Sheeple are Getting Their S4s Today

Everywhere I go I’m bombarded with more Samsung S4 marketing mush and excited sheeple gushing over their new S4s. In a few more days I figure I’ll start seeing all the posts complaining about the bugs and the busted apps that shipped with it from Samsung, and how there’s hardly any storage left on the 16GB model, because TouchWiz takes up 6-8GB of storage by itself. 

Fucking sheeple. After Samsung’s catastrophic ICS update to my Captivate Glide that virtually bricked it, and then choosing not to fix an 8 month old clipboard bug that forces my S3 to reboot at random, I’m done with Samsung. 

If HTC had put a real camera and a MicroSD slot in the One, it would’ve saved the company. Maybe they’ll be smart enough to refresh the device later this year with a Snapdragon 800, a real camera, and an SD slot. Unlikely, but THAT would ACTUALLY save the company.

I’m waiting for LG’s event in May to see if they’ll ship the Optimus G Pro with 4.2.2. If that doesn’t happen, I’ll wait to see what Google has to say during I/O and maybe a Motorola X Phone is in my future.

But as far as phones are concerned, I’m done with Samsung, and HTC needs to get their head out of their collective ass to get my money.

ICS Upgrade for Samsung Captivate Glide Available

If you haven’t been on top of Android news, you might’ve missed that AT&T officially released the ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich/Android 4.0.4) upgrade for the Samsung Captivate Glide (through Samsung’s Kies desktop software which sucks). If you’re a Mac user running Mountain Lion, guess what, Kies is not available so just go ahead and fire up Parallels, Boot Camp, or VMWare and Windoze right now, because you’ll need it.

There was an announcement like 6 months ago that this update was coming, and it’s finally here, but there is one unfortunate problem:

THE KEYBOARD BACKLIGHT DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE!

I bought a phone with a backlit keyboard, because I’m a clumsy typer on a touch screen, predictive text isn’t all that great, and voice recognition is still hit-or-miss. One of the best parts of having a backlit keyboard was being able to send a text in the middle of the night from bed, or in a dark, dark place, FROM THE KEYBOARD!

I’m not going to root my phone to fix this, damnit. This is the result of lazy coding on the part of both Samsung and AT&T. Can you tell me how this made it through alpha and beta testing without anyone noticing that the FUCKING LIGHTS BEHIND THE KEYS DIDN’T COME ON ANYMORE?! I expect a bug fix with the quickness. 

I did learn a valuable lesson with this phone, and it’s simple. If your phone has a keyboard and it’s not a Motorola Droid, expect both the carrier and the manufacturer to pretend that it doesn’t exist after it’s been released into the wild. Expect to wait months and months for major software updates, and forget about small bug fixes. The only reason the manufacturer put the phone out was to steal some sales from Motorola, and when they realize that they haven’t, they pretend the phone never happened.