Review: Samsung Vibrant
Form
Basics
Extras
Video
Wrap-Up
Comments 100+
Is It Your Type?
Body
The Three S's
Touch
Jul 18, 2010, 12:31 PM by Eric M. Zeman
T-Mobile's version of the Samsung Galaxy S — the Vibrant — holds up well when pitted against the Captivate. It lags the Captivate in a few places, while besting it in others.
The Vibrant is one of the better Android devices available from T-Mobile. If you're looking for solid performance all around, you can't go wrong with Samsung's top-of-the-line Vibrant. There are a few things that prevent the Vibrant from being 100% awesome, though. Find out where it falls short.
Since the Samsung Captivate and Vibrant are so similar, many parts of this review are identical for both the Captivate and Vibrant. The Body, Three S's, and Wrap-Up are all unique, but most other segments of both reviews are the same.
About the author, Eric M. Zeman:Eric has been covering the mobile telecommunications industry for 17 years at various print and online publications. He studied at Rutgers Newark and University of Kentucky, and has a degree in writing. He likes playing guitar, attending concerts, listening to music, and driving sports cars.
streaming to a t.v.
hey Eric did you try this out at all? did it work good? 🤨
It does have HDMI out. It connects through the 3.5mm jack at the top. You can buy the cable at RadioShack for $25.
The 4 icons at the bottom ARE changeable!!
Its easy to do. Open the app tray. Hit menu, then View Type. Set it to Customizable Grid. With the app tray open, hit menu, then Edit. Now drag whatever you want to the bottom tray-thingy. So the reviewer missed a few things. Can you give it a little better review now??
i registered with this site JUST so i could thank you for this info! i couldn't find it in the manual (could be blind..lol). thank you so much!
wait.... 8 steps to move an icon?
That sounds like a little much.
AllShare and HDMI out
The phone also has Samsungs "All Share" where you can pair DLNA equipped devices through WiFi. Really cool if you want to share pics and videos from your phone to your TV, computer, XBOX 360, ect, via Wifi. You can also buy a HDMI output cable from RadioShack for $25 if you want to hook it up to your TV. 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎
Is it me...
...or do T-Mobile 3G devices not hold a good 3G signal?
Yes its you, Ive used sprint, verizon, and tmobile and tmobile's 3g devices hold signal as strong if not more so than the rest.
Its this phone. I have had a mytouch, a G1, and a Slide, and now a vibrant. (Yeah, I know, but I work for T-Mo!) The Vibrant and the Slide were the two worst receivers of the bunch, and the Vibrant is noticably worse. I hope a radio firmware updat...
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Night Mode
Wish you would have covered Night Mode. It really is a great feature and I think in most cases superior to a flash.
Umm, what exactly is locked down?
Yes TouchWiz 3.0 isn't super flexible but neither is Sense or Motoblur. At least with TouchWiz 3.0 you can change the number of screens if you don't need all 7, change two of the four icons on the bottom panel or as the best option switch to a different launcher like ADW or LauncherPro. The beauty of Android is that almost every part can be changed to your liking and this is still the case with the Vibrant. Don't like the stock messaging app? Get Handcent. Don't like the stock email app? Get Touchdown or K9. If you really think that the Vibrant runs a "locked down" version of Android then you need to go back and put that critique in for every other Android phone not named Nexus One.
Vibrant is fantastic
I have to disagree with this reviewer on many points, though most of it is subjective, except for one...the four icons on the bottom of the screen actually can be modified (well, two of them can).
Just choose "customizable grid", then click "menu" and "edit", then you'll be able to change the two middle icons.
For me (coming from a G1, and testing out every other phone on the market, other than the Droid X), this phone is incredible, and honestly, I can't think of another better phone on the market. Is it perfect? No, but it's got so many things going for it (incredible screen, fast processor, and great UI enhancements, fantastic photos and video, and more).
I wish it had some sort of dpad, or at least had arrows for text selectio...
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I agree with you this phone needs some sort of an optical track pad or trackball or whatever at the bottom and a flash would be nice but night mode works plenty well enough for me. This phone has more potential to me than the nexus one (I am a nexus ...
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I'm going to check it out
FIRST! lol I've never done that b4 so I figured I'd be an a**
skywalkershawty said:
FIRST! lol I've never done that b4 so I figured I'd be an a**
Congrats.
just a couple things from the review I dont agree with
The statement that the phone is not as customizable because of locked down UI from samsung is not completely correct to me. I threw ADW on mine and its easily a very customizable android phone and for sure less locked down than the AT&T version. Also the reviewer doesnt like that it looks like the iphone and I for one dont care for that but its not a negative to me either. I do however feel the at&t version looks just like the blackberry storm. One of my issues is the same as with HTC sense UI and its if you decide to use a different launcher like ADW or launcher pro then you cant use the custom widgets like Sense UI or Touchwiz 3.0 widgets. Battery life kills my nexus though so thats a plus. Another thing I noticed from where I work most...
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Samsung Vibrant (Galaxy S)
