I upgraded my Captivate to Gingerbread a day or two after it was announced. Since then I've had terrible problems with it freezing and rebooting. I'm talking multiple, multiple times a day. I would set the phone down and hear the startup tone. Five minutes later I'd hear it again. A few minutes later, again. And again. And again. Middle of the night, afternoon, home, car, pocket. Freezing - I got a call from my wife and couldn't answer it. Swiping had no effect. I could see her picture and hear the ring, but couldn't do anything about it. In fact, the phone continued to ring for several minutes until I pulled the battery. I was pulling the battery 5-10 times a day due to freezes, until I found that the volume up/power button combination will restart the phone in 10 seconds.
So with that as the background I finally gave up today and stopped at my local At&T Service Center. The "tech" there didn't seem surprised when I told her my problems. She said they've heard many complaints about the Gingerbread update, and suggested that she could reset my phone to Froyo. When I asked if I could then do the Gingerbread upgrade she recommended against it. Said they had so many problems with it she thought AT&T had even pulled the link.
After having me sign a waiver that if they screw up my phone even worse they weren't accountable, I handed over my phone. My phone disappeared into the back room, and when it reappeared about 20 minutes later, the "tech" had a bewildered look on her face. She said she was able to get Froyo back on it, but every time she pressed Contacts the phone Force Closed. I told her that was obviously a problem, and she offered to redo the Froyo install. The result was the same - Contacts caused a Force Close. Her suggestion? Go next door (to the connected AT&T Retail Store) and see if I'm eligible to BUY a new phone!
When I got home (DID NOT go next door to spend $$$ on a new phone) I tried the Factory Reset available from the Menu. Surprise! No Force Close on Contacts. I figure that puts me 1 up on the "tech". I had purchased MyBackUp Pro back when I first had the problems, and it did a great job reinstalling the contacts that I had backed up last night.
Feeling lucky, I tried to reinstall the apps I had backed up with MyBackUp Pro. They downloaded fine from the external SD card, but when the program tried to install them Froyo/AT&T wouldn't let them, for "Security Reasons". I remembered reading a workaround here which consisted of calling AT&T Tech Support and having them push a patch which allows non-Market apps to be installed. (Btw, the apps I was trying to reinstall were for the most part from the Market, but AT&T was blocking me from reinstalling them from the SD card.) I called AT&T and got to the Tier 2 Support. Explained that I wanted them to push the patch to me, and the tech typed the info into his computer. After he completed typing he said that the system wasn't giving him the option of pushing it to me. He put me on hold for a few minutes, and returned saying he had talked to his supervisor, and they found a glitch in the system. He reentered the info, and said it was accepted, and was now pushing the patch. It went through step one, step two, then on the final step it said Pending. We waited. Pending. Wait. Pending. Etc. The tech went back to his supervisor, who told him to contact the next level of support, in Ashland, KY. He online chatted with them while he spoke to me. Ashland had him kill his push and resubmit it. Still Pending. The tech in Ashland consulted with someone else there. They finally decided that the push to allow non-Market apps would only work with Gingerbread - although Gingerbread already allows non-Market apps, so it's not needed there. They said that since my phone was back on Froyo they couldn't push the patch to me. They suggested I call Samsung, since the problem was with their phone and version of Gingerbread. They gave me the number to Samsung Tech Support (1-888-987-4357, in case anyone needs it). After spending 1 hour and 22 minutes on the phone with AT&T Tech Suport I was off to Samsung.
Spoke with Ashley there. Nice young lady who says, "I understand, I apologize" a lot, but didn't do anything to help. She said no one there was even aware that AT&T had the ability to downgrade a phone from Gingerbread back to Froyo, and blamed any and all problems I was having on "whatever the heck AT&T did to your phone." The tech at AT&T had told me that if they didn't have a solution, I should tell them to replace my phone with a phone with a functioning copy of Gingerbread. Ashley was having none of that. "I understand, I apologize." But no replacement. Oh, she did say that I could send the phone to them and they would
try to install Gingerbread on it. I explained that 1. I was able to install Gingerbread. It just crashed. A lot. and 2. I couldn't be without my phone while it got sent to < forget which state >, they worked on it, and waited for it to be sent back. Ashley: "I understand, I apologize. Have a pleasant day!"
So my options now are:
1. Try to reinstall Gingerbread, and hope it works this time(?). If not, back to AT&T and have them reset it back to Froyo (again!) and hope they don't break something else.
or
2. Keep it on Froyo and manually reinstall the 100 or so apps I had on there, sideloading the ones which didn't come from the Market.
or
3. Same as 2, but root the phone so I don't have to sideload.
That's my tale of woe. If anyone has a better suggestion I'm all ears.
