Samsung Vibrant Android Phone (T-Mobile)

T-mobile Finally Gets a Great Android Phone! July 15, 2010

Reviewer:  diljs 

T-mobile, the first carrier to even have an android phone (the G1), blew its lead with the OS on a stream of mediocre handsets. While the other carriers got newer and better devices, T-mobile lagged behind, until now. Finally, at long last, a quality handset has arrived: the Vibrant. With its good looks, blazing fast speed, and quality OS, T-mobile customers can finally upgrade to a great phone.

*Hardware*

The Good:
-The first thing you notice about the Vibrant is its big beautiful screen. The 480x800 AMOLED screen is sharp and beautiful, easy to type on, and shows plenty of detail.
-The phone itself is thin and light, with a nice curve near the bottom to hold onto.
-1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor is faster in benchmarks than a 1 GHz Snapdragon and offers enhanced graphics procesing
-The buttons are not buttons but touch sensitive surfaces, like a flat screen TV.
-16gb of onboard storage is awesome. Add a 32gb microsdhc card and you've got 48gb, more than the iPhone.
-3G connection takes advantage of T-mobile's ever expanding 3G network, currently the fastest of any carrier in many cities.
-5 megapixel camera takes decent pictures and records video at 720p.

The Bad:
-The big compromise here is the camera. While the EVO and Incredible have 8MP cameras, the Vibrant has only 5MP. Flash and Front Facing Camera are glaring omissions from this otherwise high end phone.
-The plastic feels a bit cheap, but this is the case with most phones these days.
-Garish T-mobile and Samsung logos detract from the smooth appearance.

*Software*

The Good:
-Android 2.1 is stock on the phone with a promised upgrade to 2.2 in the near future. The latest versions of android are fast, more battery efficient, and have fewer "force close" errors. Some highlights include animated wallpapers, 7 home screens, and support for flash in web browsing.
-The interface is fast and smooth.
-Samsung has managed not to screw up the interface to this phone like it did on the Behold 2. The customizations are useful and unobtrusive.

*Included Accessories*

The Good:
-2 backplates (shiny blue or shiny purple) for customization.
-Nice gelly earphones are higher quality than most phones.
-Charger is a solid usb/wall combo.
-Avatar movie shows off the phone's beautiful screen.
-Free Sims 3 game is a fun way to kill some time.

The Bad:
-2gb MicroSD card is a bit lame compared to the 16gb internal memory, but easily upgradable.

Overall this is a great phone. Some hardware compromises prevent it from being the best Android phone ever, but it is still the best Android phone for T-mobile, and is the phone many customers, including myself, have been waiting for. The phone looks great, is blazingly fast, and has plenty of bells and whistles.

Goodbye Pullout Keyboard, Swype on the Vibrant is incredible! July 16, 2010

Reviewer:  Amy Gray  (San Diego, CA) -

I was a die-hard pull-out keyboard junky, but using Swype on the Vibrant changed my mind forever. I could type 30+ words per minute on my G1 (my previous phone), and I'm a tad slower on the Vibrant using Swype, but that's just because there's a little bit of a learning curve. I'm convinced that I'll be just as fast on the Vibrant by this time next week.

In all respects, this phone is an incredible leap forward from the G1, and is light, sleek, and fast. The 7 customizable home screens make it easy to categorize my apps and widgets. The camera on this phone, in comparison to the G1's, is extremely usable and the results are comparable to point-and-shoot photos, even without a flash. Who likes "flashy" pictures, anyway? The screen is everything everyone has said. Coupled with the speedy processor, I can flip through photos in my Picasa or Flickr accounts in a flash.

I'm not jealous of my friends' iPhones anymore.

One of the best phones you can buy, but...e July 31, 2010

Reviewer:  ViBu "Striderhayasa"  (Philly) -

I'll try to keep this as brief and to the point as possible.

The Samsung Vibrant -

The form factor - great as it's not too big, not too small with a 4 inch screen. If you're coming from a nexus one or a droid then you may not like the amount of plastic that's in the phone or the light feel. But even though it's a plastic build, it's a compact solid build. At first glance it will remind you of a Iphone. Again, it may be a turn off depending on your tastes.

Screen - hands down one of the best portable screens you'll ever see. Uses Samsung's Super AMOLED technology which they seem to be keeping for their own products these days. Avatar as a pack in for the device is a great move. Seeing the clarity of that film running on a Vibrant is awe - inspiring. The screen is responsive and accurate. I've had no problems with it in that regard. Resolution is 480x800.

Software - the Vibrant is running android 2.1 which is good, but 2.2 on this phone would have been amazing. But to be fair the update is coming in september. It runs with a custom user interface (ui) layer on top of android called touchwiz 3.0. It adds some interesting features to stock android but at the end of the day, I found it to be totally unnecessary. I've found similar and better features in the Android marketplace for the solutions that Samsung has tried to incorporate here. There are some glaring missing features though. The user dictionary that's standard in stock android is missing here. Also the ability to add custom ringtones to your contact list entries is also missing. Both functions can be easily added by downloading User dictionary from the market as well as Ringo Lite. The phone ships with Swype virtual keyboard and its enabled by default. It also ships with Samsung's own keyboard as well as the stock android keyboard. Swype has been my keyboard of choice since it was in beta. it's very intuitive and is a great choice by samsung.
The Vibrant also ships with a version of Rock Player. This is significant. Rock Player allows standard and some not-so-standard video codecs to run natively on Android phones. Xvid, divx, wmv, mov, mpeg 1/2/3, FLV...its serious. Android always had terrible video codec support but now, the days of encoding video are over thanks to Rock Player. The player is also available in the marketplace but doesnt seem to be as polished. The GPS software is glitchy. There's a fix for it that has been discussed on many forums but Samsung is preparing an update for it.

Camera - the good news is the Vibrant takes great photos and videos. Videos can be recorded in "720p" but the phone doesnt have a flash. This was a major concern for me initially until I actually used the camera. In well lit areas, the Vibrant took great images. Night time shots were great too if ample light was available. If not, there's a night mode. It works for the most part but it left a good number of my pics a tad blurry.
Video worked as one would expect. I was happy to see consistent smooth framerate and no pauses or glitches in the videos I took with the device.

Hardware - this is what ultimately sold me on the Vibrant. It has a 1ghz Hummingbird (Cortex A8 core) cpu developed by Intrinsity with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU (graphics processor). What this means is this CPU/GPU combo gives the Vibrant better graphics/games performance than any other smartphone of its class. I didn't quite believe it at first coming from a nexus one with Android 2.2 (which I still own) but after comparing the Vibrant to the Droid, the N1, the Incredible, Iphone 3gs, and the DroidX, I noticed 3D intensive games ran smoother on the Vibrant. Consistently so at 60 frames per second. I did some research and found out why. That material is too much to post here. I'll leave it to you to Google it. But in short, the Vibrant is capable of processing 90 million triangles a second.

The Droid with a TI OMAP3430 CPU and a PowerVR SGX530 - 7 to 14 million triangles a second

Nexus one with a Qualcomm QSD8x50 (snapdragon) and a Adreno 200 - 22 million triangles a second.

Iphone 3gs 600mhz cortex A8 with a Power VR SGX535 - 7 million triangles a second.

Also, the Vibrant ships with 16gbs of internal storage and can use 32gb microsd cards. 1.7 gbs of that storage can be used for apps which is more than enough space and eliminates the need for saving apps to sd card. Avatar is a little less than 2gbs on the sd card that ships with the phone but it can be transferred to internal memory and run from there.
The phone lacks a trackball but there are virtual arrow keys in swype and the Samsung keyboard that help to make up for the loss. The camera is a 5 mega pixel camera without flash as was mentioned. The face buttons are virtual buttons and work most of the time but there were times when the phone didn't seem to recognize my press. I'm not sure if this is from Android or the phone itself, but its worth mentioning.

Phone - I've experienced no problems with phone calls on the device. Calls were clear on my end and the other end of the line. bluetooth worked as it should and pairing a headset was as easy as one would expect. There's no noise cancellation mic but the speaker on the phone is very loud for videos, music and speakerphone.

Battery life - This has been a topic of great debate and for good reason. My Vibrant has lasted an entire day with moderate use on a 1500mah battery. A day and a half with light use. It lasted about 6 to 7 hours with heavy use. That's watching Avatar for a bit, surfing the web, taking calls, downloading from the market, playing games here and there. It lasted my entire shift at work with me constantly configuring it, running it, using it. By comparison, my Nexus one with Android 2.2 cannot last the day with moderate use. I can get 5 hours out of it maybe 6 before I have to recharge. Heavy use with my n1 will net me four hours maybe 5. To be fair there might be a particular app or even Android 2.2 causing the drain because it wasn't that bad when I first bought it, but it is what it is at this point.

Final thoughts, the Samsung Vibrant is one of the best Android phones released thus far but it has some issues that are strange and keeps it from being the best. Missing utilities that are standard in stock Android and have been since Android debuted is very strange. No flash will undoubtedly turn off a few people as well as the lack of Android 2.2 in an environment that calls for it. But what the Vibrant does well, it does extremely well and solves some key issues for some older Android devices. Internal storage that's more than enough to hold any apps you desire as well as gbs worth of content, a screen that's drop dead gorgeous and easier to navigate, fantastic video codec support and a better cpu/gpu combo for superior performance especially with gaming. The Vibrant is the best phone you can buy at Tmobile if you don't need a physical qwerty keyboard. I'm happy with the device and eagerly await Android 2.2 for it.

Amazing phone: fast, beautiful, very well equipped July 17, 2010

Reviewer:  B. Hansen 

I had been waiting for this phone since it was rumored to be coming to T-mobile, so my expectations were very high after reading so much about it. Amazingly, it has surpassed all of my expectations. The first thing that hit me was how sharp and, well, vibrant its huge screen is. The colors are extremely rich. And once I started playing with it, I was very impressed with its blazing speed. I've installed my favorite podcast app, BeyondPod, and the podcasts download much, much faster than on my G1. Videos look amazing, especially Avatar, which was included on the 2 GB SD card that came with the phone. The phone also has 16 GB of internal memory. With a 32 GB SD card, the phone's memory can be expanded up to 48 GB. I was concerned about not having a physical keyboard, but Swype makes typing with the onscreen keyboard astoundingly efficient. In fact, with Swype both my typing speed and accuracy have gone way up. I'm using it to type out this review. An amazing thing about Swype is not only how fast I can slide my finger across the keyboard to type, but how good Swype is at getting the word right even when I miss a letter or two. Another thing that was a very pleasant surprise was that after I entered my Google account info, not only were my contacts, calendar and email all synchronized automatically, but when I opened the wonderfully done Gallery app, all of my photos from Picasa had also been synchronized. The gallery had a nice thumbnail of each photo, and selecting one of the thumbnails caused the full resolution photo to be downloaded and displayed. The galley app also does a great job showing off the Vibrant's graphic capabilities with a dynamic, 3D display that organizes the photos into piles that can be easily expanded or "restacked". All of this is done by the phone itself. The Vibrant doesn't need any bloated desktop software or paid services to keep it synchronized. Setting up additional email accounts was also a snap. As I type this review, I must comment again how great Swype is. It actually makes typing fun!

Setting up a secured wifi connection was also a snap. The web browser is excellent. Adding system controls such as wifi, Bluetooth, etc. to the pulldown notifications shade is an excellent feature added by Samsung. The stock widgets, such as Daily Briefing, Dual Clock, etc., are very nice, although I miss the calendar app on my G1. I'll get another one from the Market.

Having seven home screens is very nice, I like that I can jump to any one of the home screens by tapping on one of the seven dots that run across the very top of the screen.

I don't have any issues with the phone, but there are some minor nits. For example, my network connection generally seems to be stronger than what the bars indicate. Also, I miss having a trackball, but I'm finding out that with such a large, responsive and accurate touchscreen, a trackball isn't really necessary.

Whatever you want to call it, a smartphone, superphone or a handheld computer, the Vibrant is an outstanding device.

Finally a great Android Phone for T-Mobile July 16, 2010

Reviewer:  Quikster  (Charleston, SC) -

Great Phone. I had all kinds of issues trying to order the Nexus One and finally gave up. I've been waiting for something good to come out on T-Mobile since May.

This phone has a beautiful display and is supper fast. Only issue I've ran into so far is apparently none of the sales staff know to give it an Android Internet plan instead of a smartphone internet plan. Not really sure what the difference is, except one stops working after a few hours, and my brother had the same issue on his Nexus One he ordered online, so it's not even just the sales staff at my local store.

Pros:
-Swype is super fast for input once you get use to it.
-Camera seems to take decent pictures and video with a decent selection of control over the functions.
-Really bright, huge, and responsive display. Some of the older displays can be a little unresponsive and sluggish like the Nexus One, MyTouch, but this one seems as good or better than my old iPhone3g
-Really light weight, but feels solidly built
-Super thin

Cons:
-no flash on camera, may affect other people, but I never use those pitiful things so doesn't really matter to me

I look forward to spending some more time with the phone this weekend and figuring it out better, but so far it has been fantastic. If you need a T-mobile phone and want Android you should definitely look at this phone.