Thinking of purchasing a Fascinate

[converge12]

Hey guys,
I am thinking of purchasing a certified used Fascinate to a) have another phone to play with and b) lock myself into the unlimited data plan before VZW cuts me off this summer (i am month to month right now.)

is it a good phone? i know the screen is brilliant. how is the battery life? i have a Dinc and it cant be worse than that. how is the dev community? is cm7 available?

any thoughts or opinions would be great.. thanks.

 

[superchunkwii]

I think its a great phone and we have a great dev community. However, it won't help you lock in unlimited. As soon as anyone upgrades to a lte phone you'll be forced to get a new plan. That's what happened when 3g came out and it will happen with 4g on all big carriers. I.e. at&t peeps will lose their grandfather clause too with lte. Sucks but its how they work.

sent from Froyo'd Fascinate!

 

[solido888]

Punk.Kaos is working on a CM7 build currently. He has an alpha posted in the dev section, and many people (including myself) are salivating for his next release.

 

[converge12]

I think its a great phone and we have a great dev community. However, it won't help you lock in unlimited. As soon as anyone upgrades to a lte phone you'll be forced to get a new plan. That's what happened when 3g came out and it will happen with 4g on all big carriers. I.e. at&t peeps will lose their grandfather clause too with lte. Sucks but its how they work.

sent from Froyo'd Fascinate!

i have no plans to upgrade to a 4g phone at this time, at least not through verizon. i am only looking to secure my $29.99 unlimited data for the time being.

 

[archalon]

Verizon hates me; Its an argument every time I get a new phone, but I insist on keeping my exisiting plan.

Im paying Alltell rates from a plan 4 years old. To get the exact same service branded 'Verizon', Id have to pay $25 more a month for two phones.

Its all a game. If you like your plan after your contract, they cant force you to change unless you go to LTE or something that isnt supported on your current plan.

 

[droiddoes69]

it's a great phone! lots of potential, and, if you read everything you can in the fascinate forums here, you will learn a lot. the screen was what made me choose it over the droid x. i don't regret it at all.

 

[toastedoats]

Battery and Screen have to go to the fascinate but if your looking at ROMs I would stick with the DINC. There is no groundbreaking or impressive ROM development out here for the fascinate. So you wont see a fully functional Ultimate Droid, MIUI, or CM ROM. Who knows if there will ever be innovative and feature-packed ROMs for us here.

now everyone can start bashing me

 

[lasportsfan]

Well from what I read now that froyo is available the fascinate is the most state of the art single core 3g android phone on Verizon.

 

[TheSonicEmerald]

Screen is impressive and looks better than the INC. Battery life really depends on what kernel and rom you choose, like other phones. The Fascinate, although it has a great dev community, because Samsung's being a douche about Froyo and its source for the Fascinate, many custom roms like CM, and MIUI, and roms with special addons are not quite there yet, but we do have stable Froyo roms and themes. No custom kernels for Froyo yet because of lack of source.

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Still rocking DJ05 with Voodoo5 Blazed Eclair 1.2ghz with GingerLiberty
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[ckhoward]

I think the fascinate is awesome! Love the community, and froyo is cool

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

 

[ericede]

Well from what I read now that froyo is available the fascinate is the most state of the art single core 3g android phone on Verizon.

If it weren't for the Devs there wouldn't be any Froyo. The false promises of an update have been frustrating but I've been using the leaked version in the Super clean rom for awhile and I love it.

 

[TheSonicEmerald]

To sum it up for you quickly, you want custom stuff, stay with the incredible or move on to the Thunderbolt, but if you want the best hardware and media playback on the market, get the Fascinate.

 

[Shadowchasr]

I have been using certified used for about a month.

Looked good as new, they put in new battery, charger, rear cover, etc.

Works well...have bricked twice and had no issues that were related to hardware.


Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

 

[converge12]

so well worth the $35 dollars? lol

i do have the INC for development but my concern is that my inc only gets good battery life if i run cm6.1 with a very modified kernel.

what is the average battery life on a froyo rom? lets say... moderate use.

 

[converge12]

no one has anything else to say about their phone they use everyday?

 

[OneFast3]

I came from a D1 and would not go back. Miss some of the the things from CM but am happy with what I can do so far.

Mine will last a typical moderate (i even play some games) day off the charger with SC** rom's. Just updated today to latest so dont know on it yet.

Rom's will only get better.

 

[thefunkbot]

Battery life is the only thing that I don't like about it. But with a screen like this its hard not to have bad battery life. RIP geekniks stupidfast kernels with 4 days of battery life.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

 

[ericede]

Battery life is the only thing that I don't like about it. But with a screen like this its hard not to have bad battery life. RIP geekniks stupidfast kernels with 4 days of battery life.

Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA App

As far as custom Roms go battery life is all over the board. When I was using SC 2.2 my battery life was good, but it dropped off on 2.4, 2.6, and 2.7. Now that I'm using 2.8 it's good again but different people have different results because their are so many ways to customize. The worst battery life I got was with the stock rom.

Seidio makes a 1600mAh slim battery which gets you an additional 100mAh without replacing your battery door; Not that signifigant but the 3000mAh extended battery is a huge jump.

I do agree that the picture quality is second to none. It has a beautiful screen.

 

[bobloblaw1]

Battery life depends on how you use and how you define "light", "moderate", and "heavy" usage. For me, moderate usage will get me around 15-20 hours of battery life. Phone will lose about 1-1.5% an hour when it is idle with screen off so standby time is very good.

Phone is fast and stable. Media playback is top-notch. The screen is beautiful and quite responsive to input. The phone feels decent in your hand though I do prefer it with a rubberized case. I have the Otterbox Impact and I find that it gives the phone a perfect feel for my hand.

I honestly have no complaints with the Fascinate aside from Sansung being slow to update it. That said, with Superclean 2.8 I'm pretty sure I'll never use the Froyo OTA update anyway. We also have a buddding dev scene. A CM7 port and framework are in the works, along with a custom 2.2 kernel, and a MIUI port.

I'm certainly biased, but I would recommend the Fascinate to just about everyone except for people who NEED a hardware based keyboard.

 

[superchunkwii]

My battery life is very good with any use.

I know others have used varying beta roms and have battery issues.

I have had zero of these issues.

My battery always lasts a full day easily (last night after being unplugged for ~20hrs it still had over 40% life).

I use it daily with these basic cases:
get up around 6:30am....

unplug, read email/messages, check out online game (diplomacy), check some news,check calendar...

throughout day...
use various tools, browser, map, gps on, xda, diplomacy, etc, use pandora for couple hours as i hit the gym...

I then plug in at bedtime between 11pm and 1am.

Rarely it will be in a low red colored %. Great majority of time its between 20 and 40%.

Only time frame I needed to plug in during day was on days when I was making extensive phone calls (hours for various issues) or right after I got Angry Birds. Played continuously for a week.