How Disappointing...

[mlacher]

I would just like to say how incredibly disappointed I am by this phone.  I purchased the Fascinate 3 weeks ago at a Verizon store, as part of the Buy 1 Get 1 free promotion.  I combined two single accounts (both over $100 a month), change our plans to a family plan, and purchased the two new phones.  Although our salesman was great, when he installed LauncherPro on our Fascinates, he "deleted the Samsung apps" that came with the phone.  When I realized a few days later that I actually wanted these original features back, I called the store, and they instructed me to call Tech Support.  TS instructed me to do a hard reset on my phone, and in doing so, it caused the phone to crash in it's entirety.  In order to have a working phone that evening, I had to go back to the store and get it replaced.

Sadly mistaken, I thought this was the end of my issues...

Not long after getting the first phone, I noticed the terrible echo of myself in the earpiece of the phone.  It took a while, but I realized that if I held the phone away from my face, I would no longer hear it.  Unfortunately, holding the phone away from my face activated the screen, and we both would inadvertantly keep hitting the onscreen buttons (particularly mute).  We were told on numerous occasions that (especially when calling landlines) the call quality was horrible.  To the point that people said it was easier to hold a conversation over text, since it sounded like I was "calling from a rotary phone in the middle of the desert."  Still, I pushed thru, hoping things would improve.  They haven't...

From the beginning, we both noticed that the phone would not hold a battery charge for an entire day.  Within the two weeks that we've had this phone, I now have to bring a charger with me to work, as my phone will not hold a charge from 8:30 am (when I take it off the charger) to 6:00 pm (when I get back home from work).  Not only are the phones no longer charging, they are also no longer finding a signal.  I have *228-ed galore, done battery pulls, factory resets, and hard resets, with no signal in sight.  After speaking with tech support twice in 12 hours, they said they could send me another new phone, or I could take advantage of the 30 day return policy, and exchange it for a different one.  But that they wouldn't honor the Buy 1 Get 1 Free promotion for a different phone.  After speaking to the second representative, and decided that it would be best for me to exchange the phone, things still got drastically worse.  Not only would the phone only find a signal for about 10% of the rest of the day, it then decided to lock up completely.  After numerous battery pulls, with no outcome, the phone decided it was out of memory, and that I needed to delete messages, contacts, or other items to free my memory.  My memory card was reading 14.47 GB unused, and the hard storage on the phone was reading 1.67 unused.  A few minutes later, I started getting popups that would read "application (fill in the blank) has failed, please terminate" with the force close button.  However, when the phone did decide to react to pushing the button, it would just send another popup.  Since I do not have a home phone, I had to wait over an hour for my fiancee to come home (with his phone) so I could call tech support.  Again.  We were able to do a force reset on the phone, which, upon turning the phone back on, did not actually reset the phone at all.  It did, however, provide me enough time without a popup in order to do the hard reset thru the menu of the phone.

Needless to say, I will be re-visiting a Verizon store tomorrow evening, to replace this overgrown paperweight.  It amazes me that while on the phone with TS, all three have been oh-so-kind to state "I'm sorry you're having issues with this phone, and I completely understand, but you have to admit, it has a great screen quality."  REALLY?!?  Yes, the screen is great.  BUT THE PHONE DOES NOT WORK!!

If you are reading this forum, debating the purchase of a Fascinate, please, don't waste your time, energy, or money!  I purchased this phone to replace a Blackberry Curve 8330, and although the BB had it's own issues (trackball anyone), I would GLADLY take my Blackberry back!  Never once did I have the issues with a BB that I am having with this phone.  Please Verizon, discontinue the frustration, and trash these phones before selling them to the public any longer!

[LandLockedPH]

When LauncherPro was installed, it didn't delete the Samsung widgets.  If you would have uninstalled LauncherPro, everything would have been back to normal.  Why a salesperson would install that for you without giving you a chance to try the Samsung launcher is beyond me and requires a serious discussion with his/her manager.

As for the other issues you've experienced... yes, battery life sucks when compared with BB.  I also came from a Curve.  But the rest of the issues you've described don't make sense.  I'd suggest letting Verizon replace the phone you got and give it a try.  Stock first... then start adding apps.  In general, tech support is not well trained on these various devices.

I've had no issue (other than GPS taking too long to lock on) with my two Fascinates.

[mlacher]

Correct, LauncherPro did not delete the Samsung widgets.  The salesman at the store did.  And how/why that happened has been discussed with his manager, so hopefully it doesn't happen again.

Not only does the battery life suck... the call quality sucks, the performance sucks, it rarely has anything better than 1 bar of signal, and that's if I'm standing perfectly still, outdoors, with no wind, and HAPPEN to get lucky.  It's so bad that about one out of every 3-4 texts I send come back as "delivery failed".  I've had numerous people text me and tell me that they've tried to call me, but it's going straight to voicemail.  And no, it's not at the same location, or even from the same people.  It has happened while I've been at work, at home, on the road, at friend's houses, and at family's houses, all in different cities, miles apart from each other.  I can't remember the last time I was actually on a phone call that it didn't drop the call for me.

And if I allow them to send me a new phone, by the time I get it and let it do it's thing for a couple of days, I'm out of my 30 day return window.  If my fiancee wasn't having the same issues (also in different locations), I would think I just got a crappy phone, and wait for the replacement.

[PJNC284]

What apps are you referring to?  There's a 0% chance that the rep deleted any of the apps as he would've had to root your device which isn't going to happen in the store otherwise the rep would be jobless.  The native samsung widgets don't work with 3rd party launchers but  you can clear the defaults and switch back to regular touch wiz to get them back.

[mlacher]

Please don't tell me that "There's a 0% chance that the rep deleted any of the apps as he would've had to root your device which isn't going to happen in the store otherwise the rep would be jobless."  I have already talked to that store manager, and the salesman fully admitted to deleting whatever it was from the phone.  It wasn't just simply that they didn't work with third party launchers, or else the hard reset would have worked.  Whatever it is that he did, he ended up deleting key information that makes the phone work, therefore rendering it useless.  Which is why they replaced it.

[PJNC284]

What was it that he supposedly deleted then? Simple fact is that unless he rooted it in the store (highly unlikely), there is nothing that you can remove that can't be re-added from the market. 

[LandLockedPH]

This sounds like a bogus message thread to me.  If others were having the issues that mlacher is claiming, the phone wouldn't be one of the most highly rated ones (over 5 million sold) in the world.

Moving on...

[AFguy]

I have had the Samsung Fascinate for 2 weeks now and haven't had any issues.  Sounds like the OP lives in an area that does not get a very good VZW signal, thus causing the signal problems, voice issues, and fast battery drain.  Also, it seems like the OP would be better off with a non-smartphone as his/her knowledge of this phone isn't very accurate. What is it with EVERYBODY wanting smartphones these days when they do'nt know how to use them.  Geesh.

[mlacher]

How funny that I'm told I'm the only one having issues with this phone, when there are THOUSANDS of posts of other users with similar issues.  I have stated in every post that the issue with the first one needing to be replaced were not the phone itself, yet something that the salesman did.  No, I don't know the specs of what he did, nor do I care.  Not my problem.  That situation was already remedied, and only included in the story as part of my frustration.

As far as living in an area that does not get a very good signal, I have had zero problems with a signal in the past, and even spoke with TS about the possibility that there were outages, and they said they had no reports of that.  Funny that even TS said they've heard from multiple people about the poor reception of these phones.

And I don't know why you feel it is appropriate to suggest that I don't know anything about smartphones.  I will in no way suggest that I am highly technically oriented, but I can certainly hold my own with a phone, smart or not.  And, as previously stated, I did own a smartphone before, for over two years as a matter of fact, and had no issues there, other than the silly Blackberry trackball issues that have now been resolved by Blackberry.  I simply put into one thread what issues I was having, also having read about most of the same issues (not including the in-store issue) throughout the Samsung Fascinate message boards.

[AFguy]

You said in your original post: 

  "If you are reading this forum, debating the purchase of a Fascinate, please, don't waste your time, energy, or money!.... Please Verizon, discontinue the frustration, and trash these phones before selling them to the public any longer!"

"I simply put into one thread what issues I was having, also having read about most of the same issues (not including the in-store issue) throughout the Samsung Fascinate message boards."

Your remarks on your original post were more than just stating your problems with the phone.  Read your posts again.

[Kh-Phil]

Dear Community Members,

This thread appears to be taking a different direction. Please avoid any personal attacks or criticism.

While we encourage debates and discussions, we would like it to be carried out in a climate of mutual respect.

Thanks,

Paul-D
Community Moderator

[PJNC284]

Most people don't understand that Blackberries and Androids are worlds apart and operate differently and that leads to more problems.  That said, the sidetone (echo on calls) and weaker than usual cell signal are known issues and can hopefully be fixed with an update.  I'm just curious about what apps this rep "removed".  You said that you decided you wanted to use them so I figured you knew what they were.

[mlacher]

I completely understand that the Blackberries and Androids are worlds apart.  Part of the reason I switched to an Android...  Blackberry can't touch the processing speed of an Android right now.  Hopefully, they'll re-evaluate that within themselves, and come up with a way to compete with the Android.  And yes, my issues are known issues, and hoping they'll get fixed with an update is nothing short of hopes and dreams, and I need to make the decision within the next few days if I'm willing to "wait and see" what might come of the update, since it has not yet been released.  I feel that is not the best decision for me, since I will be out of my 30 day return window, having to wait another year until I'm eligible for an upgrade again.

I'm not certain what the rep removed.  He simply stated "I have installed LauncherPro for you, and removed all of the Samsung..." (I can't recall exactly what word he used here, because it was after 9 pm, we had been at the store for 2 hours, and I didn't think I needed to really pay that much attention to what he said).   I realized that I wanted to use some of the Samsung widgets (like the clock, task manager, buddies now, etc).  I called Verizon tech support (so I didn't screw anything up on my own), and they instructed me to uninstall LauncherPro.  When I did, I IMMEDIATELY got popups that certain applications needed to force close, and certain files were not found.  They had me reboot, hoping to clear the errors, and when I did, we got different errors.  We did a phone wipe, hoping to restore to the original settings, but whatever it was that the rep did apparently deleted certain files or codes, or SOMEthing necessary to make the phone function, because even though TS was walking me thru the exact steps (while I was on a landline), it would not ever restart.  Kept giving error messages that (I was told by TS) were indicative that I was missing pertinent operating information.

Like I said, I can tell you what he said to me in store, but since he did not show me what he was doing, I have NO idea what was actually done.  Removing LauncherPro, rebooting, and hard resets did not help, therefore, the phone was completely unusable, requiring a replacement.  The manager was made aware of the situation, spoke to the employee, and replaced both of my phones without hesitation.

[Herbb623]

I bought 3 new Fascinates back on 9/9 when they came out.

They are by far the best phones I've ever had from Verizon ( been with them 20 years ).

They work great...as advertised..all three.

Only exception is that the GPS on all 3 takes a good 5 minutes to get a lock, but once it does, its fine.

We've used messaging, phone, emails, google mail, contacts and schedule syncing, other email syncing...

Have downloaded lots of apps...some good...some bad..but all worked OK.

The samsung touchwiz along with swype is a great interface..and yes..I'm even OK with Bing.

( though to be honest...I would like the choice to choose bing or google..but bing can be default

initially.  )

I've downloaded, installed and use google maps, places and navigation.  It was simple and painless.

Once froyo ..android 2.2 comes along..I expect it to work even better.

And I'm sure Samsung / Verizon is working on fixing some other small bugs, like the GPS, as well.

Sorry, but these are really good phones from my experience so far !!!!

All new devices have some minor, initial 'issues'....All of which are usually resolved after a couple months.

[yellowboy74]

I've had my phone for over a month now and still loving it.Why don't you go to the Verizon Wireless site, go to smartphones and look at the review that hundreds of people are posting about how they love this phone. You are coming from a blackberry, it will take a while for you to adjust to android. But no need to trash Verizon and tell them to stop selling the phones when it is the hottest phone they have on their line-up right now.  I can relate to you with the call quality issues with the phone but they went away on their own after a few days. FYI , no phone is perfect when they are first released and you don't believe me go to Droid X , Incredible, and Droid 2 threads and look at all the issues they are having.

[fascinated_25]

I would love to be able to contact this salesman if he was able to delete all the preloaded crap on this phone, because other than all the **bleep** preloaded apps this is the best phone i have ever had, or anyone else that i know. The phone runs great and operates wonderful. I've had no problems with my samsung fascinate and its been nearly three weeks. Great phone!!! I will suggest it to everyone i know! Also out of the two other smart phones in my home ( LG Ally, and Moto Droid) the Fascinate has the best wireless reception. And i work in a customer support center, TS is only telling you that they are experiencing problems with that phone to make you feel better about yourself. sorry