the more i look at other phones, the more bothering is the graphics

[Guest bokster]

Some seriously brutal replies to some justifiable critical thinking in regards to this device.

Much of this thread has degenerated into bashing rather than offering solutions.

Thankyou dask for an intelligent response.

Perhaps there should be a thread started giving examples of "Total Software Overhalls" for the O2 where users detail the spectrum of software they use to maximise their devise potential.

I bought my O2 and experienced the same disapointment with lag on all apps... especially opera which was hugely irritating.

I've fiddled for months trying many romz, apps, today and lock screen replacements etc and now have a 90% satisfactory device.

Perhaps there should be a thread started giving examples of "Total Software Overhalls" for the O2 where users detail the spectrum of software they use to maximise their devise potential. It takes a long time to read all the forums and hunt down solutions and especially to a newbie to mobile software, this can be daunting and frustrating. Not everyone knows what they're getting into when they get a WM phone.

This is my first post here and some surely debatable opinions but this has been my solution.

1. Downgrade to the Lite WM 6.1 ROM - 6.5.whatever is a leaky memory pig. Gain 30% performance boost right there. Should have been called WM 6.5 VISTA. A lite rom is good as just about all the samsung apps suck as well asidefrom the sms, clock and calendar.

2. Unlock Lag - S2U2... Ok it's a iPhone sellout but it kills that lag and is waaaay more functional than the WM 6.1 or 6.5 locks. You can skin it as well to move away from creating an iPhone clone...

3. Want a smooth as silk today screen? - Try Point UI (I use the hero sense skin). Similar to the samsung widget concept but not laggy and a complete heap of rubbish. Point UI has decent widgets and a sweet way of placing shortcuts to just about every commonly used function and setting so you avoid using the ugly WM 6.1 interface 95% of the time. It is smooth as silk and looks purdy on WVGA Amoled goodness. Very memory friendly.

4. Find a contacts replacement - Resco Contact manager and Spam alert are again smooth as silk and very fuctional. Someone mentioned they have tested Resco Picture Viewer which solves the image lag issue... unsurprising.

5. Touch Player Replacement - Touch player is oh so functional but personally I find searching 16gb of music to be painfully laggy. Try alternates like Pocket Player (great for video as well) or even S2P (plugs in to Point UI Sense and S2U2)... They prove again that the same functionality as samsung touch player can be achieved using a fraction of the resources.

6. Not touch responsive enough? - Get total commander and reg edit the touch sensitivity to the maximum and realise the full potential of the resistive screen. I personally don't want an ultra sensitive screen as i brush it all the time without meaning to and don't really want to launch random apps.

FINALLY - Try Opera again... You'll notice that with all startup apps I mentioned running you'll still have 65Mb+ of free ram to use, Opera (and all other apps) run sooooo much better. Browsing is now pleasant... You can even multitask... within reason, all with a pretty, lag free, touch responsive interface for all your common tasks.

Conclusion: O2 is an awesome phone with more than capable hardware that comes out of the box with poorly coded, sluggish software (I include the not much prettier but bloated WM 6.5.x) BUT the bonus of using Windows Mobile is we have Apps that have been developed for years that take much better advantage of our device hardware and show it off to be the device it should have been when we bought it.

Shame some of the software mentioned costs $$$$ but if your like me and a phone is a minimum 1-2 year investment then it's well worth it.

To the negative people - Stop bagging people and driving more people to the iDrone band wagon and help a little by suggesting some solutions rather than posting meanlingless rubbish.

bok

[Guest .:stn:.]

nothing is flawless and nothing is perfect.. (Ok. Forgot that iPhone is but only for the "fanbwois")

the more I read such and similar threads the more I get some kind feeling that some of people have nothing better to do than complaining.. If you really have no interesting activities to do.. I kindly invite you to Poland, nowadyas we have t.o.n.s. of snow that needs to be shoveled off.. [;

Edited February 10, 2010 by .:stn:.

[Guest DLCI]

Just a remark:

2. Unlock Lag - S2U2......

Disable the haptic feedback and lock/unlock sounds in S2U2 and make sure you use the latest v2.30. Also play with the power settings and if possible don't let S2U2 to manage them-it's not that compatible with my i900 at least-no idea if it's better for i8000.

[Guest msra6la2]

Some seriously brutal replies to some justifiable critical thinking in regards to this device.

Much of this thread has degenerated into bashing rather than offering solutions.

Thankyou dask for an intelligent response.

Perhaps there should be a thread started giving examples of "Total Software Overhalls" for the O2 where users detail the spectrum of software they use to maximise their devise potential.

I bought my O2 and experienced the same disapointment with lag on all apps... especially opera which was hugely irritating.

I've fiddled for months trying many romz, apps, today and lock screen replacements etc and now have a 90% satisfactory device.

Perhaps there should be a thread started giving examples of "Total Software Overhalls" for the O2 where users detail the spectrum of software they use to maximise their devise potential. It takes a long time to read all the forums and hunt down solutions and especially to a newbie to mobile software, this can be daunting and frustrating. Not everyone knows what they're getting into when they get a WM phone.

This is my first post here and some surely debatable opinions but this has been my solution.

1. Downgrade to the Lite WM 6.1 ROM - 6.5.whatever is a leaky memory pig. Gain 30% performance boost right there. Should have been called WM 6.5 VISTA. A lite rom is good as just about all the samsung apps suck as well asidefrom the sms, clock and calendar.

2. Unlock Lag - S2U2... Ok it's a iPhone sellout but it kills that lag and is waaaay more functional than the WM 6.1 or 6.5 locks. You can skin it as well to move away from creating an iPhone clone...

3. Want a smooth as silk today screen? - Try Point UI (I use the hero sense skin). Similar to the samsung widget concept but not laggy and a complete heap of rubbish. Point UI has decent widgets and a sweet way of placing shortcuts to just about every commonly used function and setting so you avoid using the ugly WM 6.1 interface 95% of the time. It is smooth as silk and looks purdy on WVGA Amoled goodness. Very memory friendly.

4. Find a contacts replacement - Resco Contact manager and Spam alert are again smooth as silk and very fuctional. Someone mentioned they have tested Resco Picture Viewer which solves the image lag issue... unsurprising.

5. Touch Player Replacement - Touch player is oh so functional but personally I find searching 16gb of music to be painfully laggy. Try alternates like Pocket Player (great for video as well) or even S2P (plugs in to Point UI Sense and S2U2)... They prove again that the same functionality as samsung touch player can be achieved using a fraction of the resources.

6. Not touch responsive enough? - Get total commander and reg edit the touch sensitivity to the maximum and realise the full potential of the resistive screen. I personally don't want an ultra sensitive screen as i brush it all the time without meaning to and don't really want to launch random apps.

FINALLY - Try Opera again... You'll notice that with all startup apps I mentioned running you'll still have 65Mb+ of free ram to use, Opera (and all other apps) run sooooo much better. Browsing is now pleasant... You can even multitask... within reason, all with a pretty, lag free, touch responsive interface for all your common tasks.

Conclusion: O2 is an awesome phone with more than capable hardware that comes out of the box with poorly coded, sluggish software (I include the not much prettier but bloated WM 6.5.x) BUT the bonus of using Windows Mobile is we have Apps that have been developed for years that take much better advantage of our device hardware and show it off to be the device it should have been when we bought it.

Shame some of the software mentioned costs $$$$ but if your like me and a phone is a minimum 1-2 year investment then it's well worth it.

To the negative people - Stop bagging people and driving more people to the iDrone band wagon and help a little by suggesting some solutions rather than posting meanlingless rubbish.

bok

I use Samsung Official WM6.5 Rom with all the official apps, but my phone doesn't lag at all. In fact, it's not that far behind the WM6.1 Custom Rom with SPB Mobile Shell that I used to use.

After I upgraded my phone to WM6.5, I got my frd who's a WM geek (been playing WM since CE) to get rid of the honeycomb menu (that saved 10mb of rom as well as 10mb of ram - it's pre-loaded even if you have Samsung Menu running instead of Honeycomb), Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Digital Frame (having owned an Omnia and now I am using Omnia II, I still don't get wtf this programme is about), RSS Reader, and Podcast for me. Getting rid of all these apps and preload softwares (basically things that I don't ever use) saves huge amount of rom memory, and becos the official rom is lighter the amount of ram required to load up all samsung skinned apps as well as WM itself is alot less. At start-up, I get about 95mb ram free and huge amount of free rom memory.

[Guest dwallersv]

WHAT I DON'T GET

bokster hits on some quite valid points regarding the trash Samsung develops to run on their awesome hardware. They obviously can do hardware, and I assume can code reasonably good drivers as well (kinda a hardware engineering task, from one perspective).

They can't produce software worth a sh!t.

SO...... Why don't they simply outsource the software task, and license good stuff for the phone? For example (and this is just an example, so please let's not get into an argument whether or not this is the right software to license), they could put SPB mobile shell and S2U2 on every phone, customize them with Samsung branding, and probably do the whole thing for less than it is costing them to develop and maintain their own crappy interfaces.

I have little doubt that either SPB or AC would be lukewarm to the idea. Indeed, I suspect they'd be willing to accomodate a lot of input from Samsung for licensing fees from each Omnia (and many more Samsung phones).

Yet, Samsung delivers these awesome platforms full of garbage that any of us serious users immediately set out figuring how to disable, remove, and bypass, only to replace with something decent.

It boggles the mind...