T-Mobile's Samsung Galaxy S phone is a showstopper. Will the Samsung Vibrant rock the house? Read our full review to find out.
Samsung Vibrant Overview
We've been spending some quality time with Samsung's Galaxy S phone lineup for the past few weeks, and our most recent candidate has been the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile. Just like the Samsung Captivate for AT&T we reviewed last week, the Vibrant is stacked with a Super AMOLED screen, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 5-megapixel camera with 720p video, and Android 2.1. In fact, the Samsung Vibrant is nearly identical to the Captivate, save a few minor architectural differences and preloaded content. Let's just say James Cameron must be grinning and frolicking about like a little schoolgirl who just won the spelling bee, for T-Mobile hawks Avatar on the Samsung Vibrant like no tomorrow.
Samsung Vibrant Design
All Samsung Galaxy S phones share similar architecture, aside from Sprint's Epic 4G, which features a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. So the Samsung Vibrant is strikingly similar to the Samsung Captivate and Samsung Fascinate. Compared to the Captivate, the Vibrant resides on the cheap side, utilizing a singular thin plastic panel to shroud the battery, 32GB capacity MicroSD card slot, and SIM card bay. On the AT&T Captivate, we get a nice metal faux carbon fiber back panel that is easy to slide out. The Samsung Vibrant's frail back panel snaps on rather awkwardly to the extent that we feared breaking the inner tabs right off.
On the bright side, the Samsung Vibrant is a sleek, light device with a contoured body that seemed to fit in our pocket a tad more ergonomically sound than the Captivate. We have the same sliding USB port enclosure found on high-end camcorders and 3.5mm Audio jack located on top, volume control on the left side, and Lock button on the right side. Simplicity is the name of the game here.
The Samsung Vibrant's AMOLED screen is one of its main attractions. Aside from a panel of four touch-sensitive buttons (Menu, Home, Back, and Search), the Samsung Vibrant relies solely on its screen to run the show. Haptic feedback is optional, and the screen itself is a benchmark in the mobile industry. The Samsung Vibrant's four-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen has a WVGA resolution (800 x 480), but it's the phone's high contrast that sets it apart. The Vibrant's screen has an impressive 50,000:1 contrast ratio, which optimizes the dynamic range and proves ideal for watching movies and playing games. In fact, we compared the Vibrant's AMOLED to the iPhone 4's Retina display and made a few discoveries.
The iPhone 4 is better for basic navigation like reading and browsing while the Captivate is better for multimedia content like movies and games. It's worth noting that the iPhone 4's screen offers 326 pixels per inch (3.5-inch screen with 960 x 460-pixel resolution) while the Samsung Vibrant's screen has 260 pixels per inch (4-inch screen with 800 x 480-pixel resolution). We could see individual pixels and stepping lines if we looked very closely on the Vibrant's screen, but we couldn't see any pixels on the iPhone 4's screen. The Samsung Vibrant's Super AMOLED screen is still one of the tastiest in the mobile phone world, but the iPhone 4 still wins in the overall display department.
Samsung Vibrant Navigation Experience
After spending about two weeks using the Samsung Captivate, our assessments can apply directly to the Samsung Vibrant because both phones utilize TouchWIZ 3.0 on top of Android 2.1. Don't worry—the Samsung Vibrant will be upgradeable to Android 2.2 Froyo when it is available. But our current Android experience is going quite well. First off, we love the ability to assign a custom sound to nearly every notification. For instance, any time we get a Gmail, we here Super Mario sliding down a pipe. A text message is the Zelda Magic sound and our Ringtone is a cut from the Road Rash II (Classic motorcycle Sega game) theme song. These were created by us, loaded onto the MicroSD card, and applied within seconds on the Vibrant. Let's see Apple offer that level of customization.
Then we had the ability to scroll though our contacts and swipe right to call one and left to text message them — simple, intuitive interface implementations that sped up our navigational process. Samsung offers Social Hub, which takes all Facebook, Twitter, Google, and MySpace accounts and merges them into one. This is great for instant feeds and push notifications regarding what everyone is up to, but it can become overbearing, especially with thousands of contacts. We actually had a minor breakdown and went on a massive de-friending spree after using Social Hub. However, Samsung offers its own widget called Buddies Now, which allowed us to group all of the contacts we actually cared about into one Rolodex style address book for exclusive updates and easy-to-access contact info. The bottom line is that no matter what your social preferences are, the Samsung Vibrant will offer a high level of customization.
With the 1GHz Hummingbird processor, the Samsung Vibrant is a quick little phone. It's certainly not as smooth as the iPhone, and we could detect lagging and catching while moving pages and objects throughout the screen. We get seven home screens with the ability to easily customize our icons and shortcuts by pressing and holding the thumbnail and dropping it anywhere we wanted on a home screen. We get Google's Voice Search, YouTube in High Quality, a fast Internet browser, Wi-Fi Wireless N, POP3, IMAP, and Exchange email support, and a host of other user-friendly applications and programs that made our navigational experience feel complete. For keyboards, we could choose between Samsung's, Android's, and Swype, but Android's was the most intuitive.
Samsung Vibrant Multimedia
Even the Samsung Vibrant's packaging is a raging Avatar endorsement, and this is nothing new regarding T-Mobile. The company loves its partnerships for obvious reasons—everybody gets a piece. T-Mobile and 20th Century Fox work out a nice little deal and the consumer gets Avatar preloaded on the Vibrant for free. We saw it with the HTC HD2 and Transformers, and we'll see it again on the next hot multimedia phone. T-Mobile will snag the next graphics-heavy blockbuster, no matter how lame a story plot, in order to show off the new high-tech screens on its phones. Needless to say, Avatar looked amazing on the Samsung Vibrant, and that's because of the Super AMOLED screen.
But we're not done with the preloaded content. T-Mobile also offers the Sims 3 game, showcasing a full (well, mostly full) 3D rendering option of the game, which happens to be chock full of T-Mobile ads placed subliminally on t-shirts and building facades. Honestly, the game graphics and controls were lackluster and scenes took far too long to load. We much preferred downloading our own content from the Android Market, and Samsung's Media Hub will be available shortly, offering content from the biggest names in entertainment to be downloaded directly to the Vibrant. MobiTV, Amazon Kindle, AllShare, Amazon MP3, GoGo, Google Maps, and Slacker Radio were waiting for us when we powered on the phone, so the Samsung Vibrant will give you a great start right out of the box.
Samsung Vibrant Voice Quality
Just like the Samsung Captivate, the Samsung Vibrant gave us nothing to complain about on the talking or receiving end of the phone. Its noise cancellation and call quality rivaled the iPhone 4, and we actually called an iPhone 4 from a busy road with cars and trucks grumbling by to see how much noise pollution would actually make its way into the microphone. Surprisingly, we were able to have a clean conversation, unhindered by the roaring bustle of a tourist-heavy street, so that's one thing Samsung dialed in correctly with their Galaxy S phones—call quality.
Samsung Vibrant Still Image Quality
Surprisingly, the Samsung Vibrant fell behind in the imaging department, which is odd because we felt that the Samsung Captivate was a better performer, although neither phone beat out the iPhone 4. The Vibrant struggled to provide a sharp image and exhibited a hazy exposure at times. We think it boils down to the outer lens configuration—the Captivate has a different setup that appears to be utilizing actual glass while the Vibrant might have gone on the cheap with plastic or a different type of glass. In addition, the Samsung Vibrant lacked a flash of any sort. Whatever the case, the Samsung Vibrant gave us nothing to celebrate when it came to digital images, despite the fact that it has a 5-megapixel sensor and great camera controls.
Video quality was about on par with the Samsung Captivate. Jerky motion, noisy low light, and an overall lack of detail. We discovered that the Samsung Vibrant recorded videos at peculiar framerates like 29.65 or 29.72fps, though never a solid 29.97 like the iPhone 4. Because of that, we feel that motion took a hit. Either way, compare both phones using the videos below.
iPhone 4 720p Samples
Samsung Vibrant: The Final Answer
The Samsung Vibrant is no iPhone 4, but it was placed on the planet to offer T-Mobile users a viable alternative to the Apple lifestyle. The phone's brilliant AMOLED screen made movies enjoyable on a 4-inch screen. The navigational experience was quick and intuitive. The amount of preloaded content and downloadable applications and programs was bountiful. For the average T-Mobile user, the Samsung Vibrant is one of the best options currently to date.
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