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Hands-on Review of Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile

Posted Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 10:15 am by Antonio Wells 1 Comments

User Rating4.00/5

Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile is apart of the Samsung Galaxy S family of Android smartphones. It was released mid July 2010 for $199 after two year agreement and data plan. We’re taking an in-depth look at the hardware, software and features on the phone.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Brilliant and beautiful 4 inch Super AMOLED screen
• 16 GIGABYTES of internal memory storage in addition of 2 gigabyte SD Card and expandable up to 32 gigabytes for a grand total of 48 gigabytes
• Powerful processor, great for gaming and plenty of powerful Android apps

Cons

• No flash for camera
• No LED on front for notifications such as missed call, missed email, or missed text message

Hardware Design

The first thing many say when they see T-Mobile’s favor of the Samsung Galaxy S is, “is it an iPhone (3G)”? Though the design is strikingly similar the hardware and software totally differentiates the phone.

The Good

The screen is indescribably bright and vibrant… hence the name. It’s 4 inches of Super AMOLED touchscreen display offering good visibility even in direct sunlight. Toting a 1GHz Samsung processor it’s more than capable of high-end gaming or can handle multi-tasking hungry Android apps you can throw at it!

The Vibrant takes brilliant pictures with it’s 5 megapixel camera. However it plays and shoots HD (1280x720p) video!

The Bad

I’m not sure who dropped the ball in the product design department; worse who allowed the product to go to market without a flash for the 5 megapixel camera, worst no LED notification light! There’s an app that tries to help with that called NoLED, but in my experience was not good as it killed the battery since it essentially places a moving dot on a black screen when notifications are received, meaning your screen display is always on, just black color to look like it’s off.

I personally saw this line of phones debate at fall CTIA 2010, and knew that flaw would be addressed by launched but was obviously mistaken. I don’t see ex-Blackberry users who switch to the Vibrant appreciate the notification lack as that’s one of 3 top things people love about Blackberry: email, keyboard and addictive LED notification reminder.

Samsung Vibrant Apps and Samsung Custom User Interface

The Vibrant is the only phone to have the Avatar movie in high quality video and sound embedded right into the device. Other pre-installed Android apps are: AllShare, Gogo, Amazon’s Kindle app, Layar, Samsung’s Media Hub, Memo, Mini Diary and Write and Go, MobiTV, Swype Keyboard, TeleNav GPS, The Sims 3, ThinkFree Office, T-Movile Visual Voicemail and more. Not to mention it supports Microsoft Exchange email.

One of the key stand-outs is the custom user interface atop Android’s default UI… it’s sleek and provides a better user experience in virtually every menu. One feature I really like is the ability to auto-respond to incoming mobile callers by sending a text message back with one click such as, “I’ll call you later” (similar to PhonePlus Callback just executed better).

Pictures of Samsung Vibrant

Conclusion

The Samsung Vibrant is an awesome Android smartphone, especially for iPhone converts or existing Android users who don’t necessarily need a physical keyboard. It’s power and display make it a multimedia work horse and good for video & multimedia, gaming or business productive.

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