Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

As I posted on August 28, I got a Samsung Captivate, their Galaxy S series phone on AT&T's network. After having it for a day, I was pleased with it. Now that I've had it a couple weeks, I thought I'd give an update.

Remember how I had trouble with the charger staying plugged in? Well, that was user error. There's a sliding cover on the USB-in port that I didn't realize existed, and if I slide it open completely, the charger stays in perfectly.

I still love how easily the google services integrate. Talk, mail, maps, contacts... all at my fingertips.

One problem I've had, which other people have had as well, though far worse, according to a cursory google, is that it turns itself off at random. It's only done it 3 or 4 times since I got it, which is more than it ought, but less than the 5 times a day reported by another user in the forums. If it does it again, I'll probably go by the AT&T store and exchange it for a new one before the 30-day period is up (Sept 26).

It's convenient to have so I can check email before bed, or twitter, or look something up on the internet without having to turn on my computer. At Dragon*Con, when I could actually connect to the wifi in the Marriott (I had better luck in my room than in the public areas, which is odd, because they only provide wifi in the public areas), it worked great. I also used the wifi at the ER.

I've installed a few more apps since then. In addition to Pocket Liga (for German football), Beer Cloud (for beer reviews), and BJCP (for beer style standards), I now have Leo (the German-English dictionary), a Bejeweled clone, poke a mole (like whack a mole), word search, twitter, facebook, and the weather channel forecast widget. I've also loaded about a GB of mp3s on it.

Music Player doesn't import your itunes playlists, but you can create your own. Since I primarily put music on when whatever's playing on NPR is boring (frex, Fresh Air interviews with people I don't care about; Back Porch Music when I'm not in the mood for it), this isn't much of an issue for me. I plug it into my 1/8" aux jack and tell it to shuffle all. One downside is that the music pauses when you get a notification (email, whatever) for a second or so. That may happen with iPhone as well, but I obviously don't have one for comparison purposes.

In summary: I still love my Android phone.