After considering the pros and cons of hacking Froyo 2.2 to my own handset, I was fully committed to accepting the risks and used a PC to begin my endeavor. Upon doing a Google search that took only a few seconds, I was brought to a resource site giving fool-proof instructions. Required actions involved downloading a program called Odin and then connecting the powered-off Captivate via USB. I was shocked by how simple the whole process turned out to be, yet I still ended up making a mistake. At the start, I did not allow drivers to be installed to the PC once I connected my phone. I then sat with a dumbfounded look and wondered why the Odin program was not recognizing it...go figure. Solving this issue was no problem since I was able to disconnect and reconnect the Captivate. Once "COM" appeared in one of the text fields in Odin, I clicked the "Start" command and waited. It was only a matter of minutes before my device had been blessed with the newest incarnation of Android 2.2 Froyo.
A number of new features and surprises awaited my discovery, and I was eager to find as many as I could. The first strange thing I noticed was sluggish animation on the Galaxy S logo while the chime itself played as normal. I did not think there was a reason to be concerned since this was not an official ROM anyway, so I continued to wait for the homescreen to appear. Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary happened with the first boot of the phone. As expected, the default TouchWiz UI reared its ugly, iPhone-mimicking head onscreen, but I knew that I would soon take care of that with Launcher Pro. Swiping through the seven homescreens hardly demonstrated any increase in speed over the previous 2.1 Eclair version of Android, but this was a non-issue. A huge grin swept over my face when I verified the availability of tethering and hotspot features, and there was an added Task Manager as well! In the notification bar, there was an added "Auto-Rotation" icon, but I had yet to figure out its function after seeing it had no effect on the homescreen orientation when activated. The new Beach live wallpaper was included and I also noticed how much easier it was to connect my bluetooth keyboard after being virtually impossible with 2.1 Eclair. For text input on the virtual keyboard, the Android version was removed to make way for the Swype and Samsung models. Even though the Android qwerty was gone, it was good to see that both remaining alternatives had a speech button handy for spoken word entry. Changes were made to the web browser interface and the music player, but there was one major result from the Froyo hack: GPS!!!!
For the longest period with Samsung's device, I had to deal with horrendous lock times with GPS-enabled applications such as Google Maps and RunKeeper. When a signal lock on a Nokia or HTC device would take only seconds on average, the Captivate took anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes! To make matters worse, the long-awaited software update from AT&T did not have ANY effect on my GPS whatsoever. I was left disenchanted and even considered selling the phone, but I was so glad to not have followed through with it. As soon as I activated Google Navigation, GPS acquired a lock in SECONDS!! To add icing to the cake, the amount of stability had increased ten fold!! There was no jumping to any adjacent streets or lagging in the position indicator, and my faith was restored in the gadget once again! Just to make sure it was not a fluke, over the following days I resumed use of RunKeeper with fantastic results that matched my Nike+ application on my iPod Touch!
Aside from the lack of a hardware qwerty and LED flash, my Captivate was finally a well-balanced machine that could rightfully surpass the Nexus One.
I most certainly welcomed the arrival of Froyo via the Odin hack, but there were problems that had to be tolerated. The Docs to Go application I had relied on for blogpost writing no longer had a key available to unlock the full editing version. Puzzled as to why I was stuck with the viewer model, I then looked to preinstalled Quickoffice which had been so good to me on Symbian in years past. Unfortunately, I discovered that the copy/paste function was not enabled on it, which begged me to question how in the hell could it be considered a full-featured document editor! The next contender in line was a basic text editor called Text Edit, and it had some promise in the midst of my dire situation. I eventually got to the point where it did not feel right to go without an office application for too long, so I had no choice but to pay for another one in OfficeSuite Pro. ThinkOffice could have been a choice, but Marketplace reviews did not seem too promising...and I vaguely remembered installing and then promptly UNinstalling it from my Android a while back. Spending 15 dollars was not exactly at the top of my priority list, but it was worth it for the peace of mind and not having to wait forever for tech support. Flash was still present in the web browser, but I did observe a lack of text reflow when zooming into sites. Horizontal scrolling was not the end of the world by any means, but still a slight inconvenience nonetheless. UPDATE: I was able to activate text reflow by checking the box for "Auto-Fit" in browser settings.
As for battery life being improved, I considered the validity to this after mistakenly thinking it was the same after the 2.2 hack. Since I began using a portable bluetooth qwerty keypad, I have been keeping bluetooth on all day along with GPS, WI-FI, and 3G. I did not use bluetooth at all in this manner before Froyo, which led me to believe battery capacity would certainly be improved had I continued this way on the Captivate.
My Samsung had a new reason to live, especially with addition of a tactile qwerty keypad in the size of a Nexus One and 100% accurate/stable GPS. Waiting for the Nokia E7 or Desire Z would not be so bad after all since I had finally found multiple solutions in building my own perfect smartphone arrangement. Who knows, maybe I would end up not missing either of them at all! Hacking had always come with its own risks, so even though it worked out well for me did not mean it would be the same for others. After a long duration of wanting to go "by the book" as a friend of mine once said, I finally took matters into my own hands and regained control. There was no doubt that I did void a warranty, but that was a price worth paying and I would definitely do it again! Someone had mentioned on my Facebook I could revert back to the previous OS to avoid this, but that was not happening anytime soon! After gaining the courage to hack again on top of buying a separate 25 dollar keyboard and another office suite app, I found my perfect mobile device without being at the mercy of a carrier or manufacturer release date. Independence had prevailed, and I was the victor!
TRENT SMITH
Sent from my Samsung Captivate
3 comments:
Did u root the phone previously or do u even have to root to get the Froyo on the Captivate?
I never rooted my Captivate. This Froyo hack is able to work for non-rooted models, but I am not sure about phones that have been previously rooted.
I switched to a Windows Phone 7 device, the Focus to be exact. I missed the widgets and more mature Android OS. Also, your blog about the keyboard and use of the Captivate caused me to switch back. Thanks Trent!
Post a Comment