need a crash course in smart phones...

I lost my old phone on saturday and didn't have time to fully research things. In a possibly stupid, spur of the moment decision, I stayed with AT&T and got an iPhone4 with a 2yr contract. I have 30 days to return/exchange. I also liked the samsung captivate but I only spent a couple hours in the store playing with everything. I went with the iPhone because the restock fee was cheaper... was not thinking about the contract.

Does anyone know if I can return the iPhone and cancel the contract as well, within that 30 day window? or am I married to AT&T for 2 more years? I realize now that AT&T doesn't have plans for UMA (voice over WiFi) and I used to have crappy reception at home and at work (where I have WiFi) with my old flip phone.

I've heard that google voice or skype will let me make calls over WiFi, but these would not use my mobile number. If I set my phone to call forward to the skype/google number, is that setting stored in the network profile (HSS/HLR) so that the network doesn't actually have to attempt over the air delivery to my phone for it to work? My old phone used to get missed calls but never actually ring for them, or it'd ring once then go to voicemail, or otherwise completely fail at reception. So if it has to ping the phone over the air for call forwarding, that might not help my problem.

I was playing with a Backflip and may have accidentally run something called task killer. It seemed to kill the user interface and I couldnt get much to work after that, it was responding slowly. Would an app like this or customizability of android let me cut down on features to save battery life?

any reasons i should get the captivate instead? i don't have any other apple devices or iTunes. I have exchange for email at work, but probably wouldnt connect to it. Yahoo for personal stuff.

You can dissolve any contractual obligations with AT&T within the first 30 days--you won't be locked into AT&T if you decide to give the iPhone back to them.

Data contracts will be the same for any smartphone on AT&T, so you won't save any money in regards to fees by switching phones. Carriers advertise cheaper plans to draw in new customers, but the bottom lines are often so close as to not bother switching.

Captivate is probably the android phone closest to an iphone4, but I personally prefer the iPhone.
You don't need iTunes for syncing music, but it helps to keep your apps. You can just the App store on the phone, however.
Neither phone will offer better customizability unless you jailbreak/root them.

GV, Skype, Fring, all can make calls over WiFi. I believe they can be setup to display your mobile number. I use Google Voice and SIPGate on my iPhone for non-network calling. You'll have to do some research to set up exactly what you do...but there isn't going to be a difference between an Android phone or an iPhone in terms of how to set it all up.

There used to be a difference in that iPhones couldn't use native google apps, like google voice, without jailbreaking. But that restriction was lifted last week.

wow, that was awesome thanks for the great response.

I thought AT&T's "iPhone dataplan" was more expensive than the regular smartphone dataplan?
or did that change with the iPhone 3g or their change of dataplans? it's been a while since I've looked into any of that.

as for getting out of the contract.. yeah, somebody else posted here on the board that they renewed their contract and got an iPhone, but was able to return the iPhone and cancel the contract outright. Buyer remorse or some crap like that is what they called it.

yes, AT&T now has 2 data plans for all smartphones, 200MB or 2GB for $15/$25 per month.

I'm thinking I should have gotten the captivate... I've already had a couple disappointments with the iPhone4. Can't change the camera resolution, it's sort of a pain to toggle the bluetooth/wifi/cellular data features, i don't see how you can easily kill apps that are running in the background (does this effect battery life?), and I accidentally "ear-called" someone I was already having a conversation with. Yeah, pressing the thing up to my ear so i could hear better, i somehow pressed the touchscreen buttons to call the same person. I didn't notice this until she answered my 2nd call and said "wait, did you just call me while we're talking?"

watching this video already took care of some of those issues (disabled touchscreen when your face is close to it, lots of camera options).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPI6hV30KjM&feature=player_embedded

oh, I will mention that the Captivate in the store had screen burn in. I didn't notice it much until I had a word doc with white background, then it was blatant.

the proximity sensor problem is an issue addressed in the latest firmware. If you are on 4.0.1 you can jailbreak it easily and address most of the problems you're voicing.

you don't have to kill background apps. they are a visual annoyance only. nearly all apps don't actually "run" in the background, they just save your current state and restore it upon relaunch. there is zero effect on your battery, which is why Apple worked on their method so long. it's arguably superior to true backgrounding. My personal experience is the claim is true.

if you jailbreak, then there are about three different ways to "fix" the ghost programs.
if you jailbreak, there's a program called sbsettings that will allow you to swipe across the screen and access a drop-down with all of the settings as toggles like this (I just took this for you):

interesting, and very helpful once again, thanks. I'll peruse the camera/image apps for the iPhone. I'm thinking the UMA feature on T-mobile is only going to be for outbound calls, I'd probably need it for inbound too, so that's less of a distraction. If I visit my sister in London, it'd be nice to be able to make/receive some calls.

incidentally, which case do you use? i might just get one of the free ones (kind of shady they didnt offer these at the store).

they can't offer the cases at the store because they can only carry so much stock...but they'd need hundreds of thousands of their own bumpers (not to mention the third party cases they offer gratis that they procure and send out at their expense).

as for my phone, I use bestskinsever.

mope54 said:

Neither phone will offer better customizability unless you jailbreak/root them.

Click to expand...

I agree with most of your post, but this part is completely false. Android is infinitely more customizable out of the box. Whether or not this matters is a completely different story.

The biggest drawbacks of the iPhone IMO are the very primitive home screen and notifications. A grid of app icons and pop ups? No thanks. Android's home screen and widgets is way better (and Live Wallpapers are fun), plus you can swap out the entire homescreen if you want (there are alternatives in the marketplace such as ADW and LauncherPro, some are completely different). The notification drawer is so much nicer.

But the iPhone does have the better app store. From what I've seen, it's so much easier to browser and discover apps than it is in the Android Marketplace.

The "running apps" thing is pretty similar on Android - if you don't worry about it, the system will figure it all out and battery life is fine. Task killer programs are popular, and also stupid. I highly recommend you *don't* use one.

By the way, on the Captivate if you slide the notification drawer down (the bar at the very top of the screen, grab it and drag it down), there are icons there to toggle things like wifi and bluetooth. You can also have homescreen widgets that toggle them on and off.

Personally, I prefer Android. I love my Droid, couldn't be happier with it (well, at least not until the Cortex A9s show up ). But my co-worker has an iPhone 4 and loves it.

I have no idea about android's customizability "out of the box" because I've never seen a phone like that.

My friend's HTC Aria is AT&T branded from here to eternity. We couldn't do a thing to it until we rooted it. Then we updated it to Froyo 2.2.

I helped our other friend do the same thing with his Droid. He couldn't change much beforehand and certainly couldn't remove the carrier branding.


If you browse the threads on this forum alone you'll see people discussing all of the cool stuff they are doing with ROM's. I have never seen threads bragging about stock, branded android based phones.

Regardless, the OP is an AT&T customer. His phone will be locked down and branded more than an iPhone. While I haven't seen the Captivate, I have seen the Aria, I used to have my Blackberry, and I've had a slew of RAZRs and Windows Mobile phones from AT&T. They all needed to be rooted before anything that anyone is interested in doing can be done.


once greenpois0n is released, jailbreaking the current iPhones will be literally unstoppable. And for you personally, since you're a member here and you can ask me or anyone else how to do it, you should compare jailbroken iPhones to rooted android phones.

my personal opinion is that you should compare reception and form factor between the iphone 4 and the Captivate. features are a wash and iOS trounces Android in the apps dept.

with no unlimited data plan from AT&T might want to consider other options like T-mobile

two biggies are

1. Truly unlimited data
2. Ability to tether your device to your laptop/PC without additional charges

Since I can tether my device to my laptop, I have gobbled up 260MB in like 2 days just doing what I do with my laptop (Windows update, youtube streaming, downloading games that I bought, e-mail, IM, etc)

Grandted a HD2 is not an iphone but for what I do and ease of connection, It suites me perfectly

mope54 said:

You can dissolve any contractual obligations with AT&T within the first 30 days--you won't be locked into AT&T if you decide to give the iPhone back to them.

Data contracts will be the same for any smartphone on AT&T, so you won't save any money in regards to fees by switching phones. Carriers advertise cheaper plans to draw in new customers, but the bottom lines are often so close as to not bother switching.

Captivate is probably the android phone closest to an iphone4, but I personally prefer the iPhone.
You don't need iTunes for syncing music, but it helps to keep your apps. You can just the App store on the phone, however.
Neither phone will offer better customizability unless you jailbreak/root them.

GV, Skype, Fring, all can make calls over WiFi. I believe they can be setup to display your mobile number. I use Google Voice and SIPGate on my iPhone for non-network calling. You'll have to do some research to set up exactly what you do...but there isn't going to be a difference between an Android phone or an iPhone in terms of how to set it all up.

There used to be a difference in that iPhones couldn't use native google apps, like google voice, without jailbreaking. But that restriction was lifted last week.

Click to expand...

FALSE, omg! An unrooted Android smartphone can do way way way more than a rooted iphone can. A rooted Android smartphone can do so much more than any rooted Iphone or unrooted Android.... You can do absolutely anything.

OP, you say switching stuff on and off such as WIFI is a pain. Well, yea there's an app for that on an Iphone but it is even easier to do on Android.

A) on Captivate you could slide down notifications and hit one of the on/off buttons for whatever you wanna disable. Slide your finger left or right to increase/decrease brightness.

B) hold your finger on home screen, widgets --> power management. And you can place it anywhere, with one click, turn anything on or off...

Bottom line, you want a phone that can do way more and can truly be customized? Get Captivate, it has amazing hardware and software.

YeuEmMaiMai said:

with no unlimited data plan from AT&T might want to consider other options like T-mobile

two biggies are

1. Truly unlimited data
2. Ability to tether your device to your laptop/PC without additional charges

Since I can tether my device to my laptop, I have gobbled up 260MB in like 2 days just doing what I do with my laptop (Windows update, youtube streaming, downloading games that I bought, e-mail, IM, etc)

Grandted a HD2 is not an iphone but for what I do and ease of connection, It suites me perfectly

Click to expand...

But you could have Vibrant instead, it is better than iphone for some...

Anyways, Tmobile doesn't allow you to tether really. You can with HD2, and you could download an app on android and do it. If you hit 10gb in a month = throttle.

Same thing with any carrier, you can unofficialy do it rather easily. On Verizon it's 5gb a month, then they charge you . They want you to pay for tethering, but they can't catch you if you do it.

aFive said:

FALSE, omg! An unrooted Android smartphone can do way way way more than a rooted iphone can. A rooted Android smartphone can do so much more than any rooted Iphone or unrooted Android.... You can do absolutely anything.

OP, you say switching stuff on and off such as WIFI is a pain. Well, yea there's an app for that on an Iphone but it is even easier to do on Android.

A) on Captivate you could slide down notifications and hit one of the on/off buttons for whatever you wanna disable. Slide your finger left or right to increase/decrease brightness.

B) hold your finger on home screen, widgets --> power management. And you can place it anywhere, with one click, turn anything on or off...

Bottom line, you want a phone that can do way more and can truly be customized? Get Captivate, it has amazing hardware and software.

Click to expand...

Jailbroken iOS devices do A and B, so why would you use them as examples of an unrooted Android based phone doing "way way way" more than a jailbroken iOS device?


I'd be interested in hearing the things the Captivate can do that an iPhone can't do...not whether you need to install an apk or an app to match features as doing either are trivial.

if mope54 is correct and I can back out of my contract, I could easily switch to another carrier for a better version of the captivate/fascinate/galaxy (AT&T has no camera flash). Some form of tethering would be nice (jailbroken or not) without a fee because I'm on a train for 80-120 minutes per day and I'm probably going to night school next year, so that time would be useful.

thanks everyone for the comparisons, I've got some googling to do to figure this out.

EVO
/thread
Posted via [H] Mobile Device

black_b[ ]x;1036234000 said:

if mope54 is correct and I can back out of my contract, I could easily switch to another carrier for a better version of the captivate/fascinate/galaxy (AT&T has no camera flash). Some form of tethering would be nice (jailbroken or not) without a fee because I'm on a train for 80-120 minutes per day and I'm probably going to night school next year, so that time would be useful.

thanks everyone for the comparisons, I've got some googling to do to figure this out.

Click to expand...

I would seriously consider Sprint. $69 a month for unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited mobile to mobile calls (to any network), and a host of other great features, plus they have the Epic 4G and Evo (both $10 extra a month...still a hell of a lot cheaper than Verizon and ATT).

The Galaxy S phones are great options....Captivate on ATT, Fascinate on Verizon, Epic on Sprint, and the Vibrant on Tmobile. The Evo and Droid are also amazing phones. Each one has their strengths but expect to be able to do everything on them that you can on the iPhone plus a hoard of other features. As far as customization....whomever said the iPhone is just as customizable is simply wrong. The amount of customizing Android allows is out of this world....it really is mind blowing what the Android community is doing with these phones. You'll need to be patient with a few things but the iPhone wasn't without its tripping points either.

I keep hearing all this talk about "customizability" and wondering what, exactly, you are referring to that these phones are doing that iPhones can't do...

I read this thread to my friend to ask his opinion about his HTC now that we've put Froyo on it. I don't think I'll directly quote him, it's not pleasant, but the long and short of it is that Android phones basically have a set number of ROMs to choose from. There is very little customization, unless you are talking about moving widgets around, short of cooking your own ROMs.

Are you guys dev'ing for Android? I doubt it...
My guess is you are aping the common BS that Android OS does so much more than iOS without any basis in personal experience of either platform. You're moving widgets around and installing custom ROMs that someone else made and calling that customization and choice. Swell, but it's not any better than what iPhone users have the ability to do.

If you've actually used both platforms (and I've laid out my personal experiences in my posts already), then you should list the actual differences you've encountered. I listed the similarities. If there really are "hoards" of features that an iPhone can't do, then surely it shouldn't be too difficult to actually list any...

mope54 said:

I keep hearing all this talk about "customizability" and wondering what, exactly, you are referring to that these phones are doing that iPhones can't do...

I read this thread to my friend to ask his opinion about his HTC now that we've put Froyo on it. I don't think I'll directly quote him, it's not pleasant, but the long and short of it is that Android phones basically have a set number of ROMs to choose from. There is very little customization, unless you are talking about moving widgets around, short of cooking your own ROMs.

Are you guys dev'ing for Android? I doubt it...
My guess is you are aping the common BS that Android OS does so much more than iOS without any basis in personal experience of either platform. You're moving widgets around and installing custom ROMs that someone else made and calling that customization and choice. Swell, but it's not any better than what iPhone users have the ability to do.

If you've actually used both platforms (and I've laid out my personal experiences in my posts already), then you should list the actual differences you've encountered. I listed the similarities. If there really are "hoards" of features that an iPhone can't do, then surely it shouldn't be too difficult to actually list any...

Click to expand...

K, I've owned both. Both are great, but Android definitely allows more customization.

A) The home screen and app drawer interface in Android is known as the launcher. If the term were to be applied to the iPhone, its launcher would consist of horizontally scrolling pages with grids of icons and a dock. The only customization you get out of the iPhone's launcher is the ability to change the wallpaper and rearrange icons. Jailbreaking allows further customization, but still nowhere near what most Android launchers offer. Additionally, Android allows you to completely replace the launcher with one that offers completely different looks and functionality.

B) Most Android launchers offer the ability to place widgets on your home screens. There are thousands of widgets in the Android market. Some are for information. Some are for beauty. Some are for performing tasks. The bottom line is, they allow you to do things and see vital information very quickly without having to open app after app.

Those are a couple general things, but if I get more specific then the list becomes endless and I could go on forever. Quick example... What if I don't want a lockscreen and just want to be right on my home screen when I press a physical button? You might be able to do that on an iPhone if you jailbreak, but I was never able to find an app to do that in Cydia when I owned an iPhone. On an Android phone, you don't even need to be rooted. There are apps in the regular old Android market that offer more functionality than even apps like SBSettings and Winterboard in Cydia. I'm not even going to go into rooting, ROMs, overclocking, etc.

To be honest, you really won't understand until you own an Android phone for a while and figure out for yourself what it can do. Don't worry, I didn't get it either when I owned an iPhone.

I don't think you should be lecturing me on what I do or do not understand when you can't differentiate between the phone's UI and the OS it's running...

mope54 said:

I don't think you should be lecturing me on what I do or do not understand when you can't differentiate between the phone's UI and the OS it's running...

Click to expand...

First of all, I wasn't lecturing. You were wondering what people meant by customization. I tried to give you an answer. I never said one platform is better than the other so I don't know why you're getting upset.

I also don't know why you're trying to say that I don't know the difference between a UI and an OS. The relationship between a UI and an OS is completely irrelevant to what I had to say in the previous post. Not to mention, I have a degree in Computer Engineering so I know what they are. Either you misunderstood me or you simply don't know how to carry on a discussion.

I may have misunderstood you.

I asked for specific differences between Android OS and iOS and you gave examples of how you think the UI's are more customizable than the iPhone's UI (it isn't, btw, one can do all of what you wrote on an iPhone).

Since you apparently *should* know the difference between the underlying operating system and the user interfaces you were describing, your response begs the question of why you're talking about features of Touchwiz, Sense, Droid UI, etc. rather than Android OS itself.

The closest you came was to write that the list is so endless that you didn't want to go into it!
kinda hard to ascertain what black box or myself are missing out on with a response like that...

mope54 said:

I may have misunderstood you.

I asked for specific differences between Android OS and iOS and you gave examples of how you think the UI's are more customizable than the iPhone's UI (it isn't, btw, one can do all of what you wrote on an iPhone).

Since you apparently *should* know the difference between the underlying operating system and the user interfaces you were describing, your response begs the question of why you're talking about features of Touchwiz, Sense, Droid UI, etc. rather than Android OS itself.

The closest you came was to write that the list is so endless that you didn't want to go into it!
kinda hard to ascertain what black box or myself are missing out on with a response like that...

Click to expand...

I'm comparing the user experience on each platform. What are you comparing?

Here's a little hypothetical user experience on an Android phone. Everything mentioned below can be done on a non-rooted phone with extremely minimal effort. A few of the things listed below are possible on an iPhone, but they aren't nearly as quick, easy, and painless.

I didn't like the icons in my app drawer scrolling sideways, so I installed a launcher that allows them to scroll vertically. Then I enabled a setting that produced a 3D effect when scrolling through icons because I thought it looked cooler. I didn't like the dock background, so I went into preferences and changed it. I also changed my default home screen to the third page, changed the number of icon rows on the home screens to 5, hid icon labels, enabled screen indicators, increased the scrolling speed, and increased the speed of the app opening animation. Then I selected one of the thousands of live wallpapers from the market as my background. It's a 3D spinning galaxy. It allowed me to adjust its colors, motion, and spin speed to my liking. Then I started browsing through the thousands of widgets available in the market. I put a calendar/agenda widget on one of my home screens so that I can quickly view and scroll through upcoming appointments without going into an app. I added a widget for quick access to my most used contacts, a widget to show the current weather, and a widget to display my Facebook news feed. I resized and arranged all of these widgets as I pleased. After that, I installed a free tethering app from the market so that I don't have to pay my carrier for that functionality. Then I popped in a 32 GB MicroSD card to bring my total storage capacity to 48 GB. I plugged my phone in to a friends computer and copied a bunch of documents and music to my MicroSD card. His computer saw it as a mass storage device so it was easy. When I unplugged my phone all of the music I had copied over was automatically added to the media library and could be seen from any of the three music apps I had installed. The file manager that came preinstalled was a bit barebones, so I downloaded a better one from the market so I could copy some files from the MicroSD to the internal storage.

I'm not saying Android phones are better than iPhones. I'm just saying they're different. iPhones are better at some things and Android phones are better at some things.

Thank you for that post. It's informative. I read it but I'm going to read it again later.

mope54, it's obvious you haven't spent any time with android. I'm a former iphone user and am two months in with my vibrant and to say that the iphone is just as customizable is ludicrous.

I'm just trying to answer the guy's question without getting too bogged down in the pissing contest you android users keep trying to drag me into.

I've spent plenty of time with andoid OS to have formed an opinion about it's capabilities, I just haven't spent all that much time messing around with all the different UI's on each carrier. I am familiar enough with AT&T's offerings, though, to know that both the Android based phones and the iPhone will be equally powerful.


Black box listed some specific needs of his and asked whether there were any reasons he should consider a different phone than the one he already has. So far, unless he's overly concerned with moving widgets around his screen, I haven't seen anyone write a compelling reason for him to switch.

The S-AMOLED screen on the Captivate has some noticeable differences to the iPhones Retina display. He already mentioned that he thought the Captivate had burn-in. That blue-ish tint is something that's been noted in numerous reviews in regards to the AMOLED screens. It's also worth pointing out that if he's going to be looking at a lot of white, then his battery life will suffer more with the OLED based technology than the LCD on the iPhone 4.

The iPhone's IPS screen is going to have better viewer angles and sharper text. Those things are important if you're using it primarily to view text and as a phone. If he's using the phone as a media device, then the screen size difference might make a difference. It doesn't sound like it, because he said he wants to tether. So that makes me think he has a larger device to surf and watch movies. As such, he might be interested to know that the iPhone's tethering can either be bluetooth, USB, or Wi-Fi. USB is best for his situation, imo. He'll be able to keep the phone charging and the temperature low.

I was only able to get Wi-Fi tethering working on my lady's Palm Pre. Maybe that's the case with the Captivate. I don't know...and no one seems to want to address the actual features of the phone that Black box has expressed an interest in knowing about. It'd be nice if you guys would get off the moving widgets around kick you're on and spell out some things we are wondering about.

It would have, at one point, been important to point out that Android OS based phones have access to Google API's that the iPhone google apps did not since he wants to make and receive calls off-network. But now that Apple has finally given Google the green light that is much less of a concern. He can do everything he wants to do in that regard with his iPhone (without jailbreaking finally--this wasn't the case even as recently as last week).


So it's features like these that I think are more important to note for him than whether or not it's easier to move widgets around on the screen without rooting the device!