Honest Critique of Samsung Focus Coming From iPhone 4

[scottcraft]

I am pleased with the battery on my trophy. It's not iPhone 4 good, but it lasts longer than my Motorola droid and seems a lot more consistent.

Sent from my Windows 7 phone using Board Express

 

[JohnMKeynes]

Yeah, you're not going to beat that iPhone 4 battery. It's a beast. It'd be nice if carriers like Samsung would up themselves to 1800mAh. With the battery saving you see in an AMOLED screen, it could well top the iPhone 4 by leagues.

In any case, there are some thigns you can do to improve the battery life. Turn on medium brightness, keep wi-fi off unless you're actually using it, keep your background black (White light consumes something like three times the power), turn off location services, turn off "Find my phone", and turn off Feedback. Also, turn your e-mail on to that mode where it only grabs them when you request them.

Once I did all those things, I noticed a significant jump in battery life. Once the phone isn't constantly pinging a number of assorted services for data, it's life improves a great deal. I can easily cruise through a day's use, or more, on my Focus. I only typically need to charge it midway through the day if I've had a marathon, two hour gaming session or something.

Yeah I did all those suggestions except the location one. Battery life did a little better today. But this can solved by having a spare battery charging since most of consumption is during the gym.

My 32 SD Card came in the mail. Yes!

 

[GekkoAce]

My motive to try out the Windows Phone 7 was because I loved the UI interface when playing around with it in the store. I have to say also is that I loved my iPhone 4. I used it for everything. However I had been using the iPhone OS for about three years now. Just seriously was sick of looking at the same old screen interface.

I just choose to try it now since there was so much buzz around WP7 mango and how it was going to bring up to par with iOS 4. So I figured I sell my iPhone 4 and get maximum value before the iPhone 5 comes out and buy a used Samsung Focus. Then just wait it out and see what Mango devices come out.

I purchased my Samsung Focus in mind condition for $160 off of Craigslist(which is a story in itself).

I played around with the phone almost all day. I currently have the the 7390 build. I'll just go ahead and provide quick summary:

-Display is simply stunning! I'm coming from an iPhone 4 and still was surprised how rich the colors looked. It's not as sharp as the iPhone 4 retina display but that's a tradeoff which in my opinion only matters when you're reading text like on forums such as these.

- OS goes without saying is breathe of fresh air. There is nothing there that I miss coming from iOS. Again this is on a non-Mango build. I know it's just one day use but the buzz around WP7 was how it was missing so many features. I simply have not come across any as of yet.

- Apps is somewhat of a mixed bag. Some apps like Youtube by Liveworm just shows what kind of apps can be developed on this OS and tools. Most of the vital apps I used on iOS 4 are there but with time and popularity hopefully this will improve. Again, there isn't one important app that's missing on my WP7.

- Hardware on this Samsung focus is nice but not great. What sells this phone is the Super AMOLED display and thinness. The phone is much lighter than iPhone which has it's tradeoffs. I can't really critique the camera, or the battery since I haven't used it enough.

However my biggest complaint with the phone is the capacitive buttons. These things are driving me insane! Okay they're not that bad however whoever decided to make this design decision should be fired. I know Samsung was going for aesthetic appeal here but bring back hardware buttons!

Again, I'm loving my device so far. Not missing my iPhone 4 at all.

I agree! I have a focus and those capacitive buttons are horrible. It seems like others agree and I've heard on a podcast (WPCentral a week or two ago) that they are looking for a solution in the OS, for example; an option that requires you to hold the button to activate it.

You should try Mango RTM! I installed it on my Focus and it worked first try! It's amazing.

Build 7720 - Now updated with keeping chevron and how to add more languages - xda-developers

-Aaron

 

[GekkoAce]

My biggest annoyance with WP7 during my workouts is that the longest screen lock setting is 5 minutes. I wish there was a 10 minutes or no lock timer.

 

[VernonEL]

Push

Also will check my email here and there.

I'm not exactly sure what you meant there, but with the way that email syncing works currently, I'm fairly confident that choosing "push", instead of hour or so intervals, or even manually checking, uses less power.

It was explained to me like this: "Timed or manual syncing requires the device to send an out going signal for several seconds, where push is more like a a text message. The device is aways ready to receive a message, but it doesn't use any power reaching out trying to grab one."

Maybe there's is a better way to explain it, but that makes sense to me. I have five accounts syncing email with my phone, and all are set on push. Some days are very heavy days for email, and others are very light. I have not noticed a real difference in power consumption either way, although it's certainly not something that's very objective.