Samsung Galaxy S2 and Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) 4.0.4 Flawed

Last Thursday night when I turned my phone on for the first time that week, I was pleasantly surprised to find there was finally a operating system (OS) update for my phone's OS running Gingerbread. Since I had been anxious to try Chrome on my phone and it was only available on Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), the OS update, I immediately chose to go ahead and update to ICS 4.0.4. Since the Jellybean update has already come out I thought I would be happy to be only one generation behind the latest OS after a year of waiting for ICS due to Sprint and Samsung being so slow to release the update.

The Samsung Galaxy S2 phone had always worked flawlessly, until...

The update went very smooth and the phone rebooted with the new OS. I used the phone for Twitter, Facebook and SMS messages that night and went to bed happy that my phone had finally been updated to the long promised ICS.

Then I woke up and found the Wi-Fi wasn't connected, even though it showed a strong signal and said it was connected to my home Wi-Fi. I restarted the phone using the new Restart choice on power off. The Wi-Fi connected after the restart. Later I noticed the Wi-Fi had quit working again. This time I chose to cycle the Wi-Fi alone rather than restarting the phone. Again the phone connected to the Wi-Fi. Being in the same room as the Wi-Fi router doesn't seem to help the problem. This pattern has continued ever since.

All other Wi-Fi devices continue to work normally.

This morning, Sunday, I was trying to add a comment to someone's Facebook entry. I tried using the "Speak Now' function and found it didn't work. I canceled the attempt and decided to try Speak Now in another application. I tried SMS texting and then tried a note taking application I had installed. Neither of these applications worked with Speak Now. I can only guess what other "features" no longer work. This update, which is most definitely not an upgrade, has turned into a disaster.

I have tried googling for suggestions to fix the Wi-Fi issue and have tried some of the suggestions. There appear to be a lot of people having related issues. I tried setting the Wi-Fi to only connect at 2.4GHz rather than the default of auto, which had the most hope, but it didn't work. None of the suggestions appear to fix the problem. Now I can look forward to dealing with Sprint and Samsung support for fixing these problems if even they know how. Given Sprint and Samsung's track record on releasing updates a year or more after they are available doesn't make the future of this phone look promising.

Makes me consider all the promises made with the Samsung Galaxy S3 that just came out. They all promise the world when they come out and never live up to expectations. All I want is a smartphone that works and uses the current operating system. Since an iPhone isn't an option since I can't stand their control-freak attitude, and Microsoft seems too incompetent to release a phone of any sort I may just go back to a dumb phone.

BlackBerry & RIM Comments

My first smart phone was a Palm Treo 755p. Oh how I miss that phone with it's stylus and touch screen. I replaced it with a RIM BlackBerry 8330 eventually. Even initially I had trouble with the BlackBerry. The first phone I had, I returned to the store and went home with a Samsung Insight instead. I ended up returning the insight after accidentally texting my wife's aunt in California at 4:30AM her time. Thankfully, it was a landline and the message didn't get delivered. Didn't get along well with the Insight's touch screen. I finally decided my first impression of BlackBerry must be wrong and it couldn't really be that bad.

I took another BlackBerry home and tried installing the desktop software on my 64-bit Vista Home Premium computer. No luck, the software didn't support 64-bit Vista. Eventually, I ended up just using the BlackBerry as a USB drive to transfer data. This all happened nearly two years ago, and my BlackBerry contract with Sprint is going to expire this coming spring.

I continued being disappointed with the BlackBerry. Installing apps was always a pain. My Treo 755p had long had the Slingbox app to watch my cable TV from anywhere, which never became available for my model 8330. Installing updates on the BlackBerry often caused a regression to an application or made the experience less fulfilling.

The Vista 64-bit computer has since been upgraded to 64-bit Win 7 Ultimate.

This morning I decided to try an app called Flixter that I learned about on InfoWorld.com. Sounded like it might be an interesting application. The link took me to appworld on blackberry.com. It wanted to install something called "Blackberry AppWorld Installer". I tried installing using Firefox with no luck. Tried using an IE window in Firefox with no luck. Finally started up IE 8 and tried installing from there. It seemed to install, but the connection to the phone didn't seem to work enough to satisfy the installation web page. Decided enough was enough and looked for help on the BlackBerry web site. What I quickly found was their recommended work around was to use a compatible operating system on my computer to install and use their application. In disgust I uninstalled Blackberry AppWorld Installer using the Control Panel.

Imagine the arrogance involved with a phone application (or web site or phone vendor) requiring that I use a compatible operating system on my computer to load their application. Although I have another 32-bit Win 7 Home Premium and three 32-bit XP @Home computers which might be compatible, they are not my primary computer. I will not defile them with this software.  So I hereby decree, I will no longer install anything related to Blackberry on either my computer or the phone itself and will begin investigating Android phones to replace the BlackBerry. If I can't find a phone compatible with my needs then I'll do without a so-called smartphone and save lots of money each month. Oh how I miss my Palm Treo. Palm sort of reminds me of the Commodore story of a better product failing because they couldn't sell it to save themselves.

Me, Sprint and SamsClub

About a month ago I decided to replace my Palm Treo 755P because it kept rebooting every morning the first time I tried to use it. That got really old. On April 10, I was in the local Sam's Club and stopped at the phone Kiosk, which I found is run by a Radio Shack company. I left with a BlackBerry Curve 8330 and spent about a week with it. I was not really satisfied with it as a replacement for my Treo 755P so I returned it for a Samsung Instinct S520. I found the Instinct looked really nice, but didn't have any of the applications I used constantly and the news was through the browser rather than a standalone application like on the Treo and BlackBerry. Earlier this week I decided to take the Instinct back and get another BlackBerry. I went back to the Sam's Club and admitted my embarrassment at having to return yet another phone and get another BlackBerry. They said no problem and replaced the phone.

Some of the problems I experienced in this comedic episode were:

1. The Treo thinks of itself as the top dog and will accept Bluetooth address entries from anywhere, but won't share them with another phone.
2. The Sam's Club phone kiosk has no means to transfer your address book, but the Sprint Service Center is willing to do it for you.
3. The Treo had a incredible Address book capability and the Samsung address book was pathetic. Having more than a hundred entries in my address book and finding the Instinct stored them using the first name gave me nothing but grief. Quick, what's the first name of your dentist? You had to scroll through all the names on the touchscreen and not click on one and start a call. There was a tab thingy that allowed you to quickly change the first letter of the first name you were trying to locate, which had minimal usefulness.
   
4. The Instinct touchscreen takes a lot of getting used to. The day after I got it, on a Sunday morning at 6:00AM, I was trying to text my son. Somehow I ended up texting my son, a co-worker I hadn't seen in more than a year, and my wife's 70+ year old aunt in California. Thank God my wife's aunt's phone was a land line and the text message failed at 5:00AM on a Sunday morning. Later I got involved in a confused conversation with my co-worker who didn't know who I was based on my phone number and assumed he was talking to a relative of his.

Had a tooth pulled yesterday, so decided to go home after Sam's Club rather than go to the Sprint Service Center. On the way home I found my tooth was bleeding profusely and I needed to put more gauze on it and lay down to make it eventually slow down. Today it's not bleeding , but I had to drink a pot of coffee at room temperature.

Well I'm about to leave for the Sprint Service Center I'll follow up with how things go there? Still got some tasks and questions about the BlackBerry, such as:

1. Transfer address book
2. Setup email and make sure account is set up correctly for the BlackBerry
3. Ask how to add/remove apps (Doc2Go) using my credit card and not going to phone bill
4. Same w/ Ringtones
5. How to change the Background image
6. How to move apps (MySpace which I don't use and Facebook which I do use).

Well I'm back and the Sprint Service Center came through like a champ. They answered all my questions above. They showed me:

1. Done, quickly. Looks like they managed to transfer all the phone numbers and the email addresses including multiple for one person. The street addresses don't seem to have been transfered.
2. They showed me how to setup my email accounts using sprint.blackberry.com. I had to create a new blackberry account and then I just typed in the credentials for both my prime accounts.
3. Suggested I go to crackberry.com for the downloading and visiting the forums to get answers. They also recommended I visit the sprint downloads site.
   
4. See number 3.
5. See number 3.
6. The answer was easy, you find the app and click Move then use the ball to move it to where you want.

So I'm happy with Sprint and my BlackBerry. Not so with Gateway support as I'll explain in a post soon.