It’s been over a year since Samsung Fascinate’s official appearance at Verizon. At first, it was running on Android 2.1 Éclair then it was later upgraded to Android 2.2 Froyo. That seems to be a lot of upgrading but the smartphone still needs at least one more update before it can proudly say that it’s now running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. And that folks is what you are going to get as a special holiday treat from Verizon.
That’s right. Verizon Wireless has officially announced that its loyal Samsung Fascinate users can now be able to upgrade their smartphones to Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. The said firmware is currently being rolled out via OTA (over-the-air) update. Just don’t whine when you don’t get notified of any available software because the folks at the Big Red have claimed that is a staggered release. Meaning, there’s a possibility that you may get yours sometime next week. If in case you’re hoping for Android Ice Cream Sandwich, better stop dreaming about it. Anyways, you can still get your phone rooted as long as you know the right way to do it.
In addition, there are a couple of enhancements that you can expect out of this Gingerbread upgrade. The update will give your phone a new Download Manager App along with a new ‘Running’ tab that will let you view your handset’s list of active applications, used memory and storage. You will also be fascinated with Fascinate’s new home screen, widgets and icons.
Specs wise, the Samsung Fascinate can take pride of its candybar form factor. It is a 4 inch Android handset that flaunts a Super AMOLED capacitive multi-touch display at 480 x 800 pixels of screen resolution. The smartphone is being powered by a single core 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird Processor and can take a bunch of images using its 5 mega pixel rear facing camera with LED flash and ISO control.
[Via Phandroid]
And it has tons of glitches….
my outgoing text messages stopped using. Verizon wanted to know which of our family upgrades (they belong to my husband and son) I wanted to use! I said neither, they want them and they put me on the phone to customer support on their landline for 10 minutes. When customer support answered, they could not hear me and hung up!