waited minutes upon minutes without a location lock in our follow-up testing. AGPS is the kind of thing you don’t miss until you don’t have it, at which point you realize how woefully inadequate straight-up GPS alone is for mobile use when you’re frequently (for some of us, nearly always) trying to locate yourself indoors, under a tree, or in the heart of an urban canyon.
This isn’t a low- or medium-priority fix — this is something that Samsung, T-Mobile, and AT&T should’ve been working to get out immediately. Actually, let’s step back a bit: this is a problem for which there’s no reasonable explanation why it made it all the way to retail devices, and it raises concerns over just how well these products were tested (you might remember from our review just how many egregious examples of weird English we found, for instance). Put simply, all three of these companies should have these phones pulled from shelves until the problem’s fixed, should be communicating tirelessly with customers and the press to make sure that everyone knows the status of the issue, and should have a fix available right this second. Android’s ecosystem has proven just how important frequent, reliable firmware updates are, and Sammy’s already working from a damaged reputation thanks to the Behold II debacle. Let’s make this right, guys.
[Thanks, Steve]
Update: We’ve just received an official statement from Samsung on the matter:
“Samsung Mobile is aware that under certain conditions, the GPS on our U.S. Galaxy S devices may not be meeting performance expectations. We are diligently evaluating the situation and will provide an update as soon as possible.”
Update 2: Several readers have pointed out that there are workarounds for the problem available — we’ve got one linked in the More Coverage section below which points to an Android Central article. It’s a good start, but not one that’s practical for the average phone buyer, bearing in mind that most folks aren’t power users (and, sadly, don’t read Engadget Mobile). That still leaves the impetus on Samsung to get an official firmware update pushed out on the double.
