Discovered More Broken Stuff After ICS Upgrade

So there is plenty wrong with my Captivate Glide after Samsung botched the ICS upgrade. The keyboard no longer lights up, the phone app freezes and crashes, Bluetooth crashes, apps that were previously stable crash at random, and the phone locks up at random.

I had to reboot the phone three times yesterday, which is a new record for this phone. I felt like I had my BlackBerry Torch again and it was fucking miserable.

Today I discovered that the Email app is broken and I can’t read any email on my Exchange account. It downloads the messages, but you can’t see or open them, and the app gives random connection errors.

I really hope that Samsung knows that they need to fix and re-release the update as soon as possible, because this is a really big botch-up, and how they handle this will determine whether my next phone will be a Samsung or not.

Samsung Captivate Glide ICS Update Removed from Website

If you didn’t know, the ICS update for the Samsung Captivate Glide was pulled off of the Samsung website. The update that they initially released disabled the backlight on the keyboard completely, caused the phone app to start crashing, and in my case, caused Bluetooth crashes when pairing with my VW Passat.

I spoke with AT&T support, who were clueless, and I spoke with Samsung support, who didn’t even realize that the update has been pulled from the website. Since Samsung pulled the update, it means you can expect a fix (hopefully) in the near future. They don’t need more bad press right now.

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. 

64GB MicroSD in my Samsung Captivate Glide

I have to admit that I’m a little bit spoiled by my phone. Samsung’s Captivate Glide is one of the few devices that can accommodate a 64GB MicroSD card. Between Spotify and my own collection, I’m drowning in music all the time, and I quite like it. I just need to remember to make and sync new Spotify playlists on a more regular basis.