14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung Captivate, the AT&T version of the critically-acclaimed Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, has just received the Android 2.2 Froyo treat. Even though this is not an official release, those waiting for AT&T to roll out the highly anticipated software update will be able to install this unofficial ROM, which also fixes a lot of problems
Thanks to the guys over XDA-Developers, Samsung Captivate owners will be able to update their smartphones with Android 2.2 OS using this I897UCJI6 build.
The new ROM was built on September 21st, which means it's pretty fresh and it also addresses most of the Android 2.1 bugs that haven't been fixed till now.
It's most likely that AT&T will not release a new 2.1 update to fix the GPS issue, as well as the other bugs that Captivate still has, instead it will release the Android 2.2 software update, which will fix all these by default.
The new Froyo build for Captivate brings lots of goodies to AT&T customers, such as Mobile Hotspot, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, JIT compiler, Media Hub support, but also a wide range of UI improvements and tweaks.
The file can be downloaded from the XDA-Developers forum and requires to boot your Samsung Captivate into Download mode, run the .exe file, plug the smartphone and flash.
This appears to be a one-click Odin file, so everything will be done automatically, as long as you put your Captivate into Download mode, by hold both volume keys with phone off and plug in USB.
As a side note, it appears that the phone has already been tested with the Quadrant benchmark and it scored 971 points, which puts the Captivate on third place after Motorola Droid X and Google Nexus One smartphones.
Before doing the update be sure to backup your data as you will lose everything that's not stored on the SD card.
Also, bear in mind that you might not be able to install the latest official updates released by AT&T in the future.