Samsung Vibrant Review

We review the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile, part of Samsung's new line of Galaxy S phones that feature Android and outstanding AMOLED screens.

Introduction

While the Samsung Galaxy S Captivate wages a potentially fruitless war versus the iPhone 4 over at AT&T, in many ways, its sibling, the Galaxy S Vibrant, faces a more crowded Android field at T-Mobile. But in a feature-by-feature comparison, the Vibrant prevails with little problem. Its only real competition, feature-wise, is the otherwise inferior Windows-based HTC HD2, and the Android Motorola Cliq XT. Almost by default, the Vibrant becomes T-Mobile’s most impressive Android phone, albeit with some quirks and omissions that leave room for improvement, and some hard dollars-to-features choices for T-Mobile Android customers.

Features

Like its Galaxy S siblings, Vibrant offers nearly all the modern cell Android 2.1 amenities – 7.2 Mbps 3G connectivity, Wi-Fi, a speedy 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 5-megapixel camera and HD (720p resolution, 30 frames per second) video recorder, Bluetooth 3.0, six-axis sensor for enhanced gaming, 16GB internal memory, and SWYPE text input, as well as Samsung’s “Social Hub,” which aggregate updates from your Facebook, Twitter and MySpace accounts.

Design

With its front silver frame, the smooth, rounded Vibrant bears a resemblance to the first iPhone, and its predictable lines make it much more elegant than the angular Captivate. The Vibrant’s only physical anomaly is a hump at the bottom rear, presumably for the antenna array. While surprisingly light, the Vibrant doesn’t feel cheap or fragile. In fact, it’s essentially the same weight (4.2 oz.) as the smaller Motorola Cliq XT.

Like all the Galaxy S phones, the Vibrant’s calling card is its 4-inch super AMOLEDscreen, which is brighter and displays more accurate colors than any other T-Mobile Android phone. Oddly, the Vibrant’s display also presents truer colors than the Galaxy S Captivate. This difference is especially notable on Web pages with a white background, which tend toward the blue on Captivate.

Layout and Interface

On the left is a smooth volume toggle with no separation, and no raised dots or dashes to distinguish between up and down. On the right is the power button, which doubles as a lock key in certain apps. This power button is located closer to the center of the right spine than on the Captivate, and can easily be confused as the camera shutter release, which it is decidedly not.

Like the Captivate, the microbus jack is at the top next to the headphone jack, which makes it less awkward to use the phone when it’s plugged into a PC for charging and syncing.

Multimedia

T-Mobile doesn’t have its own video store, so included viewing options are limited to YouTube and the subscription-based MobiTV. As with the Captivate, the low-res offerings from these services don’t exactly challenge the super AMOLED screen.

You’ll want to use earphones to listen to your videos. The Vibrant’s only speaker is the earpiece, which produces only tinny sound, and barely enough volume for private listening in a quiet room.

The Vibrant includes Samsung’s AllShare app, which lets you play a file from your phone on another media player, play a file from a server on the phone, or play a file from a server onto another player, using the phone as a remote – all requiring Wi-Fi and DLNA.

Sound Quality

You’ll get plenty of volume for conversation, but the earpiece sounds just as tinny with voices as it does for music, even if words are easily distinguishable.

Phone Functionality

For the Galaxy S phones, Samsung has changed the app menu from the usual vertical slide-up screen to an iPhone-like four-by-four grid of icons arrayed across a series of swipable horizontal screens. As on the Captivate, apps on the Vibrant can’t be re-arranged from their automatic alphabetical sequence.

The Galaxy S’s white-on-black Contacts app is a throwback to monochrome screens, but actually makes info easier to read, especially in a dark environment. The haptic touch dial pad has large, easy-to-read alphanumeric keys.

Similarly, the well-spaced haptic touch QWERTY keyboard is possibly the best of the Android phones thus far, and is naturally far roomier than the keyboard crammed onto the smaller Cliq XT screen.

Web

T-Mobile’s 3G network on the Vibrant out-performed the Captivate on AT&T – when you can get it. While sitting in a Times Square hotel lobby, we started off with speedy 3G service, but Vibrant mysteriously lapsed to EDGE for no discernable reason. Mobile-optimized pages such as CNN and ESPN loaded in 3-4 seconds while in 3G, twice to three times as long for standard HTML pages.

Camera

The Vibrant also takes photos better than the Captivate, with deeper blacks and brighter colors. HD videos – and Vibrant is the only T-Mobile phone to offer full 30fps HD video – don’t offer the level of detail of even Flip pocket cams, but are far superior to any captured by other T-Mobile phones.

Then there’s the side power button, found on all the Galaxy S phones. In almost all other apps, you hit this key and the phone shuts off. But in record mode, it locks the screen and all the buttons, a status indicated by a tiny, barely perceptible on-screen padlock icon. We’re not sure why this camera lock is necessary. With no immediate and obvious status indication, it frequently delayed snapping candid shots.