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The Samsung Fascinate hasn’t been in the hands of the general public for more than a day, but Verizon is already hard at work compiling a ‘known issues’ list reporting various bugs and glitches that will need to be sorted out with future OTA updates. And the list is already quite long. Some of the various issues have short-term workarounds, though quite a few will leave you and your phone hanging if you experience them. Some of the more noteworthy bugs include:
- Alert Notifications: There is no option to change the Calendar alert notification. Short term work around: There is no short term work around for this issue.
- Blank Screen: If you are on a call and a second call comes in, you get the correct Caller ID information. If you answer the second call, the caller ID screen goes blank and does not show any caller information. Short term work around: There is no short term work around for this issue
- Email Sync: In some cases exchange e-mail and yahoo mail can stop syncing Short term work around: The user can manually sync Planned Resolution: A fix for this issue will be included in the MR 1 release for this device.
- Exchange ActiveSync Security Lock: The EAS security lock may be invoked earlier then the timer is set for.
- Google and Bing Maps Latency: It has been reported that it takes longer then other devices to get GPS location information when using Google and Bing maps. Short term work around: There is no short term work around for this issue
- Call Disconnect: If you are on a call or in the process of receiving an incoming call and you press the search button the call may be disconnected.
You can read an extensive list of other known problems over at the source link below. We’d like to think that most newly-launched devices get similar lengthy lists, but the shear number of bugs reported has us a bit worried about the Fascinate. All the more reason for VZW and Samsung to push out a Froyo update sooner rather than later, right? I know. Wishful thinking.
[via BGR]
Considering the Vibrant and the Epic had pretty good reviews, its a bit disappointing that Samsung had to end the Galaxy S launches (major carriers) on such a down note (I’m not blaming Samsung).
Also, it seems to have only taken a year for Verizon to change course to “providing great phones” to having that overbearing control once again.
known issue not mentioned:
*No google search
*No google navigation
@elijahblake I lol’d.
It does have Google nav
This is the kind of crap that’s going to leave the regular smart phone user, which is still the majority, a very bad taste in their mouth for Android. I love the freedom of Android, but at the same time, Google needs to start putting their foot down with carriers and the phone manufacturers as the continual bastardization and fragmentation of the OS is going to really be an obstacle. The way these guys muck up the UI’s and such seems rediculous.
@chris
Yeah, when nav. actually works. :)
other known issue
no FFC
being run on verizon
and why do you have to run another device after using the GPS on this one? or is it saying that it’s taking longer because you have to use another device to get GPS signal?
“Google and Bing Maps Latency: It has been reported that it takes longer then other devices to get GPS location information when using Google and Bing maps.”
Following on the heels of Microsoft alternatives replacing two of Google’s trademark features in Android, the phone has more issues than other recent releases? Thus can’t be good for Samsung or Verizon.
It’s like Microsoft trying to neuter Google’s Android.
hey Micro Soft_D*CK, F*CK OFF!
@elijahblake Just fyi, Google Navigation can be installed from the Market. Google Search is the only issue there.
Maybe they should stop trying to release 10 phones a month and spend a little time on quality control.
@MVTom, I think all the carriers could take that advice.
With 2.2 it will have access to google voice search. Limited to only 2.2
also the gps is fixed by loading google nav, allow a minute or less, Then restart google nav. I have had luck when trying this to speed up connection. Not perfect. But they are viable workaroinds for”bing problem” and gps crappage/ map crappage.
Blame the carrier, not the phone manufactuer or the OS. Its Verizons phone at the end of the day.
@JW
Does Verizon load/design the crap UI’s these guys are putting out? I don’t believe they do. They are however resposible for the crap apps. they throw on there.
Blame samsung for the crappy gps problem, blame verizon for the crappy bing issues.
It has about the same number of issues as any new phone if not they wouldn’t get an ota less then a week after it is out just with Motorola they don’t release a list like this
Well the fact is that it is all VZ fault they take great phone’s and screw them.
It isn’t just this model that has these types of issues. I went through TWO defective Droid 2 models before I finally gave up and just told Verizon to switch me back to my old phone. Once my long-standing contract with them is up, I’m just going to switch to a “non-smart” prepaid phone. I’m TIRED of defective phones!!! Phone makers are using the public to be their testers, and these things should be tested BEFORE they are shipped to stores.
Glad I’m on Sprint, cause so far the Sprint version is the the best, then the t-mobile version, then at&t, then Verizon. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not sayin this cause I’m on Sprint. I have the evo, I naturally hate Samsung phones. Samsung have had bad track records when it comes 2 phones so I will never get a Samsung phone again till I see that corrected. I don’t really play games and the games that I do play run smoothly, and honestly from what I see that’s what the galaxy s phones are really for, playing games. and the touch wiz, though not that bad, I don’t know why leper complain, is not really for me, I prefer sense.
All the more reason Sprint kicks every other carriers behind.
I tried upgrading to a Samsung Vibrant on T-mobile from an iPhone a couple of weeks ago but returned due to all the crashing app problems and GPS issues I encountered. Quite often the dialer app would quit or the phone would shut-down in the middle of a call if the GPS was operating.
As a result I decided to switch to Verizon but found Droid-X phones are not available for some so on the assurances of Verizon reps I went with the Fascinate yesterday. I have been using it for a day now bu can only make one phone call using the Verizon number or Google Voice. After making one call the dialer just clicks and does not place a call, the number I try to call does not show up in the call log. Killing some apps allows me to make one call and then it stops placing calls again.
Also I notice many apps “Quit unexpectedly” and being forced to use BING search and maps seems counter-intuitive and self-defeating.
After spending days troubleshooting and returning phones I am seriously considering Getting a 3G hotspot adapter and using the iPhone and trying to get by wiht Skype and Gizmo5 over 3G and forgetting the voice plan all together.
Please don’t let me buy the latest and greatest….it never fails, so many issues with just released technolagy! PC’s Phones and so on. I’m really having major issues with my email coming into this Samsung Facinate. The mail program on the phone will just hang searching for mail. Most of the time I don’t get mail at all. Sometimes the mail I do get will vanish. The power really gets sucked up Fast…..the screen times out faster than the time is set to. The Voice Dial does not respond well.
Who is buying a Fascinate instead of a DX, DI or D2?
Nobody?
Yeah, I thought so.
I got the fascinate yesterday and can say the it falls very short of it’s name. The keys on the touch screen keyboard are so narrow that i have to hit them with the side of my fingers—and i have small hands! It took my 3 minutes to type a facebooks message that normally would have taken less than a minute.
There are no seperate alert sounds for voicemail, email and text.
The alarm, although set for a soft tone, blares my ringtone at 7am this morning.
The speaker cracks when a call is on speaker phone and the volume is past 1/2.
If the battery runs out, it takes far longer than any other smart phone i’ve ever had to recharge before you can use it.
The screen covers SUCK.
When you answer a call while on another call, you lose the screen and thus the first call.
The only cool feature for me is the ability to leave a written memo for youurself using the voice record feature.
Further more, the salesperson was so psyched about it and “jealous” that she couldn’t upgrade to it but mistakenly handed me a memo from her manager complaining about lack of sales in the store. Wonder what kind of perks they get for pushing the new product as I could have bought a blackberry and spent the SAME amount but was discouraged in doing so.
Guess who’s spending the morning in the verizon store today?
Well I returned the phone at the Verizon store today…..didn’t go so well since I wanted them to refund the $35.00 restocking fee since it was Verizon that pushed out a Buggy Phone. My 15 years as a customer didn’t pull much weight, got pretty ugly. I eventually got the credit and my old plan/Blackberry back. Oh the manager did not care or want to see anything from this site reguarding the bug/issues.
Just got my Samsung Facinate yesterday, was on the phone with tech support for a few hours, drove back to store. They swapped out with a new one.. My issues? Samsung Fascinate will not allow me to download apps from the market place. We’ve tried “uninstalling” (a few times we got apps to download but then it wouldn’t let anymore be downloaded..I am talking like 2-3 apps – not 20. So I know the issue wasn’t filling up my phone) Powering on and off didn’t help either. NOR DID 2 FACTORY RESTARTS! My browser worked great, and I could get my Gmail and GoDaddy emails. But I really don’t see the point of switching to Droid if I can’t download the apps..my little Window CE worked great for me to just check my email. I hope they can fix the bugs.. Verizon is sending me my 3rd NEW SAMSUNG FACINATION next week. It would be amazing if the 3rd phone didn’t have the same problem. Anyone know a way around this?
Someone actually wanted a Fascinate at my store today. I tried really hard to talk him out of it, telling him about how bad Bing was and how you couldn’t put Goggle on it at all, but he really wanted it so I set it up for him. He wasn’t too bright so I told him he really needed a task killer so I put ATK and Task manager on there and set both to high priority. His battery shouldn’t last more than 3 or 4 hours, restarting all the applications I told it to kill automatically. He should bring it back in a couple of days, pissed off at the battery and how sluggish his brand new phone is. I’ll sell him a Droid 2, Droid X or Incredible, doesn’t matter which one.
I have the Samsung Epic 4G…no issues whatsoever!!!! GPS works great!!!!! Love that it has Google already and has the FFC!!!!!! Its Verizon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t have ay issues with my Epic. Sad to see the Fascinate be the defective one of the bunch.
I don’t have ay issues with my Epic. Sad to see the Fascinate be the defective one of the bunch.
Having been in sprint with epic….and now having verizon is night and day….epic have everything functioning well and enjoying google experience….so fat here at verizon fascinate is ok…but certainly not enjoying true google experience….i happen to install launcher pro to be able to use google search but unable to use search button on fascinate with out rooting it and then having verizon say it will not provide froyo 2.2 for does having rooted there phone because verizon has forced bing on us.
@RRT2010, @Sean:
Yeah no issues with the Epic except an upload speed cap of 150 kbps on 3G. Keep on talking about how great a phone it is and the Fascinate is defective. Oh, and case you disagree, why don’t you post your Speedtest on 3g showing an upload speed of higher than > 150 kbps? Oh wait… you can’t.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=777165&page=1
And no, this problem isn’t seen on the Fascinate.
Now I don’t know about you, but I think data transfer on a smartphone is going to be like uh…the most important thing there is. So if the Epic has having upload problems on 3g, it makes these minor issues with the Fascinate look less and less like the ‘defective one of the bunch’
And not to hijack this thread but I think its hilarious everyone seems to think their Epic is the greatest phone ever when there is an obvious upload issue, which by far in my mind makes it the most defective Galaxy phone of the bunch.
http://community.sprint.com/baw/message/212163
http://androidforums.com/samsung-epic-4g/166945-lousy-down-up-load-speed-3g.html
http://androidforums.com/samsung-epic-4g/172761-samsungs-problem-cdma.html
If you have an Epic 4g, try the Speedtest app on 3g, you won’t get above 150 kbps upload.
I am waiting for my 3rd Samsung Facsination. My husband’s worked great (1st one) but mine has problems download apps. After #2 I was convienced that I would go back to an old Window Mobile phone or Droid but Facscination does have some cool features like the voice to text and nice screen, swipe so I am trying to adapt to Droid. If 3rd Fascination doesn’t work, I will probably go to Droid 2 w/slide out keyboard, but I am trying to work through not having a slideout keyboard. Tried a made at home stylus and have ordered stylus so maybe I can be quicker. Any advice for a Droid Newbie coming from Windows Mobile? I about had a heart attack when I though it was be a 5 step process to copy and paste, etc. Thanks!
Jesus…. did anyone remember that it’s used to make phone calls? The other sh*t is bound to have issues, and can hopefully be corrected with 2.2 and other updates. Beyond that, if you owned a company and another company said, “we’d give you a sh*tload to use our search engine (ie:bing),” what would you do? I’m sure all the “fixies” call this selling out. Well, get used to it. This is big business, and you can’t do sh*t about it. Remember kids, Big business even uses Nirvana to sell crap. So peel those ‘jeans’ off and welcome to the world we live in, or will live in past your pre-pubesent days.
Yeah, it has problems. But we can expect a few problems from a brand new phone. I have no doubt Verizon is addressing these issues and will be rolling out updates to fix them. It takes a little time for phones to start working to their potential. Don’t expect everything right away. Unfortunately, we are testers and we find the problems for the companies to fix.
my fascinate when booted up wont go past the first thing that pops up which is the samsung name after that there is an intro vid of the galaxy s then a verizon banner you can hear the music for those next to parts but cant see them just goes blank after it says samsung
just got my Fascinate. I love the phone but it takes forever for my company email to come in and then not all of them come in. I may end up going back to the Blackberry since this is proving to be inefficient so far…
Well,
I just spent a frustraiting hour or more at verizon store in mission valley san diego and their service sure has hit deep doodoo. I have had a fascinate since sept 9, The fascinate worked fine at first, but after the update it became a downdate. It will only sync in my car with a mystery phone book that has no people in it. It worked fine until the update (downdate). The manager in teh store tried to explain to me that verizon does not know why it does not work in my car but they did naot want to take care of the propblem as he told me that what happens if the computer in the car breaks then verizon will get sued and that is not good. I then asked if he could provide another fascinate to check and see if it was the phone or some other issue. No they could not do that as they do not have insurance for the emplooye to be outside of the store and yes they could get sued if the employee fell or broke somethingin my car. he then proceeded to tell me that there was no guarantee that it would ever download in a car and it was really not verizons reponsibliity to look into those things, it was the car manufacturer or phone maker. I explained that i thought when i bought a phone that says it has bluetooth and download capabilities that is what it should have. Agin i got that wrong. When i kept on telling him that it worked for a week or so, he said oh that can happen and it might even happen with another phone but they really did not know what phones worked in what cars. I am still fuming from the runaround and total lack of service. i almost went over to AT&T to get 3 iphones but am calming down a bit. Otherwise it is back to the trusty and slow blackberry. I have been a verizon customer for about 15+years and i have always touted their service, but i am left at a total blank.
@ alan My fascinate worked great for about 3 weeks of heavy use and now mine does the same thing yours does. Won’t load up past the intro stuff. Just goes blank after that. I’ll take it back and try out another one. If the next one has issues I’m switching to a droid incredible or a X.
This site sounds like a bunch of noobies. There are fixes for all of those problems. I have had a fascinate since it came out and it is by far the best phone verizon has come out with. The incredible was nice but the battery life was the worst of any android I’ve used yet. My Fascinate has been a pure google phone since day 2 of me owning it and it is faster than my incredible. You see there are simple things like Rooting, Clockwork Mod Custom Recovery and Custom Roms that get rid of all the bullshit apps that come preloaded and all the buggy lags that the phone has. Instead of complaining and getting multiple phones replaced by verizon, look up how to do stuff to your phone. This phone is made to hack and customize if you just want something with internet and e mail go to a blackberry or a piece of shit iphone with at@t
Also after the vzw update and so called google update, when i am in call, my screen timesout instantly and it keeps locking…pretty annoying when you are doing other things while on a call…anyone know how to fix that issue? it never happened before until i did the update today.
My samsung fascinate has done 2 weird things so far. 1) sometimes when i get a text from someone, on the notification bar on the top, it will say that its from someone else in my contacts list, but when i open it, it shows as the right person.
2) today this happened for about 10 minutes, i would tap on the messaging icon, and it would open an app that is under applications.
Anyone know how to custom a ringtone for contacts in my phone. It does not give me the option to give a diffrent ringtone to anyone. Email me plz at [email protected]
Just had the Samsung Fascinate for one month and in that time I have not received most of my calls, or any notification that I missed a call. In the past three days I had to turn the phone off and back on 6-7 times a day just to get the 3G signal to come back on so I could send a text or access my email. Sure the Fascinate has tons of bells and whistles but it is so frustrating not to be able to recieve calls or texts or access the web without turning off the phone every two hours…and by the time I have sent and resent “failed” texts the battery in the phone is dead and needs to be recharged (only after 3-4 hours of use) There is diffinately a bug in the Samsung Fascinate software. It takes beautiful clear pictures which look very pretty on the large screen, but I wanted a phone not just a camera.
Man – you are scaring the crap out of me – I have had my Fascinate for 2 weeks and so far it works…
My fascinate has been ok except for two major issues… I have to turn my phone off and on several times a day to get my email to update and sometimes I get texts from people where the words have been changed to symbols… like wingdings. It so strange because one text will be fine and then the next is messed up then goes fine again. ANy suggestions?
i have had my fascinate for about a week n yesterday i was in the middle of texting someone n it stopped… says every message i send fails… she can recieve messages from other phones but i cant send her any… also when i tried to send her messages my phone sent them to other people in my contacts… any one no wat this is about???
I cannot download apps through the Market app. It always tells me that download was unsuccessful. I’ve had this problem only a few weeks after owning it.
The Fascinate has a pretty screen and that’s about it….the e-mail interface is literally crap even compared to Blackberry’s of 5 or 6 years ago. I’ve had mine for two days and it’s going back tomorrow for a new Blackberry Torch or a Motorola Droid X. Any watchouts on the Droid X??
For 44. Sara..I have the same problem at times..how do I solve it without calling verizon?
I can not get my incoming bell to ring on vioce only
When I receive a txt over 160 characters, it comes in as 2 parts and the 2nd part is symbols. anyone else?
I’ve had a Fascinate a couple of weeks and the only complaint i have is the black screen appearance when i make or recieve a call..if i call anyone..even verizon its self i can not get past that black screen.. and then when they ask for my last 4 of SS,, i can relite screen by pressing the on.off button but as soon as i stop that i can only squeeze in 1 number at a time.. thus being to slow and unacceptable.. help
Hey Ryan D.
how about some adresses for sites to get apps etc that will work around these fascinate bugs.
mainly that blank screen when in a call…
and yes i am a noobie with smart phones..
you can contact me [email protected]
The Fascination is the worst phone I have had. From speakerphone distortion, screen going blank, errors which stop the phone in its tracks when changing from one function to another right while I’m busy or in heavy traffic and need it to work, on and on. I would never recommend it. Also as someone else pointed up the keys for letters and numbers are dinky and very hard to use, particularly while driving trying to get to a phone number in the Contacts.
NOT RECOMMENDED.
Ive had my Fascinate for about three months so far and the only problem I have had with it is the “force close” problem. But i did a quick simple factory reset and no problems since. Other than that, the phone has been perfect for me. I dont ever use the GPS cause i have a real one, so theres no need for it. The only problems that can come from a carrier are service related. Such as signal strength and dropped calls. Other than that, the manufacturer is the one to blame. And SOME of the time, whether people want to admit it or not… Its cause they dont know how to use the phone properly and need someone else to blame because they’re too ashamed to admit it.
Ditto Jeff. I too have the Fascinate and love it. I have tried several different phones and what I thought were glitches were often just setting-related. Googling to find a resolution to a problem proved to be more helpful then speaking to Tech Support. To those having download problems with Marketplace, you will need an sd card. I had been told, you didn’t. Whether that is the way it s/b or not, it fixed things for me.
all your download problems are now resolved…………i had the same problem with my fascinate…what u need to do is update your bing program….just tap bing in ur program..it’s going to prompt for update……problem solve…proceed to android market and let the fun begin :-)