Got a Samsung Focus Flash...

P

PNut12345

Supreme [H]ardness
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So due to an accident, my Samsung Focus is in cell phone heaven :(

When I went to replace it, my nearest AT&T Store only had the Focus Flash and Focus S (fucking drool) in stock...I went with the Flash since it's only $50 vs $200 for the S.

So far, some pros and cons of the Flash compared to the vanilla Focus:

Pros:

1.4 GHz processor vs 1 GHz on the vanilla Focus, and the difference is tangible. Apps load faster, it's just quicker all-around, and that's saying something because the Focus was no slouch in that depatment.

AT&T "4G" radio: from what I can tell, it seems to load data quicker than my wife's Focus (she didn't break hers...)

The camera response is a bit quicker on the Flash, not as much shutter delay, which was about the only complaint I had for the Focus. The front-facing camera is a nice extra, too.

Fantastic build quality. The brushed aluminum on the back is a great touch.

Cons:

3.7" screen compared to 4" screen. It's still bigger than the iphone screen but I'm starting to think 4" is the sweet spot for smart phone screen size.

Harware home button on the Flash, unlike the capacitive Home button on the vanilla Focus. No big deal, just takes some getting used to. The Back and Search buttons are still capacitive.

Some reviewers have complained about the smaller form factor. I came from an iphone and they're about the same size, so I adjusted pretty quickly. YMMV.

Overall, and as some reviewers have mentioned, don't let the $50 price point fool you into thinking this is some bargain-basement shitty phone. IMO, it's probably the best bang for the buck phone out right now. It's screaming fast, solidly built, comes with Mango pre-installed, has the second generation 1.4 GHz CPU, and Adreno 205 GPU which appears to be a big step up from the Adreno 200 in the Focus. FWIW I've noticed better framerates in the same games, on the Flash.

Give it a look, you'll probably love it.
 
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Just want to say that glad you enjoy it!

I made the jump from the iPhone from WP7. Had an iPhone 3g and 4...They were nice, but I was interested in something new, and I didn't want to go to Android. I eyed up the Focus S, I was excited for WP7. I knew I might have to sacrifice a few things on such a new OS, but I'm loving WP7 even more than I anticipated.

I can't even look at an iPhone now. It is WAY too small.
 
I have the Focus S in my Amazon shopping cart, just waiting for me to finalize my order. $175 shipped seems like a pretty solid deal. I'm doing a mental pro/con checklist before buying, though. Any drawbacks to the Focus S?

EDIT: I bought it. Will post pics, comments when it arrives. :D
 
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Mr. Wolf said:
I have the Focus S in my Amazon shopping cart, just waiting for me to finalize my order. $175 shipped seems like a pretty solid deal. I'm doing a mental pro/con checklist before buying, though. Any drawbacks to the Focus S?

EDIT: I bought it. Will post pics, comments when it arrives. :D
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Sweet, let us know how it is. I loved my vanilla Focus, the Flash is cool but the S looks fantastic :cool:
 
WP7 is incredible. I don't think even ICS is going to be as smooth and responsive. I have a Focus and it never ever lags.
 
Uses the Snapdragon S2 instead of S1 so it should have better 3D performance.

IMHO the only new WP7 phone worth its price, compared to the HTC Titan and Lumia 800.
 
Thanks for the info. I'm on both Verizon and Sprint but of course AT&T has the best Windows Phones.
 
yimingwuzere said:
Uses the Snapdragon S2 instead of S1 so it should have better 3D performance.

IMHO the only new WP7 phone worth its price, compared to the HTC Titan and Lumia 800.
Click to expand...

The 3D performance is considerably better. IloMilo runs much smoother on the Flash than the Focus, although the Focus ran it pretty well. Panning and zooming is just snappier.
 
I buddy of mine tagged along with me to check out the Focus S on launch day. He was coming from a Blackberry 9000 that was giving him problems for the past few months. He always commented on my Focus and how the OS was pretty damn smooth. He was going to wait for the Nokia phones to arrive later this year. This was before they announced the Lumia was not coming to the US til Q1 2012

They had 2 separate areas on opposite sides of the store with WP7 to play with so I was on one side and he was on the other. I ran the Focus S (fucking amazing) and the Flash ( also amazing) through a bunch of stuff that i would do every day and both devices were half a sec to a sec faster at loading everything. Seriously, if it wasn't for the 8gb non upgradeable storage and 3.7in I would jump on it. Coming from a 4in Focus down to 3.7in for me is silly, even with all the upgrades over the vanilla Focus.

When I was finally done playing around I went outside for a smoke and my buddy came out shortly afterwards with a Focus S. Bastard...
 
RumpRoast said:
I buddy of mine tagged along with me to check out the Focus S on launch day. He was coming from a Blackberry 9000 that was giving him problems for the past few months. He always commented on my Focus and how the OS was pretty damn smooth. He was going to wait for the Nokia phones to arrive later this year. This was before they announced the Lumia was not coming to the US til Q1 2012

They had 2 separate areas on opposite sides of the store with WP7 to play with so I was on one side and he was on the other. I ran the Focus S (fucking amazing) and the Flash ( also amazing) through a bunch of stuff that i would do every day and both devices were half a sec to a sec faster at loading everything. Seriously, if it wasn't for the 8gb non upgradeable storage and 3.7in I would jump on it. Coming from a 4in Focus down to 3.7in for me is silly, even with all the upgrades over the vanilla Focus.

When I was finally done playing around I went outside for a smoke and my buddy came out shortly afterwards with a Focus S. Bastard...
Click to expand...

Yeah, if the store hadn't been out of vanillas I would've just replaced mine. As it was, I simply couldn't afford the Focus S and went with the Flash. Aside from screen size I'm incredibly happy with it.
 
heatlesssun said:
Thanks for the info. I'm on both Verizon and Sprint but of course AT&T has the best Windows Phones.
Click to expand...

Same boat. I went with the Trophy a couple weeks back and I don't regret it at all, $50 from amazon wireless.

Really enjoying WP7 over android, even with custom ROMs.
 
PNut12345 said:
Settings--->Brightness--->Off then set to high, medium or low brightness
Click to expand...
The auto brightness setting is dependent on the ambient light sensor alone. The Focus dims the screen if it's showing a majority of white pixels on the screen, regardless if you have brightness set to medium, high, or auto. It's at the driver level (i.e. it's not a feature of WP7) and there's no way to disable it.
 
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drleospaceman said:
I wanted to get either of the new Focus's, but unfortunately they both have this "feature":
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1567710
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drleospaceman said:
The auto brightness setting is dependent on the ambient light sensor alone. The Focus dims the screen if it's showing a majority of white pixels on the screen, regardless if you have brightness set to medium, high, or auto. It's at the driver level (i.e. it's not a feature of WP7) and there's no way to disable it.
Click to expand...

Settings > Extra Setting (a Samsung only menu) > Turn off 'Use Auto Display Intensity'
 
Happy to see some more people jumping on the WP7 train :) I picked up my Focus S on launch day and have not looked back since at my old iphone 4. Love how smooth and fluid EVERYTHING is and after turning off the auto-brightness thing the screen blows the iphone 4 out of the water.
 
Silentbob343 said:
Same boat. I went with the Trophy a couple weeks back and I don't regret it at all, $50 from amazon wireless.

Really enjoying WP7 over android, even with custom ROMs.
Click to expand...

My wife has the Trophy, I have the Arrive on Sprint. I like the Trophy better even without a keyboard, Verizon's 3G is MUCH better than Sprint's and the Trophy just feels faster and the larger screen makes using the onscreen keyboard much easier.

Anyone know if Verizon or Sprint will be getting Nokia devices?
 
tgabe213 said:
Settings > Extra Setting (a Samsung only menu) > Turn off 'Use Auto Display Intensity'
Click to expand...

We have a winner

heatlesssun said:
My wife has the Trophy, I have the Arrive on Sprint. I like the Trophy better even without a keyboard, Verizon's 3G is MUCH better than Sprint's and the Trophy just feels faster and the larger screen makes using the onscreen keyboard much easier.

Anyone know if Verizon or Sprint will be getting Nokia devices?
Click to expand...
Some time in 2012 is all I've heard, I couldn't wait that long. I am really impressed with the hardware on the trophy, phone feels very solid all the around. It has some faults, like if you place the phone down on the back the speaker gets blocked and muffled, but overall a very nice phone.
 
I have an HD2 and have ran both android and wp7. I really liked WP7.. so smooth and polished, it really looks great! However the lack of customization really gets to me. I prefer an android phone with MIUI because of how fast i can move from one app to the other and the toggle switches to turn off wifi and such.

I would definitely recommend WP7, especially to older people who are new to smartphones. Unfortunatley it doesn't have the options and apps that i need being a power user. However i am looking forward to what lies in store with apollo.

on a side note i don't know what im gonna do when my contract runs out. I love how i can flash so many different OS/s, it's like i've already owned multiple phones!
 
Been playing with my new Focus S all day. Mango is really smooth, fast, and is every bit as responsive as iOS. The phone is fantastic, too. I love its screen and thin profile. However, I'm definitely having withdrawal symptoms now that I'm unable to do all the customizing I've gotten used to with Android. I can't even add a decent ringtone. It's only been one day, but I'm not feelin' the love for WP7... at least not yet.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Been playing with my new Focus S all day. Mango is really smooth, fast, and is every bit as responsive as iOS. The phone is fantastic, too. I love its screen and thin profile. However, I'm definitely having withdrawal symptoms now that I'm unable to do all the customizing I've gotten used to with Android. I can't even add a decent ringtone. It's only been one day, but I'm not feelin' the love for WP7... at least not yet.
Click to expand...

You can make your own ringtones for Zune
 
Yea WP7 could be much better in terms of notification customization, but that's really my only gripe with it so far. Only been using it for a couple weeks, but man no more FCs, the GPS works when it needs to, I don't have terrible redraw when leaving an intensive app that requires a good 5-10 second delay before doing another task on my phone.

Oh and using the built in battery tool it gets about 22 hours with moderate usage. That is one thing I would have liked on the Trophy a larger capacity battery, heavy usage will kill it quick.
 
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Silentbob343 said:
Oh and using the built in battery tool it gets about 22 hours with moderate usage. That is one thing I would have liked on the Trophy a larger capacity battery, heavy usage will kill it quick.
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Yeah, the Trophy should have had a bigger battery, that's probably it's biggest weakness though the batter seems to last much longer under Mango. But honestly, heavy useage kills most phones pretty damn quick, hell I can get better battery life out of my Samsung Series 7 Windows tablet running a USB 4G modem than a lot of 4G smart phones.
 
Is there any way to get WP7 or the Samsung to resize browser text to fit the screen when zooming in? I love that feature on HTC phones.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Is there any way to get WP7 or the Samsung to resize browser text to fit the screen when zooming in? I love that feature on HTC phones.
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Double tap the text it should zoom to fit. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding your question...
 
I think he's referring to text wrapping when pinch to zoom where the paragraph reformats itself onto the screen. If so, that feature is only available for Android. If not then I totally misunderstood your question as well.

For those thinking about taking advantage of the Titan for ATT's holiday special on the 26th, the Titan is gonna be released on the 28th I believe.
 
RumpRoast said:
I think he's referring to text wrapping when pinch to zoom where the paragraph reformats itself onto the screen. If so, that feature is only available for Android. If not then I totally misunderstood your question as well.

For those thinking about taking advantage of the Titan for ATT's holiday special on the 26th, the Titan is gonna be released on the 28th I believe.
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Yeah, there's flow vs fit. IE on WP only supports fit that I know. Has nothing to do with the OS but IE is the only browser for WP currently of course.
 
Yeah, I heard the zoom/resize function was an Android-exclusive feature. Bummer.
 
Hopefully it's included in the sale. I'll be going with the Titan if it is; if not it will be the Focus S.
 
I returned my Focus S, yesterday. After spending more time with it I'm definitely going to buy a WP7 phone next Saturday when that sale kicks in. The Titan is a little too big for my tastes. I was surprised how compact the S was once I got it in my hand. It's the phone for me, especially for a penny. :D
 
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