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I got a Fascinate on the 1st of the month and I have been enjoying it so far. However there are a few problems that concern me. First is my battery life. I hear stories about how good the battery life can be etc, etc. Well I can barely get a day with 'moderate' usage. Now maybe my version of moderate usage is different but it consists of a on and off browsing on the internet and the app market. A few games that I downloaded off the market.
I plugged my phone in before I went to bed last night, unplugged it at 7am, turned the gps on(will get to this problem shortly) for about an hour and its already at 74%. GPS is #1 in power use and almost tied for screen usage. I know games use a lot but I drained the battery just by internet browsing and the app market. Is this normal? I pretty much charge my phone daily because of how low it gets by the end of the day. My signal at home kinda sucks(another issue I will address) and Iv read that a low signal can increase battery usage due to the device using more power on for the radios(not sure if this is true or not).
My 2nd issue is my GPS. I know about the various issues people have with the Galaxy S line but I also see people have no problems. I can not get a signal at all at home indoors. I let the thing sit for an hour and it found 1 sat with zero locks. During my GPS test today, I went to the store and turned the GPS on. It took about 15-20minutes to lock. It had about 10 sats found with 6-8 locks with an accuracy of 13-40 Ft. Much better compared to the 2200m accuracy I had at home with 1 lock which I managed to achieve once. Iv tried some of the 'fixes' found on the various android sites and they haven't helped. Wish Samsung/Verizon would release that GPS fix already.
Another issue is my really low signal strength. It seems there is a bug with the SF that makes the dBM rating really high(bad signal) when its actually not but will it actually affect performance? My 3g data rates are really low compared to what people get in this thread http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1552422 I don't even get close to over 1MB. The best I got was 700Kb/sec download and 300Kb/s upload. This is in an area that is very open. At home its way worse. I had a few 100KB/s and a 7Kb/s upload on 3g. My 3g has also gone to 1x if I go from my PC to my bed which is only a few feet. I get alot of failed connection errors while browsing the internet and in the market causing me having to hit retry numerous times a day. I do have a case on my phone but I don't think it can affect the signal that bad can it? Also my 'bar' signal jumps around a lot, going from 0 bars, to a no signal indicator, to 4 bars and back down while only moving a few feet. With 4 bars I had -91 dBM, and it 0-2 bars it -96. Really annoying because I don't know it its just a visual thing or if its really a bad signal.
I guess those are the main issues I am having with the phone. The bing thing doesn't bother me, the phone is very fast, the screen is gorgeous, love the UI that it has. Installed Launcher Pro and loving the new home screen. Haven't made too many calls, but it sounds fine so far.
So what do you SF owners have to say about these issues? Do you have them? Should I go and exchange for a new one? Love the phone and I can do without the GPS but the signal/data speeds annoy me. This is my first smartphone so maybe I dont understand how long the battery should last but it seems short to me since it drains just by app/internet browsing. I also wonder if the low signal is causing the battery drain.
Thanks for reading my rant.
I plugged my phone in before I went to bed last night, unplugged it at 7am, turned the gps on(will get to this problem shortly) for about an hour and its already at 74%. GPS is #1 in power use and almost tied for screen usage. I know games use a lot but I drained the battery just by internet browsing and the app market. Is this normal? I pretty much charge my phone daily because of how low it gets by the end of the day. My signal at home kinda sucks(another issue I will address) and Iv read that a low signal can increase battery usage due to the device using more power on for the radios(not sure if this is true or not).
My 2nd issue is my GPS. I know about the various issues people have with the Galaxy S line but I also see people have no problems. I can not get a signal at all at home indoors. I let the thing sit for an hour and it found 1 sat with zero locks. During my GPS test today, I went to the store and turned the GPS on. It took about 15-20minutes to lock. It had about 10 sats found with 6-8 locks with an accuracy of 13-40 Ft. Much better compared to the 2200m accuracy I had at home with 1 lock which I managed to achieve once. Iv tried some of the 'fixes' found on the various android sites and they haven't helped. Wish Samsung/Verizon would release that GPS fix already.
Another issue is my really low signal strength. It seems there is a bug with the SF that makes the dBM rating really high(bad signal) when its actually not but will it actually affect performance? My 3g data rates are really low compared to what people get in this thread http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1552422 I don't even get close to over 1MB. The best I got was 700Kb/sec download and 300Kb/s upload. This is in an area that is very open. At home its way worse. I had a few 100KB/s and a 7Kb/s upload on 3g. My 3g has also gone to 1x if I go from my PC to my bed which is only a few feet. I get alot of failed connection errors while browsing the internet and in the market causing me having to hit retry numerous times a day. I do have a case on my phone but I don't think it can affect the signal that bad can it? Also my 'bar' signal jumps around a lot, going from 0 bars, to a no signal indicator, to 4 bars and back down while only moving a few feet. With 4 bars I had -91 dBM, and it 0-2 bars it -96. Really annoying because I don't know it its just a visual thing or if its really a bad signal.
I guess those are the main issues I am having with the phone. The bing thing doesn't bother me, the phone is very fast, the screen is gorgeous, love the UI that it has. Installed Launcher Pro and loving the new home screen. Haven't made too many calls, but it sounds fine so far.
So what do you SF owners have to say about these issues? Do you have them? Should I go and exchange for a new one? Love the phone and I can do without the GPS but the signal/data speeds annoy me. This is my first smartphone so maybe I dont understand how long the battery should last but it seems short to me since it drains just by app/internet browsing. I also wonder if the low signal is causing the battery drain.
Thanks for reading my rant.
