A few days ago I bought a new phone: the Samsung Captivate. At first was very excited; I would have a full featured webkit browser, a giant 4-inch screen, and the rapidly-growing Android software ecosystem. After my first day with the phone, the problems started to stack up quickly.

First, the phone had a maddening problem with lag. Searching was a bit of a nightmare; after clicking the search button, there was a very long pause while the phone tried to bounce from search to either contacts or the browser. Sometimes the apps would stall completely, and since there are no hardware buttons, it was hard to tell if the phone was registering my “home” or “back” commands.

After 5 days of use, I happily took the Captivate back to the ATT store for a refund. Now I’m typing this post on my Blackberry 9700. I’m going to wait anxiously for their next big thing: the 9800. I’ll leave with a few more thoughts that helped my decision:

-Most of the Android apps really suck. They take forever to open and just seem really half baked. There isn’t a single twitter app that can match the greatness of the mighty Ubertwitter for Blackberry. (In my opinion, this applies for every other mobile OS as well)

-Multitasking is pretty bad. Apps that are open tend to drain the battery at an alarming speed. I downloaded Advanced Task Manager to help kill unwanted apps, but this just seemed like a pretty bad solution. With the 9700, I can simply close the app by clicking “close” or “exit”. Simple as that. Also the 9700 has superior battery life, which is mostly related to screen size, but important nonetheless.

-The 9700 is a superior phone. It has 5 bars where the Captivate has 3, vastly superior call quality, and text messaging is a breeze. The Captivate didn’t even come close in terms of basic communication.