Android invasion! Galaxy S variants coming to T-Mo, Sprint, VZW, ATT, and US Cellular

[Bateluer]

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/samsung-vibrant-is-official-on-t-mobile-coming-july-21-for-20/

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/samsungs-epic-4g-for-sprint-seems-to-live-up-to-its-name/

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/verizon-ropes-in-samsung-fascinate-us-cellular-gets-a-galaxy-s/

Reall cool stuff, 4in AMOLED display, 1GHz Hummingbird, oodles of storage, etc. Glad to see T-Mo getting a high end Android phone finally. Really looks like Verizon is pulling out all the stops with their Android phones, they mean business. Sprints version has 4G apparently too, now they just need to rapidly ramp its coverage.

 

[Narmer]

[sarcasm]I'm glad to see Samsung backstabbing HTC's Incredible for their own phones. What a partner[/sarcasm]

 

[Bateluer]

[sarcasm]I'm glad to see Samsung backstabbing HTC's Incredible for their own phones. What a partner[/sarcasm]

Might have something to do with HTC switching to Super TFT LCDs for the Incredible.

http://www.droid-life.com/2010/06/27/droid-incredible-changes-to-super-tft-lcd-screens/

 

[Narmer]

Might have something to do with HTC switching to Super TFT LCDs for the Incredible.

http://www.droid-life.com/2010/06/27/droid-incredible-changes-to-super-tft-lcd-screens/

Right, after they were abandoned by Samsung. The Epic 4G sounds like the perfect phone for me (I love real keyboards) but I cannot tolerate Samsung's constant abandonment of their users via poor service.

 

[Deeko]

[sarcasm]I'm glad to see Samsung backstabbing HTC's Incredible for their own phones. What a partner[/sarcasm]

Its business. If they can only manufacture so many of these screens, why wouldn't they give their own phones priority? Its not like Samsung was just making screens and processors, and decided to jump into the hardware game to screw their partners. Samsung has been making phones - and smartphones - for many years.

 

[dguy6789]

Just when I thought I had seen the silliest name with the Incredible, Samsung one ups them with the Samsung Epic 4G.

 

[Bateluer]

Just when I thought I had seen the silliest name with the Incredible, Samsung one ups them with the Samsung Epic 4G.

I don't think Samsung named the carrier branded models. Blame Sprint for that one.

Vibrant, Fascinate, and Captivate are all decent names for basically the same phone, but a little hard to keep track of which phone is on which carrier.

 

[Deeko]

I am a big fan of this phone....I just wish they'd announce that rumored QWERTY version!

 

[Synomenon]

The Epic 4G on sprint is the QWERTY version.

 

[Deeko]

The Epic 4G on sprint is the QWERTY version.

Is it? I stopped looking at each one after I saw tmo, verizon, and at&t....guess I stopped too early!

Might be back to Sprint for me....

 

[Narmer]

Its business. If they can only manufacture so many of these screens, why wouldn't they give their own phones priority? Its not like Samsung was just making screens and processors, and decided to jump into the hardware game to screw their partners. Samsung has been making phones - and smartphones - for many years.

Well, unless you care about future business-to-business sales, you'd put your partners first. Going forward, if I was HTC, I'd avoid them like the plague.

 

[Deeko]

Well, unless you care about future business-to-business sales, you'd put your partners first. Going forward, if I was HTC, I'd avoid them like the plague.

If Samsung makes the best screen technology, HTC is going to want it. They might make a business decision to go with something more available/lesser quality...but then they'll have a lesser screen than the competition, which isn't advantageous either.

Also, we can't pretend to know the language of Samsung's contract with HTC. It could very well be clearly written that in availability terms, HTC gets a certain priority.

At any rate, I think Samsung would rather sell their phone, which is all but guaranteed to use their screen, their processor, their software, etc...than sell just the screen to HTC.

 

[you2]

Of the three phones: evo, droid x and galaxy s the galaxy s seems the be the slickest in style (also some will prefer the 4inch screen which is between the driod x/evo 4.3 and iphone/incredible 3.6).

What is not clear to me is how the galaxy s will perform relative to the other two. I realize that speed wise and battery it will be close to the droid x so I guess the real unknowns are how well it performs as a telephone and if the droid x has any special features up its sleeve.

As a recap:

evo is 16bit colours; has snapdragon process and slow gpu (i.e, it requires a bit more power per cycle than the other two as well as having a slower gpu. It does have a front camera and htc sense. It is mostly flat. (I played with one of these for a week and compared it to my regular sprint phone; and can state first hand it is a very good phone (reception/sound quality on both end - did tests with various folks comparing phones).

droid x has 32 bit colours; has omp processor (similar family but more efficient) and faster gpu. NO front camera and hump at end (not clear to me if this is a plus or minus). It also has three microphones and previews are indicating very good reception and voice quality.
previews and benchmarks indicate this phone is quite a bit faster than the evo with better battery life (gpu makes the big difference in speed).

galaxy s: not seen any reviews on sound quality/phone aspect. No flash on camera (if that matters to you) very sleek styling very light; said to have a very good display. Battery life appears to be a bit better than droid x due to amoled screen. I expect performance to be identical to droid x in practical sense.
-
Hum. Which one to go with

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/samsung-vibrant-is-official-on-t-mobile-coming-july-21-for-20/

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/samsungs-epic-4g-for-sprint-seems-to-live-up-to-its-name/

http://i.engadget.com/2010/06/28/verizon-ropes-in-samsung-fascinate-us-cellular-gets-a-galaxy-s/

Reall cool stuff, 4in AMOLED display, 1GHz Hummingbird, oodles of storage, etc. Glad to see T-Mo getting a high end Android phone finally. Really looks like Verizon is pulling out all the stops with their Android phones, they mean business. Sprints version has 4G apparently too, now they just need to rapidly ramp its coverage.

 

[Deeko]

evo does not have a hummingbird, it has a snapdragon. Hummingbird is the CPU in the Galaxy S line, with a much faster GPU than the Snapdragon.

 

[Narmer]

If Samsung makes the best screen technology, HTC is going to want it. They might make a business decision to go with something more available/lesser quality...but then they'll have a lesser screen than the competition, which isn't advantageous either.

Also, we can't pretend to know the language of Samsung's contract with HTC. It could very well be clearly written that in availability terms, HTC gets a certain priority.

At any rate, I think Samsung would rather sell their phone, which is all but guaranteed to use their screen, their processor, their software, etc...than sell just the screen to HTC.

FWIW, Apple has shown (as has Sony) that the best displays are still TFT and you can still get excellent battery life in the phone. So, I think AMOLED or S-AMOLED's advantage of 30% better battery life with just as good a screen remains to be seen. Therefore, HTC may have only gone with AMOLED because of the technological reputation. Hence, going forward, I'd assume they'd let Samsung keep all the AMOLED since they are not a reliable partner.

 

[dguy6789]

FWIW, Apple has shown (as has Sony) that the best displays are still TFT and you can still get excellent battery life in the phone. So, I think AMOLED or S-AMOLED's advantage of 30% better battery life with just as good a screen remains to be seen. Therefore, HTC may have only gone with AMOLED because of the technological reputation. Hence, going forward, I'd assume they'd let Samsung keep all the AMOLED since they are not a reliable partner.

The only thing Apple has shown with their screen is that they can make a higher resolution screen than competing OLED screens at the moment. That and better visibility in sunlight are the only advantages it has. Color vibrancy, contrast, blacks, viewing angles, and response times are still not up to par when compared to AMOLED.

 

[Deeko]

FWIW, Apple has shown (as has Sony) that the best displays are still TFT and you can still get excellent battery life in the phone. So, I think AMOLED or S-AMOLED's advantage of 30% better battery life with just as good a screen remains to be seen. Therefore, HTC may have only gone with AMOLED because of the technological reputation. Hence, going forward, I'd assume they'd let Samsung keep all the AMOLED since they are not a reliable partner.

Eh - SuperAMOLED is promising, as the biggest issue with AMOLED is visibility in sunlight. The iPhone obviously has the resolution edge, but its not like someone won't release a 720p AMOLED phone soon enough.

I have a ZuneHD and a HD2...I will say without a doubt that the lower resolution AMOLED screen on the Zune looks better than the higher resolution LCD on the HD2.

 

[Narmer]

The only thing Apple has shown with their screen is that they can make a higher resolution screen than competing OLED screens at the moment. That and better visibility in sunlight are the only advantages it has. Color vibrancy, contrast, blacks, viewing angles, and response times are still not up to par when compared to AMOLED.

Higher resolution and visibility in sunlight are extremely important going forward considering phones are getting larger in size, being used for countless purposes, and are meant to be used everywhere. So, yes, I would say that those would be primary factors. Also, seeing this is Apple, the company that knows a thing or two about digital imaging and color accuracy, I am more inclined to believe them when it comes to which tech is better overall.
But you don't have to take my word for it:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/iphone-4-retina-display-vs-galaxy-s-super-amoled-fight/

 

[dguy6789]

Resolution is important to an extent, but phones in the 3-4 inch range are getting to the point where unless you are looking at the screens an inch away from your eyes, you won't see any pixels. Higher resolution screens are growing increasingly less important with time. Current gen phones already have 2-2.5x the pixels per inch of desktop computer monitors. I don't believe 4.3 inch and larger phones will become the norm, I think they will always be mainly a niche for enthusiasts. It's just too big for a lot of people.

It is typical Apple to use words like better, great, terrific, fantastic, instead of specifications when describing their product. The phrase "LCD is better than OLED" -Apple does not hold very much credibility. OLED has always produced better color quality than LCD and Apple saying LCD is better does not make it so. Did anyone else find it slightly interesting when on the topic of screens Apple said the only thing that matters is resolution nothing else is significant, but when they get to cameras they say resolution is meaningless and it's all about colors and whatnot?

 

[Deeko]

Nothing really new in that - yea, LCD > AMOLED in sunlight, and the higher resolution display is sharper, but as the article pointed out, the Galaxy is still very good, and when not at a pixel level, its not like its THAT noticeable.

What I find impressive in that is just how much better SuperAMOLED is in bright light than regular AMOLED.

 

[Narmer]

Resolution is important to an extent, but phones in the 3-4 inch range are getting to the point where unless you are looking at the screens an inch away from your eyes, you won't see any pixels. Higher resolution screens are growing increasingly less important with time. Current gen phones already have 2-2.5x the pixels per inch of desktop computer monitors. I don't believe 4.3 inch and larger phones will become the norm, I think they will always be mainly a niche for enthusiasts. It's just too big for a lot of people.

It is typical Apple to use words like better, great, terrific, fantastic, instead of specifications when describing their product. The phrase "LCD is better than OLED" -Apple does not hold very much credibility. OLED has always produced better color quality than LCD and Apple saying LCD is better does not make it so. Did anyone else find it slightly interesting when on the topic of screens Apple said the only thing that matters is resolution nothing else is significant, but when they get to cameras they say resolution is meaningless and it's all about colors and whatnot?

WRT cameras, they are right. That is why many P&S have not gone beyond 14MP. Even Panasonic lowered its MP count with its high end Micro 4/3rd camera and focused on other aspects of the phone. You may be right about resolution on such a small screen but it allows for smoother animation and video.

 

[you2]

Sorry swapped the names; the droid/galaxy have hummingbird and evo/incredible snapdragon.
--
In my view the Evo screen (which is probably the worse of the three) is very good and (much?) better than the iphone 3g. I.e, (and i know this is relative) it is plenty good for me.

evo does not have a hummingbird, it has a snapdragon. Hummingbird is the CPU in the Galaxy S line, with a much faster GPU than the Snapdragon.

 

[Bateluer]

Sorry swapped the names; the droid/galaxy have hummingbird and evo/incredible snapdragon.
--

Not quite. The Evo and Incredible are Snadragon powered, the Droid X is OMAP 3640 powered, and the Galaxy S variants are Hummingbird powered.

 

[you2]

Hum. I thought the Galaxy S and Droix X were based off the same parent processor and had similar power usage/performance but perhaps I am mistaken. I know the Evo and Incredible (and Nexus) all use the same proc. which make sense all three are made by the same company.

Not sure if the Galaxy S or Droid X has faster GPU. For me it is Galaxy S or Droid X; probably the Droid simply because it will be available sooner. There was a quick audio review of the Evo and Droid X that basically said the Droid X sucked (worse camera, when he pinched the browser the Evo framed the text so you could read it but the droid x chopped it off and similar). Not sure about the browser issue (did the Evo have a modified software here?)

 

[CTrain]

Lets me give my thoughts on the Galaxy series.
I love the 4" super amoled screen.
I think 4" should be the minimal size for a superphone these days.
Of all 4, I like the ATT design the best.
The Sprint Epic the least. Not because of the keyboard but the corners are waayy too rounded. Reminds me of an oval shape like the Pre.
The main design looks OK but its almost identical to the iphones in shape.
My biggest issue with it is no flash. I just can't fanthom a superphone these days without a flash. The Sprint Epic will have flash but T-mobile and ATT version won't have it.

As far as the processor, its faster than the Snapdragon but lets wait till we see some reviews on them.
Engadget got an early version of the ATT and they said its very sluggish.
I believe the Droid X will have the fastest overall cpu/gpu combination.