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Samsung Galaxy S..... impressed.

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That's an awesome deal on the Captivate. Its also the best (looking) of the Galaxy S line, IMO. AT&T coming on strong with Android....
 
I thought ATT opened up side loading apps on the Aria (or HTC did). Will the Captivate allow it? How about the Vibrant?

[edit] didn't see Deeko's post.
 
I played with the vibrant yesterday but decided to skip it because there is no 1 year option and the out of contract price is $500. However, if the captivate price is $350 I might bite esp given that at&t current plans make it the cheapest for me and they have relatively good service in boston.
--
The only thing I hated about the vibrant was the hump at the end of the phone; on the droid x it doesn't bother me (it is at the top) but on the vibrant it was at the bottom and I found it very uncomfortable in my hands.
There were a few other nit picks; max volume was a bit soft and a bit statically and it froze up on me once while watching avatar and playing with the volume (had to hard reboot). The display is wicked.
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I do wish the phone aspect worked a bit better (better clarity and a bit louder without headphones/ear phones).
--
I'll check out the captivate in a week or so maybe it doesn't have the hump and has better sound.
 
Check post #8 in this thread (link).

Re: How is the Vibrant's reception?

07-15-2010 10:03 AM
I just discovered something shocking. If I hold my phone in such a way that it cups the bottom of the phone, my bars disappear. If I just put it down i get full 3G bars. I never noticed this behavior on the MT3G. This sounds shockingly like the Iphone 4 problem. The antennas must be on the lower-left side of the phone since the problem DOES actually seem worse when I hold it with my left hand than with my right.
Click to expand...
 
I bought the Vibrant. The screen is outstanding. It's definitely usable in the direct sun, much more so than the HD2. It does feel a little plasticky, but the plastic also means that it is very light. Noticeably lighter than the HD2 and my coworker's iPhone 4. I'll update later.
 
10
Warning! Long post ahead!

I bought mine this morning. First one sold in the store! This phone is almost completely awesome. It does have a few things, niggles really, that I consider cons:
No ded. camera key.
Charging port on the top
No way I can find to remove the paginator dots across the top
Home and Menu buttons are swapped from what I'm used to (coming from a MyTouch 3G)
Like I said, little niggles, nothing make-or-break.

The screen is absolutely amazing. The most beautiful display I've seen on a mobile device yet (granted, I haven't seen the iPhone4's display, but the only thing it can show is "No signal" 😉. I just can't say enough good about this display, SAMOLED technology is just amazing. It's almost completely readable in sunlight that would render any other display useless.

The camera is REALLY good. Auto white balance actually works correctly, and the 720p video quality is excellent for a mobile device. 720p video of my cat crawling into the Tmo bag

It's also blazing fast, I ran the Quadrant benchmark and got an 890 with a Live Wallpaper and "Weather & Toggle Widgets" loaded. I'm also not seeing any of the lag that was showing in that "Vibrant/Droid X dogfight" video that was posted a while back. It's very snappy, everything happens instantly.

The centerpiece of the "Vibrant Experience" (my words) is 3 applications that T-Mobile is really highlighting: The Sims3 special edition, Amazon Kindle app, MobiTV and an included movie, Avatar.
I haven't used the Amazon or MobiTV apps, as they require subscriptions, but the Sims3 SE app really shows off the 3D muscle of this phone. It loads very quickly, and runs buttery smooth.
Avatar, a movie I have not yet seen (going to watch it later this evening), showcases that wonderful screen. Colors are vibrant (hah!) andpop, and it looks gorgeous.

There's a few other apps it comes with, one neat one is Audio Postcard, where you can take a picture of a person and apply a frame effect to it, such as overlaying a football helmet, or a picture frame, then record a small audio message and send the whole thing through MMS or email. It also comes by default with a file browser, and the music player is very nice and has lock screen integration.
The Vibrant also has the ability to play DiVX-encoded avi files with no additional software.

Edit: Oh yes, and I almost forgot. The phone is advertised as having 16gb internal storage. 1.60GB is available for application storage, and 12.78GB of the internal storage is available to use. With my 8GB microsd card, I have a total of 20.39GB of space. It can also handle up to a 32gb microsdhc card, as well.

All in all, it's a powerhouse of a phone, a multimedia and 3d gaming mobile communication hub (and now I sound like an advert). I can easily recommend this phone to anybody looking for a high-end Android phone on T-Mobile.

tl;dr:
GOTO 10



jalaram said:
Re: How is the Vibrant's reception?

07-15-2010 10:03 AM
I just discovered something shocking. If I hold my phone in such a way that it cups the bottom of the phone, my bars disappear. If I just put it down i get full 3G bars. I never noticed this behavior on the MT3G. This sounds shockingly like the Iphone 4 problem. The antennas must be on the lower-left side of the phone since the problem DOES actually seem worse when I hold it with my left hand than with my right.
Click to expand...

I'm honestly not seeing this. I normally bounce between -95 to -104 dBm (lousy signal at my house, might be the walls) and when I cupped the bottom edge of the phone in my left hand like that post describes, it dropped to 0 dBm then immediately shot back to -104dBm.
 
Last edited:
The non-contract price for ATT gets even more interesting.

TexUS on HardOCP, got his for $300.

Link - Look at the 1st reply.

Originally Posted by TexUs
Originally Posted by XpediencY
did you buy that from a an authorized dealer? I just checked and it's $400 at the one near me for non-contract. They said authorized dealers can vary their prices, but all the corporate ones are going to be $400. Authorized retailer ftw lol
Click to expand...

Yep, official ATT store... $299.
biggrin.gif


I just rooted this sucker, too. I can confirm root works I guess (though I haven't figured out how to remove the ATT pre-installed stuff yet). I rooted it and got no errors at least.
Click to expand...

He also posted his receipt in the previous page.
 
sciwizam said:
The non-contract price for ATT gets even more interesting.

TexUS on HardOCP, got his for $300.

Link - Look at the 1st reply.



He also posted his receipt in the previous page.
Click to expand...

Well, dang. I was just about to say that I bet the pricing is wrong in the system, because I thought all the Galaxy S phones (Vibrant, Captivate, Fascinate, Epic) were all SGH-9xx model numbers, but the Captivate is actually the SGH-897. If only that guy left some more info on the receipt, you could take the pic to an ATT store and say "Gimmie it for $300!".
 
Thanks for the initial impressions. I just ordered two. One for me and one for the wife. Should be a nice upgrade from CyanogenMod myTouch. I like that Vibrant comes with Korean language support without having to root. That was a major selling point for my wife.
 
sciwizam said:
The non-contract price for ATT gets even more interesting.

TexUS on HardOCP, got his for $300.

Link - Look at the 1st reply.



He also posted his receipt in the previous page.
Click to expand...

Seems pretty hot if you can move it to tmob put it on Even More Plus for 60-80 mo w/ unlimited text/web.

Course tmob wants $499 for it on Even More Plus.🙁
 
From Clockwork's twitter traffic, looks like custom recoveries on close at hand for the Galaxy S series. Good sign.
 
Zebo said:
Seems pretty hot if you can move it to tmob put it on Even More Plus for 60-80 mo w/ unlimited text/web.

Course tmob wants $499 for it on Even More Plus.🙁
Click to expand...

From what I understand, the Captivate doesn't support the radio band necessary to use 3G on T-Mobile. 3G on T-Mo runs on 1700MHz in the US, which the Captivate does not support.

I like the way the Captivate looks but would rather use T-Mobile for their cheaper plans. Won't be able to do that with this phone though. I will hopefully just sell this phone when a better one comes along that works on a non-AT&T carrier.
 
KingGheedora said:
From what I understand, the Captivate doesn't support the radio band necessary to use 3G on T-Mobile. 3G on T-Mo runs on 1700MHz in the US, which the Captivate does not support.

I like the way the Captivate looks but would rather use T-Mobile for their cheaper plans. Won't be able to do that with this phone though. I will hopefully just sell this phone when a better one comes along that works on a non-AT&T carrier.
Click to expand...

Can someone clarify this? I thought the technical details of the Galaxy S series phones were the same, shouldn't the GSM versions support the same frequencies? Seems like a waste of engineering dollars for Samsung to design 4 different antennas for 4 different carriers.
 
Bateluer said:
Can someone clarify this? I thought the technical details of the Galaxy S series phones were the same, shouldn't the GSM versions support the same frequencies? Seems like a waste of engineering dollars for Samsung to design 4 different antennas for 4 different carriers.
Click to expand...

They did do this. Kinda lame right? It's how US carriers work though. They all want their own damn device!!!

Yeah I hope people start using like a pentaband 3G Antenna like Nokia does for its N8. The dumbest thing is to have to produce an 850/1900 device and then another Euro/Asia 2100 device. T-Mobile is the only one that uses 1700 so honestly I don't care if people exclude them. That's what you get for using an exclusive frequency. LOL. But seriously, it shouldn't be that hard to include them too.
 
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