Anyone that follows me on Twitter knows how pissed I am at Samsung and Verizon for their complete disregard for their customers using the Galaxy Fascinate.
First they force users to use Bing as a search engine (not default to it — force users to use it). That’s not even mentioning that the GPS is almost non-functional. (Well, I guess I did just mention it. Sue me. Or better yet, sue Verizon / Samsung.)
Then they have Verizon store employees telling people that the new version of the Android operating system (Froyo, or Android 2.2), would be available “any day now.” They’ve been saying that since I got the phone in October last year. They finally released an update earlier this month (after repeatedly falling through on official announcements that it would be out later this month… or that month.. or that month), but it only contained a few bloatware updates (and a GPS fix, thank god). But no Froyo.
whether it’s because they’re purposefully holding off on Froyo because they want to force people to upgrade to other Android models that have it already, I don’t know, but I’ve given up on them. If you’ve got the Samsung Galaxy Fascinate as your Verizon Android phone, you should give up on them too. Here’s how (using a Mac, which is a little more tricky than with a PC)
- Root your phone: This gives you “su” (superuser) abilities, allowing you to do things that Samsung / Verizon don’t want to allow you to do.
- Run a backup: Just in case. You don’t want to risk “bricking” your phone.
- Remove bloatware: I used Titanium Backup Manager (premium version needed), “freezing” software that I didn’t want. Be careful about deleting software, as people have noted that you won’t be able to receive OTA (over the air) upgrades if you’ve made certain modifications to your phone. Freezing makes programs unavailable to the operating system, but you can easily “defrost” them if you want them back for an upgrade.
Removing Verizon’s bloatware made my phone muuuuuch more responsive. I use LauncherPro instead of TouchWiz, Samsung’s custom UI, and I also got a big boost from removing widgets and home pages that I’d left from TouchWiz. Use Home Switcher to move back and forth between both launchers.
I haven’t started playing with Custom ROMs, but based on the success of what I’ve done already I’m not sure I need to bother. If you’re looking to start hacking your Fascinate, there’s a lot of other great resources on this Android Forum sticky.