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My GS1 (Samsung Vibrant) is running ICS. Everything works. Even camera recording at 720p, hardware video decoding, gpu, and even GPS works as good as on any official rom. You might give it a shot. Here's a link to get you started. I'm running Passion mod, which is more or less stock ICS. My partner has a Nexus S and performance is more or less identical. Why stay with 2.2? There is really no need. If you have a Samsung Captivate (ATT), or an international Galaxy S, check their dedicated forums on XDA developers. Similar roms exist across all GS1 variants.

Doing anything for the first time is scary.

This is XDA's forum for your phone:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1114

Here's a page of how to root your model:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1594650

Here's a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUT5JcnJHgk

Go boldly.

Doing anything for the first time is scary.

This is XDA's forum for your phone:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1114

Here's a page of how to root your model:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1594650

Here's a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUT5JcnJHgk

Go boldly.

Don't complain. Do something about it. Root it and install Ice Cream Sandwich. Go to youtube and search for instructions on rooting your phone. QBKing77 does a ton of videos that walk you through doing it. Look up a rooting video FOR YOUR DEVICE.

If you've never done it before (I assume) you will need Odin for windows and the appropriate rooted kernel. Once you have installed a rooted kernel you can reboot into clockworkmod recovery and begin installing ROM images for your device.

I'm no guru, but I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (Sprint's Epic Touch variant). I'm running an Ice Cream Sandwich based ROM called Blu Kuban. Great stuff. I can block ads in free software. I can overclock my CPU. I installed Beats Audio to optimize my sound playback. You'll even be able to flash more recent modem firmware to give you improved signal strength for improved connections. Change your user interface, themes, even boot animations.

Or you can wait for your provider to push ICS and you might get it around the same time everyone else is upgrading to Jelly Bean.

Your source for getting the most from your phone: http://www.xda-developers.com/

Clearly, this puts Android upgrading on par with Apple upgrading... something well within reach of the average consumer.

Don't complain. Do something about it. Root it and install Ice Cream Sandwich. Go to youtube and search for instructions on rooting your phone. QBKing77 does a ton of videos that walk you through doing it. Look up a rooting video FOR YOUR DEVICE.

If you've never done it before (I assume) you will need Odin for windows and the appropriate rooted kernel. Once you have installed a rooted kernel you can reboot into clockworkmod recovery and begin installing ROM images for your device.

I'm no guru, but I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (Sprint's Epic Touch variant). I'm running an Ice Cream Sandwich based ROM called Blu Kuban. Great stuff. I can block ads in free software. I can overclock my CPU. I installed Beats Audio to optimize my sound playback. You'll even be able to flash more recent modem firmware to give you improved signal strength for improved connections. Change your user interface, themes, even boot animations.

Or you can wait for your provider to push ICS and you might get it around the same time everyone else is upgrading to Jelly Bean.

Your source for getting the most from your phone:
http://www.xda-developers.com/

I wonder if they will finally address Android's audio latency problem this year, so developers can get us some better music production apps.

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/reduce-audio-latency-on-the-galaxy-nexus-and-nexus-s/

The moment I can smoothly run Linux applications inside Android I'm switching.

Well, for command-line-based stuff, there's things like this, though you'll need to root it. Graphical apps don't do so hot yet (have to bounce through VNC for the nonce) but I suspect that'll get sorted eventually.

WalledGalaxy S3

You mean one-click rooted and Cyanogenmod 9 supported and therefore totally open Galaxy S3?

I almost upgraded to the S3 a couple of days ago. Instead I put ICS on my Desire HD. Saved myself £480 in phone tariff charges over the contract term (£10 pcm no minimum term compared to £30pcm 2 year term), and got all of the functionality except for NFC, which I wouldn't use.

WalledGalaxy S3

You mean one-click rooted and Cyanogenmod 9 supported and therefore totally open Galaxy S3?

I almost upgraded to the S3 a couple of days ago. Instead I put ICS on my Desire HD. Saved myself £480 in phone tariff charges over the contract term (£10 pcm no minimum term compared to £30pcm 2 year term), and got all of the functionality except for NFC, which I wouldn't use.

Let's not forget the fact that nowadays, what really makes a phone useful is not the "as shipped" factory experience, but the applications.

If you want developers, you need to have either:
1) A well established market ecosystem that makes developers want to jump in, even if there are barriers to entry in the market (Apple iOS)
2) Ridiculously low barriers to entry for a new developer that wants to start producing work for your ecosystem (Android)

Microsoft doesn't have either - They have barriers of entry on par with iOS for developers, but they don't have the market share/ecosystem to entice developers. Not only that, but they seem to enjoy screwing over what loyal developers they may have - http://www.xda-developers.com/feature/enjoying-chevron-say-goodbye-to-your-developer-unlock/

After decades of Microsoft shenanigans on the desktop, and no evidence of them stopping those shenanigans with mobile - who is going to choose to develop for Windows Phone?

Let's not forget the severe platform limitations WP provides - even now that Skype is owned by Microsoft, Skype on WP7 is horrifically crippled compared to Android and iOS simply due to WP7's fundamental platform limitations. That's impressive considering how bad it is on Android (It's #1 on my battery-draining-apps shitlist.)

You'll love ICS, it works awesome right now on this device.

Just 2 things you should take into account:

a) Do you use 3G?
b) If so, What region are you in?

3G didn't work for me on this region, so I had to do a very ugly hack: I kept the modem.img from Froyo, and had to restore the original EFS files.

Don't worry, you won't brick your phone.

Here's what you should do:

If you are in Froyo, first update to Gingerbread (as Heimdall for Linux doesn't work well with i9003, you'll sadly need a windows machine and Odin). You'll find further instructions on XDA.

Root the device
Install CWM

That's the last time you'll need a computer to upgrade, you can continue to do so from CWM.

Then just go to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1449649, download the latest version (Alpha 7 at the moment), copy it to your SD card. Also download the Gapps zip. Reboot your phone into CWM, clear cache, data and dalvik-cache, install from zip, and install the Alpha 7. Install from zip again and install gapps. Reboot and enjoy ICS.

Feel free to mail me if you have any questions (almafuerte at gmail dot com).

Also, for Android users on custom ROMS:
Gingerbread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1357056
And for ICS:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1554960

Also, for Android users on custom ROMS:
Gingerbread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1357056
And for ICS:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1554960

What private keys of note have been hacked?... Dell, Microsoft, the big players, they all work very hard to make sure their private keys are secure.

That I can remember right now:

* ASUS secure boot key
* JMicron and Realtek Windows driver keys
* RSA's SecurID seeds
* Yahoo's private key for signing plugins
* Motorola's bootloader key
* HTC various engineering bootloaders (not an actual key, but signed bootloaders that allowed chainloading of non-signed code, which is just as good as a key in this case)

Funnily enough, I used to have legitimate access to a private key that could be used to load firmware onto a certain brand of credit card payment terminals. So did hundreds of other developers over the years - the key was required to do any form of development, but once you had it, you could reprogram any device in the field to grab card details, pin numbers, modify transactions etc. It was only the goodwill and honesty of the developers that prevented the key from being leaked. I'm sure there are some companies that work hard to protect their private keys and hold those with access accountable, but there are also those who handout private keys to internal staff and contractors alike.

If it's so great, why is the NSA porting their SELinux stuff to Android?

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/security-enhanced-android-released-by-nsa/

The NSA disagrees

http://www.xda-developers.com/android/security-enhanced-android-released-by-nsa/

I'm sorry but assuming the person/people that created the mod know what they are doing then a custom mod will always be better then the stock mod. I doubled my battery life by using a custom mod (iKReaM for HTC Thunderbolt). Removing the bloatware that they don't allow you to remove is what saves battery life.

WinCE (WindowsMobile) would be happy enough in 256MB.
I used to have a few HTC WinMo devices, helped along by the wonderful team at XDA Developers. Maybe digging that old source code out and giving it to the community would help re-establish WinMo as a viable platform on devices like this?

You mean, go to the home screen? On Transformer keyboard, they actually have a dedicated key for that. I think that, on regular keyboards, Win key will also do that.

Android is actually surprisingly well-developed when it comes to keyboard shortcuts - it's not just the OS, it's also stock apps like GMail. Here is a useful collection of info, albeit also Transformer-specific (but most of it should apply to any ICS device).

Hello fellow MT4GS owner, allow me to introduce you the magic of community ROMs. I've been running an unofficial CM9 build from here on mine recently, and it only has a handful of bugs. The current builds are using a 2.6 kernel because the 3.0 tree isn't playing nice with the keyboard. It is a completely open community project, so you can watch progress on the TeamDS github page.
It sucks that HTC and/or T-Mobile aren't providing us with an official ICS ROM, but when you buy a phone you are buying that phone, assuming you will be getting major updates is a sure path to disappointment. This isn't specific to Android, Apple drops iOS hardware from being supported in new versions approximately two years after release. Manufactures have a double incentive not to provide updates for devices in the cost and complexity of supporting old devices and the encouragement to buy new hardware that not providing updates brings. At least with Android you get snazzy community projects because the parts are open.

Considering that their eBook reader runs a version of it...

Or used to. They made it hacker-resistant with the December OS updates...

No, B&N hoped it would be hacker-resistant, but the XDA devs released updates to their rooting methods (like ManualNooter) pretty quickly.

That's why I said hacker-resistant rather than hacker-proof. If I can hack by inserting a bootable card and cycling power, that's an easy hack. If I have to spend a lot of time, go through several complicated steps, risk damaging my normal Nook account and config info and/or reset the device to originally-shipped factory conditions, that's a whole arena. One I don't like.

Considering that their eBook reader runs a version of it...

Or used to. They made it hacker-resistant with the December OS updates...

No, B&N hoped it would be hacker-resistant, but the XDA devs released updates to their rooting methods (like ManualNooter) pretty quickly.

I'd be happy to have the e-reader integrate with my PC if 1 specific thing happened:

the DRM was gone.

It may be slightly harder to find one without DRM, but I've got a pretty good solution that's working out for me. Get a B&N Nook and install CM7 on it (not the simplest process in the world, but it's not too hard with a good tutorial. Then, install FBReader on it (available from Google Play Store, or F-Droid) and get your drm-free books.

Especially after I got it for the $140 re-furb sale they had a few weeks ago, and threw Ice Cream Sandwich on it. Wish it had a camera sometimes, but otherwise I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap tablet.

I think that's MS's biggest misstep - In the process of redesigning their OS, they basically threw the entirety of their existing market out. Their Windows Mobile core userbase was more enterprise-oriented. WP7 was a massive step backwards for many WM6.x users - nearly all of whom went over to Android. So MS now has a "me-too" "shiny UI" OS, with very little app development, and little prospect of app development because they keep dicking around with developers - http://www.xda-developers.com/feature/enjoying-chevron-say-goodbye-to-your-developer-unlock/

I have a Nook Tablet, and I'm very happy with the hardware, happy with it as a book reader, but I wish it was a real Android tablet (with Bluetooth and Android Market^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGoogle Play).

So? Pick from CM7 or CM9.

Enjoy.

I have a Nook Tablet, and I'm very happy with the hardware, happy with it as a book reader, but I wish it was a real Android tablet (with Bluetooth and Android Market^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGoogle Play).

So? Pick from CM7 or CM9.

Enjoy.

If you have a rooted phone and use gingerbread, then try PDroid. It allows you to send a blank, random, or custom value to those applications, which prevents a poorly written application from crashing. It's essentially the same feature that CyanogenMod rejected (IMHO, clearly demonstrating where their loyalties lie).

Just FYI, you can easily install both Android and WP7 (and also Maemo/Meego and Ubuntu) on an HD2. Most versatile smartphone I know of.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/index.php

That is why you can't get cellular voice service on a tablet

Actually, I have a Samsung Galaxy Tablet that is designed to make phone calls. See this forum for more details: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=752

Just be aware of the limitations of the model LBE uses. All root apps like it - including DroidWall, which I use as well - are by their very nature, leaky. If they crash and you don't realize it, they do nothing. If they fail to autostart and you don't realize it, they do nothing. In that small window between when Android boots and LBE/DroidWall autostart, they do nothing. The last case can be helped somewhat by startup managers.

PDroid seeks to shore up those shortcomings, however, it is only available for some ROMs and phones as it makes changes to Android itself. It also only appears to be available on 2.3.x releases of Android. But the upside is that it is not leaky like root background apps, and doesn't crash apps like Cyanogenmod does.

Actually, thanks for reminding me to look this up again. I'd forgotten about it, but would love to get it on my phone...

It is nice to see that there is an actual effort to make an empirical test, but I think most techies had this figured out long ago. The simple test is boot time on the devices. A relatively small OS which typically takes 2+ minutes to cold boot, yeah sounds like a storage issue.

Fixing the issue with some form of data striping would be attractive, but chews battery for each additional chip. Some kind of balloon-able RAM buffer configuration would work nicely, where the buffer RAM was turned off when the device was not in active use or where individual modules could be brought online as needed.

Frankly, Microsoft pointed at flash as being a speed culprit early on with their requirements for WP7 phones for add-on, non-removable storage expansion micro SD cards. Sure there were a lot of people all gruff and bemoaning the double price premium for Microsoft certified micro SD cards, but it was mostly just a lack of understanding of the needs for device performance. If I recall correctly, Microsoft had somewhere around 10-12 MiB/S read and write and I/O per S requirements which put most cheap commodity flash modules out of the running. I would also guess that WP7 stripes data between the on board and add-on SD card or otherwise uses some kind of secondary caching algorithm since the micro SD cards get married to the device.

In the Android world, plenty of RAM cache hacks have been implemented, most notably some in Cyanogen and similar. Consider the technical implications of this post at XDA forums regarding I/O schedulers: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=22134559&postcount=4

As an anecdote, the most frequent crashy app on my Android device is the Gallery. It tends to have all kinds of issues with the scheduler as it is reading images and creating thumbnails, likely due to flash access speeds.

Partial solution: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

This will help you with your battery problem: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing is as perfect or simple as you'd like them to be. Android suffers from massive standby battery drain issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Some people report losing anywhere up to 90% of their battery drain through the screen (or so it's reported in Android): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128219

Basically Android is a terrible OS that will never stop lagging because its UI thread is at the same priority as the apps.

Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing is as perfect or simple as you'd like them to be. Android suffers from massive standby battery drain issues:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

Some people report losing anywhere up to 90% of their battery drain through the screen (or so it's reported in Android): http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128219

Basically Android is a terrible OS that will never stop lagging because its UI thread is at the same priority as the apps.

Except that Rovio is lying, they specifically told XDA to remove modded versions of their games that block ads and remove copyright protection. They did this several times. This is a PR stunt, pure and simple. They are saying "PIRACY IS GOOD" while mumbling under their breath "for our competitors hahaha"

Or, more specifically they are saying piracy is fine as long as their in-app purchases, advertising, and merchandising are all making money. Basically they are saying they aren't concerned about their game being a loss leader. What they have essentially just admitted is their games have little to no value other than as a method to pull a consumer into their other product bases. He's pretending that he's pro-piracy when really they have just shifted strategy towards the MMO "freemium" model.

Some proof: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=838184 (there are several cases of this happening, with XDA mods openly admitting they had been asked not to let these apps out there)

Ok guys, I said I would look into improving Angry Birds and I did All ads are gone, and I optimized the app for better performance! Enjoy everyone, let me know what you think of it!!!! Also, please vote in the poll if you can! Thank you

Thanks to: Creators of the game!

Link down as requested by developers

Piracy may cause publicity, but it doesn't come free. Anyone who says it's free PR is either deluding themselves or an idiot. Was some piracy good for their bottom line? Sure, probably. But they put the kibosh on it when it stopped being PR, and started cutting into ad sales.

FWIW I am not a game dev, so dont bother painting the naysayers as disgruntled devs with inferior products. That's as presumptuous BS as the RIAA saying they lose 100 trillion to piracy.

Uh... Control signals have nothing to do with overall data consumption quantities. When you send a text message, you send the 160 or so bytes of data through control signals. The issue here is that Android doesn't control the way its apps try to contact the towers, basically hammering them if they don't respond properly. This issue is one of the reasons Android has massive standby battery drain problems, as detailed in this 300 page xda thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1179809

The galaxy nexus has its own 100+ page thread dedicated to battery drain on standby.

How about AdFree?

Are you talking about the same Bing that came pre-installed as the default (un-changeable without rooting) search option on my wife's Verizon Samsung Fascinate? The same Bing that when I type something into the browser to search expecting google results like my unbranded Samsung Galaxy S does (nearly the same damn phone), I instead get Bing results that have nearly NO RELEVANCE to what I was searching for?

And that's the gods honest truth.

An example...
"teamhacksung ics build 14 galaxy s"
This update for build 14 was just done yesterday.

First result on Google: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=21498197#post21498197
Exactly what I wanted

First result on Bing: http://galaxy-s.t-mobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s2?cm_mmc_o=Vzbp+mwzygt*VAygtzlw*VyBpAgf+mA55Byf*VyBpAgf+mA55Byf
Second result: http://www.hdtechvideo.com/forum/index.php?threads/rom-teamhacksungs-ics-port-build-14.48/
Third result: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=20794402
Right forum and thread, but takes me to page 716, where as google takes me to the FIRST page where the info, downloads, etc are.

And this is just one example.. I've had TONS that were way worse with Bing not returning even CLOSE to what I was looking for, and google returning exactly what I wanted in the first few results (typically the first few are so close in terms to each other any one of them would work)

Are you talking about the same Bing that came pre-installed as the default (un-changeable without rooting) search option on my wife's Verizon Samsung Fascinate? The same Bing that when I type something into the browser to search expecting google results like my unbranded Samsung Galaxy S does (nearly the same damn phone), I instead get Bing results that have nearly NO RELEVANCE to what I was searching for?

And that's the gods honest truth.

An example...
"teamhacksung ics build 14 galaxy s"
This update for build 14 was just done yesterday.

First result on Google: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=21498197#post21498197
Exactly what I wanted

First result on Bing: http://galaxy-s.t-mobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s2?cm_mmc_o=Vzbp+mwzygt*VAygtzlw*VyBpAgf+mA55Byf*VyBpAgf+mA55Byf
Second result: http://www.hdtechvideo.com/forum/index.php?threads/rom-teamhacksungs-ics-port-build-14.48/
Third result: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=20794402
Right forum and thread, but takes me to page 716, where as google takes me to the FIRST page where the info, downloads, etc are.

And this is just one example.. I've had TONS that were way worse with Bing not returning even CLOSE to what I was looking for, and google returning exactly what I wanted in the first few results (typically the first few are so close in terms to each other any one of them would work)

here you go http://forum.xda-developers.com/wiki/ASUS_Eee_Pad_Transformer/How_to_install_Ubuntu

Minor pedantic point: Actually Amazon can issue a patch that would add Bluetooth, as the hardware is all there already (there's a similar situation in the Nook, and third party Android distributions for the Nook do enable it.)

It's not 100% clear why Amazon left out BT support in the OS, might be a "Don't want to spend cash on licensing unnecessary patents" thing (although I thought BT was clear of that.) The Fire also has an FM radio.

Here's the cite: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1350119

Your points about the other things still stand, obviously. It's disappointing the Fire doesn't have these, but ultimately it's extremely good at doing what it's designed to do.

Kubuntu runs comfortably (20 sec boot time from emmc), though there are a few things which don't work. Most notably, video playback (dependent on hardware acceleration) and the external speakers. The 768 MB of RAM can be a bit limiting if you try to open Firefox with a bunch of tabs though. (Chromium won't render anything until we get graphics acceleration working).

In terms of software, mplayer doesn't work (but VLC does, and I think mplayer could be fixed with a recompile) and plasma has an odd bug where you can't add any widgets to the desktop - the pane just doesn't respond when you try and drag them.

Despite these, it actually works pretty well. Once hardware acceleration is working I'll probably get rid of Android entirely and just use Gnome 3 when I want a tablet-style interface.

No such thing available for my device (of course the part that goes INSIDE the phone is the interesting one); one guy did some VERY VERY VERY nasty hardware mod: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1319473
Nasty in the sense that I wouldn't do it to my phone, the mod itself is really cool.

Give this one a try: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1363593
I think you'll find it icy-sweet enough
True, Samsung doesn't care about software updates, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't either.

Oh, and if your GPS antenna is broken or has bad contacts; you can order a new one for roughly 10-20$ off eBay, replacement is easy with just 2 screws.
However I usually find external bluetooth receivers with SIRF3-chips the best; my "Road66"-one even manages to get a steady and accuracte fix in large cities, has 6 hours battery charge and takes around 10 seconds to cold-start (I dont know how it does it... amazing!)

I for one am quite pleased with my Galaxy S (first revision), even if not with Samsun'g customer service. Well, that's what homebrew is for, isn't it? ;)

Even worse, the ability for users to "Interop Unlock" their phones was mostly based on the manufacturer. I think there is one available for Samsung and LG; HTC got the shaft after the Mango update.

Read on for more information: Click here

Your question will garner far more posts like the one above but I will add my 0.02.

I like the original Transformer (TF101-A1) very much and would suggest you take a look at it if the Prime is too pricey for what you want. The Prime is currently the only shipping Tegra 3 system I know of so to lump it in with the rest of your list isn't quit fair. While it's still yet to be field proven all indicators point to the Tegra 3 being quite a capable chip which will run for a very long time on a single charge.

Toshiba's Thrive is an interesting tablet. I have only tested it in store but I like it for the most part. The full size ports are a definite plus and the rubbery backing make for a slip free experience.

I don't have any experience with the Xoom or the Galaxy but you mentioned rooting and I was curious if you had posed this question over at XDA? I choose my android devices on price and rootability so the Nook Color has been my recommendation to all my non-technical friends looking for a cheap tablet.

Sony likes to cut off its nose to spite its face. Given their treatment of Geohot I would steer clear if you are looking for rooting. I'm sure you can root them just not sure what Sony's response will be to it.

Your question will garner far more posts like the one above but I will add my 0.02.

I like the original Transformer (TF101-A1) very much and would suggest you take a look at it if the Prime is too pricey for what you want. The Prime is currently the only shipping Tegra 3 system I know of so to lump it in with the rest of your list isn't quit fair. While it's still yet to be field proven all indicators point to the Tegra 3 being quite a capable chip which will run for a very long time on a single charge.

Toshiba's Thrive is an interesting tablet. I have only tested it in store but I like it for the most part. The full size ports are a definite plus and the rubbery backing make for a slip free experience.

I don't have any experience with the Xoom or the Galaxy but you mentioned rooting and I was curious if you had posed this question over at XDA? I choose my android devices on price and rootability so the Nook Color has been my recommendation to all my non-technical friends looking for a cheap tablet.

Sony likes to cut off its nose to spite its face. Given their treatment of Geohot I would steer clear if you are looking for rooting. I'm sure you can root them just not sure what Sony's response will be to it.

Hard to fix a hardware problem with software.

This phone has provided me with no end of frustration. It's a $500 phone that I'm paying another eight bucks a month for warranty for over my two year contract, meaning I'll wind up paying a total of $700 for a phone that doesn't work right. And t-mobile wants to give me a $150 clique in replacement.

Some links follow.

It's a hardware problem in a number of phones:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=878970

http://pocketnow.com/android/hardware-fix-for-vibrants-gps-problems

T-mobile did push out a patch:

http://pocketnow.com/android/samsung-vibrant-gps-fix-finally-being-pushed-out-by-t-mobile

But it didn't actually do the upgrade. No, you have to turn off your computer's firewall and virus protection to apply software patches to hardware problems...

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/SupportOwnersFAQPopup.do?faq_id=FAQ00026061&fm_seq=26229

for a patch that doesn't work anyway...

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=988076

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1661605-Vibrant-Problems-Please-post-all-here-so-Samsung-Google-Engineers-can-see-them/page4