GALAXY Ace takes a minimal approach in its design, resulting in a sophisticated mobile that will allure. The smooth rounded edges and slim, compact size are a pleasure to wrap your fingers around, just as the large 3.5” HVGA screen is a delight to watch.
A Market with Limitless Fun
With approximately 100,000 apps available on the Android Market, there’s no end to what your mobile can do. Enjoy countless games, utilities, news, health and finance applications with more being added each day. The scope of what GALAXY Ace can do is virtually unlimited!
Perfect Social Hub
GALAXY Ace offers a fully integrated one-page layout of your phone book, IM, email, and SNS. You can also organize and view your contacts according to four separate formats—Info, History, Activity and Media-so you can customize your layout just the way you want it.
Great Hardware for Great Performance
GALAXY Ace comes fully loaded with all I need for smooth web browsing, downloading and more. Equipped with a strong 800MHz processor and Wi-Fi, I can surf the web, download apps quickly, and share content with friends. Multitasking is a breeze, so we can have fun in all sorts of ways.
Speedy Quicktype
GALAXY Ace features Quicktype by SWYPE, an intelligent interface that connects the dots made by your finger to figure out what you are trying to write. By moving your finger across the keypad from letter to letter in one fluid motion, the mobile senses exactly what you want to say!
Unlimited access to web-browsing with Flash 10.1 support
Experience Flash 10.1 content on a 7”screen and immerse yourself in interactive web experiences. Never be shutout from visiting the countless sites that use Flash 10.1 content to provide interactive games, animation, rich Internet applications, data presentations, and a wide range of multimedia experiences. The absolute reliability with the most common Internet protocols provides a new web surfing experience that supersedes conventional access.
A one stop, Readers Hub for books, magazines, and news
Readers Hub is an integrated book, magazine, and newspaper solution that gives you e-Reading content to enjoy when you want to read the newest bestseller, a must read Op-Ed piece, or do some self-improvement. Build your own personal library and have instantaneous access to your favorite books with the touch of a fingertip. The familiar paperback size of the Samsung GALAXY Tab Smartphone makes the 7”screen a joy to read during an afternoon break.
Communicate face-to-face with the entire team
The 7”screen is perfect for video conference calls that let you meet your entire team with the press of a button. See and experience greater efficiency in your ability to communicate with others. Enrich yourself with a new communication experience that lets you choose more personal and satisfying ways to interact in both business and friendships. A video call on the GALAXY Tab lets you communicate with greater perception and depth
More of the information you need
The Samsung GALAXY Tab Smartphone’s use of augmented reality lets you see more travel details than ever before. See information on restaurants, places of interest, and hidden local history that give you an unforgettable travel experience. Business trips become less of an adventure and more of an experience with a 7”screen you can take anywhere.
Social Hub integrates your E-mail, IM, and SNS
Organize and synchronize better all your online contacts through Social Hub. Streamline your e-mail, SMS, IM, and SNS information into one unified box, and interact faster with more people in the way you want to. Access your email or social network information on a 7”brilliant screen. Preview emails in a split screen layout and assess the priority of messages without having to open them. Communicate easier with SWYPE, which lets you type faster and smoother than ever before.
A cartographer’s masterpiece
Leave the stress of travel behind as the Samsung GALAXY Tab Smartphone helps navigate you to your destination faster and safer than ever before. Be it on foot, driving, or bicycle - receive destination feedback in a method that lets you concentrate on situational awareness. Save time and energy by avoiding traffic jams, wrong turns, and bad directions.
Thinkfree
Single-handedl y prepare and produce of f i ce documents that can be viewed and shared with others on a 7”screen at the most convenient time possible. Develop spreadsheets, Word documents, PDF files, and PowerPoint presentations in their original formats.
Integrated Calendar
The Integrated Calendar synchronizes your Samsung GALAXY Tab Smartphone calendar with the most popular time management services offered by Google, Facebook, and Microsoft Exchange (MS Outlook). Maximize your work time, maintain personal commitments, and prioritize your tasks to get the most out of your day.
Rich Multimedia
The Samsung GALAXY Tab Smartphone may be the best thing in movies since popcorn. A full high-definition video experience on a 7”screen gives you the perfect platform to watch movies with while you’re on the go. In addition, have a 5.1 surround sound theater experience or listen to concert hall music in the palm of your hand with SoundAlive 3D audio.
Fast Connectivity
Stay connected at speeds that meet or exceed your demands. Always be able to connect to the Internet with Wi-Fi or use the 3G network that allows for uploads up to HSUPA 5.76 Mbps and downloads at up to HSDPA 7.2 Mbps. In addition, experience the convenience of 3G wireless tethering and share data with other tethered devices at speeds never experienced before.
The Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile is part of Samsung's Android-powered Galaxy S family of smartphones. All the versions sold in the U.S. (AT&T's Captivate, Verizon's Fascinate, Sprint's Epic 4G) feature 4-inch Super AMOLED displays, 16GB of internal storage, and a 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird CPU. Only the Sprint model features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, though.
The Vibrant features impressive specs overall, and its 5 megapixel 720p HD capable camera ranks high among them, though the lack of a flash earns it a ding on the report card. Also troublesome is the Vibrant's relatively weak reception on T-Mobile's network. The biggest issue with the Vibrant, however, is the frequency and severity of pauses, or hiccups, in the use of what is otherwise a very speedy phone. These seem to exist is all versions of the Galaxy S - even those in Europe. In spite of these problems, the Vibrant is still a desirable handset. It does many things right, and presents it all on that magnificent touchscreen display.
Goodies like the full version of the Avatar movie pre-loaded on its 2GB microSD card, and a pre-installed The Sims3 game will help it compete at its $199.99 price point.
Hardware
As a Samsung Galaxy S based smartphone, the Vibrant for T-Mobile features a simple touchscreen slab design. What makes that design special is not its style, of which it has some, but rather the brilliant properties of its 4-inch, 800 x 480 pixel Super AMOLED(INFO) display. Samsung's Super AMOLED technology puts the capacitive touchscreen(INFO) layer directly on the display layer, which makes the complete assembly thinner, better performing in direct light, and somewhat more frugal with power.
That big display ensures that the Vibrant is not a particularly petite phone, though: 123 x 64.5 x 10.0mm (4.8 x 2.5 x .4in). That makes it narrower, shorter, and thinner than a Motorola DROID X, but not much so.
Apart from the display, the design is simple. There are 4 touch sensitive buttons at the base of the phone, and a volume rocker on the left edge that is balanced by a power/lock button on the right edge. The 3.5mm headphone jack is at the top, next to a micro-USB port for power and data that features a sliding cover.
The rear of the phone has a nice pattern on it, and feels slightly warm to the touch - in spite of being made of plastic. The 5 megapixel camera sits on the back, sans flash, and there is little else to the rear cover except for the speaker grille and a slight bulge (an additional 1.5mm) at the bottom of the phone. The rear cover can be easily removed to reveal the microSD memory card slot (2GB card included, 16GB already built-in), but the battery need not be removed to swap cards.
The build quality of the device is good, but the plastic rear cover and relative light weight of the device don't make it feel particularly rugged. The rear cover also seems a bit too easily scratched.
Usability
In spite of what you have heard about Samsung's TouchWiz in the past (including what we've said on this site), the user interface work that Samsung is doing is good. TouchWiz 3.0, as it appears on Samsung's most recent smartphones, is user friendly, attractive, and sensible. It still lacks the spit and polish of HTC's Sense, but it is desirable none the less.
The new main menu, with its ability to be arranged into panels of the user's choosing, is a great example. The shortcut buttons for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, and Silent mode that appear in the notification area are another. Even Samsung's new homescreen is nice: there are plenty of widgets, and users can add, remove, and rearrange home screen panels as they like. Great stuff.
The Android 2.1 OS still has some issues of its own, though. The back button doesn't always perform as a user might intend, and there still is no proper task manager on the phone. But overall Android is easy enough to use for people to settle in quickly enough.
The Vibrant's contact system is very nice. It is easy to find a contact, thanks to the list's index letters and easy searching, and shortcuts to frequently accessed contacts can be placed on the home screen. The phone imports contacts from Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter and will make use of their contact photos, as well. Status updates can be viewed from a tab in the Contacts app, where users can do things like reply and retweet. The ring profile support on the phone is minimal, but text input options are well rounded, and include the very nice Swype keyboard system.
While there is much on the phone that can be customized, such as home screen layout and (live) wallpapers, there is no real theme support. I really do appreciate being able to reorganize the main menu, though, and the ability to swap out the Contacts and Messaging icons at the bottom of the screen for those of other functions. My only real issue is that the Vibrant occasionally hangs, or pauses, for a second or two. These pauses are most frequent with 3rd party apps (all of which work fine on other devices), but happen with the built-in apps, too, and are often entirely repeatable. They can make the phone annoying to use, at times. That's not something I'd expect from a phone with a 1GHz processor.
This lag issue is what drops the Vibrant's Usability score from a 4 to a 3. It is a real problem.
Calling / Data
While it seemed to be an issue in my initial encouters with the Vibrant, the phone's internal antenna seems to work quite well, finding a signal where many other devices can't. Voice quality overall seemed good, when there was signal enough, and even the speakerphone performed well - though it was obvious to remote callers that it had been activated.
Data is well covered on the Vibrant. In addition to the typical GPRS, EDGE, and 3G HSPA(INFO) support one can enjoy on the T-Mobile network, the phone also supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. I managed to get 3G data speeds that ranged from 1200kbps in weak signal areas to those well over 2500kbps in better coverage areas. The Wi-Fi system supports DLNA(INFO) (through the AllShare application) for streaming media to or from other compatible devices, though, truth be told, I had limited success with it, just as was the case with the Motorola DROID X.
Messaging
Like most Android smartphones, the Samsung Vibrant has great messaging capabilities. Samsung has added some of its own apps for messaging on the Vibrant, though, that make it more colorful and even more useful. The brightly colored threaded SMS/MMS system is very nice, for example. It lacks contact photos, but at least makes it clear as to which messages are from you, and which are from the other person.
The Vibrant has full support for IMAP, POP, and Exchange email through a very pretty application that Samsung has added to the phone. Moving between folders is very easy thanks to the TouchWiz 3.0 sliding tabs at the top of the inbox. Multiple email accounts can be configured, and Contacts and Calendar data can be pulled in from Exchange accounts along with mail. Gmail is handled by a separate Gmail client, and it, too, supports multiple accounts for mail, contacts, and calendar data.
No dedicated social networking apps are pre-installed, but official (and non-official) apps for Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are readily available (and free) if the built-in support in the Contacts app proves insufficient. Instant Messaging support is limited to a pre-installed Google Talk client, but apps for other systems are also widely available.
Apps / App Store
While the Android Market can't compete on an application count basis with the iPhone App Store, the fact that there are nearly 100,000 apps to choose from should make most anybody happy.
For their part, T-Mobile and Samsung loaded the phone with plenty of good stuff. Slacker Radio, The Sims3, ThinkFree Office, and the full length Avatar movie are pre-loaded. Samsung's cute Memo, Write and Go, and Mini Diary applications back up a very solid Calendar app that pulls in data from multiple Gmail and Exchange data sources.
Google's Maps application, with its free turn by turn navigation system, is pre-installed on the Vibrant. But if you prefer a non-beta navigation system, and who could blame you, then you might enjoy the Telenav GPS system that is also loaded onto the phone.
Browser
The web browser that is built into the Samsung Vibrant is first rate. The large, colorful display and accurate touchscreen provide the perfect foundation for what turns out to be a competent and fast web browsing experience. Pages render the way they are supposed to, and they load up quite quickly.
Zooming can be accomplished multiple ways, including through the use of multi-touch gestures and double tapping on the screen. When the browser zooms in or out, text re-flows to keep everything readable, too. Adobe Flash 9.1 support is built into the browser, though a dedicated client on the Vibrant takes over when you attempt to watch an embedded YouTube video.
Camera
With two glaring exceptions, the lack of a flash and hardware shutter button, the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile has a top notch camera. It shoots very sharp 5 megapixel still photos, and is capable of producing equally nice 720p HD video recordings. The fact that the user interface is very easy to use and visually appealing is just icing on the cake.
The missing flash, however, means that the phone really needs a good ambient light source before it can snap a photo. You'll have to hold the phone still to have a chance in darker environs. The missing hardware camera shutter button makes that all the harder, since users are required to tap on the screen to focus and then tap again on an on-screen button to snap the photo. The process makes camera shake an issue. I do like the wide array of features on the camera, though, such as face detection, anti-shake, and blink detection. The stock Android 2.1 gallery application does an acceptable job of presenting the photos to user, too.
Music
The Samsung developed music player on the Vibrant is a step forward from the stock Android player, in my opinion. I like the visual appeal it has, and appreciate the quick access to playlist creation, the many equalizer presets, and even the simulated 5.1 channel surround sound. If also features a nifty cover flow like look when the phone is held horizontally.
When I synchronized it with Windows Media Player from my Windows 7 PC, however, most of the album art failed to copy over. Without some sort of MTP(INFO) support, even partial album art success wouldn't have been possible, so the Vibrant is still ahead of most Android phones. Perhaps it is just my Windows Media Player that is at fault, it's hard to say. I do know that the music that had its album art copied was purchased from the Amazon MP3 store, though not on this device. The Amazon MP3 store is pre-loaded on the Vibrant, though.
Battery
With a large 1,500mAh battery like that in the Vibrant, some might be inclined to expect stellar battery life. Alas, were that only true. In my situation, at least, the large display, 1GHz processor, and weak reception contributed to a phone that could only last one day with a decent amount of use. That's with the display's brightness turned down, but with WiFi enabled most of the time.
If you live in a stronger signal area, and don't have to rely on Wi-Fi for data, you will get an easy day and a half out of this device.
Samsung rates the phone as being good for almost 6.5 hours of talk time or 18 days of standby time.
Reviewer Spin
Of all the Android smartphones with over sized displays (4.0 inches or greater) to come along, I probably like the Samsung Vibrant (and its Galaxy S brethren) best in terms of hardware. The phone feels more manageable with one hand than devices like the HTC EVO 4G and Motorola DROID X, and you gotta love the Super AMOLED touchscreen technology.
I am, however, disappointed by the performance of the phone's internal antenna on T-Mobile, and am often dogged by random pauses and stumbles in what is otherwise a blazingly fast device. And even with Swype, my personal tastes lean towards devices with hardware keyboards (like Sprint's Epic 4G).
In the end, I like the phone quite a bit. But until Samsung can issue a firmware update to address the lag issues, and maybe the reception, I'm not going to love it.
You'll find a gallery of photos shot with the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile USA, along with a sample HD video, on the following page.
AT&T fans can finally rejoice with an Android smartphone that's competitive with Android offerings on the other U.S. carriers. The Samsung Captivate is the best Android smartphone on AT&T today, and while there are other solid offerings, such as the HTC Aria, the Captivate offers much more power, a larger display, better battery life, and 16GB of on board storage.
The Captivate seems to offer it all, from a 5 megapixel camera to a 1GHz processor and a Super AMOLED display. It's a beauty all around and was a pleasure to use during my testing experience. However, I did have a few problems with call quality, and its user interface hung from time to time while exiting applications - a bug I hope gets fixed through a firmware update in the future.
Let's take a look at what makes the Samsung Captivate the best, and most compelling, Android smartphone on AT&T while addressing some of its flaws, too.
Hardware
Samsung did a bang-up job with the design of the Captivate. The Samsung Captivate has a premium feeling industrial design. The front face sports a large 4-inch Super AMOLED(INFO) touchscreen display with an 800 x 480 pixel resolution. The entire area around the display is gloss black, save for four small touch sensitive buttons below the screen. The top and bottom of the phone are gently, and beautifully, curved, adding to its premium look. The top of the phone is home to a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a micro-USB port with a sliding hatch. The right side of the phone houses the power/lock button, and the left side sports the volume rocker. Unfortunately, the Captivate doesn't have a dedicated camera key.
The back of the phone has a sturdy metal battery cover with an attractive faux carbon fiber design. Below and above the battery cover are two gun metal gray colored areas that accent the battery cover nicely. A 5 megapixel camera sits just above the battery cover. The microSD card slot is under the battery cover, and, thankfully, I didn't have to remove the battery to access it.
The Super AMOLED screen is incredible. Photos and videos look amazing on the screen, and colors really pop with vibrancy. I've heard some complaints that the colors were are too saturated, but they looked OK to me. Samsung's Super AMOLED display is also viewable under sunlight. I did find that I had to squint at times, but it was much easier to view than a standard AMOLED display, which is nearly impossible to view under glaring light.
Usability
The Captivate runs Android 2.1 with Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 user interface on top. TouchWiz 3.0 adds a lot to Android 2.1 and while I think it's a little less polished than HTC's Sense, there are a host of features that even Sense doesn't offer, such as the ability to customize the main application menu.
The Captivate provides seven different homescreens that I was able to customize with Android and Samsung widgets. TouchWiz 3.0 also let me quickly tweak the homescreen so that I could set how many homescreens were available (7 is the maximum), and rearrange them. Similarly, there are four touch sensitive icons along the bottom of the screen that are defaulted to the Phone, email, browser, and applications. However, the email and browser icons can be swapped out for any application of your choice. I chose to add Google Voice and the camera applications in their place, and it made it much easier to launch the apps without digging through menus.
As I noted earlier, the main application menu can also be customized. Android, by default, just lists the icons in alphabetical order and there's no way of tweaking it. However, the TouchWiz 3.0 interface on the Captivate provides three options, a customizable grid, an alphabetical grid, or an alphabetical list. I chose the customizable grid and lined all of my applications in the order I like them. Samsung sorts the applications into pages, too, each with 16 application icons on them. I loved the user interface and it was very intuitive to use, and Samsung spiced it up a bit by adding colorful backgrounds to each icon.
The Captivate provides a rather robust address book application, that, like all Android devices, links your contacts with their respective Google accounts if you choose to allow that. However, the Captivate also lets you sync up with Facebook and Twitter accounts, too. I wish that Facebook photos were pulled down automatically, as they are with the HTC Sense user interface, but that's not the case. I was, however, able to view some status updates from friends, but not photo albums and associated Facebook content.
To unlock the phone, without a security combination, I simply had to slide my finger across the display moving a UI overlay off the screen. If I had a missed text or phone call, there were small puzzle pieces present on the lock screen, and if I dragged one of them into a puzzle piece hole, it would automatically launch the corresponding application. I loved this feature, as it eliminated the need to unlock the phone, and then launch messaging or my call log, just to see what I had missed. Similarly, if music is playing while the phone is locked, there's a small half-CD logo at the top of the screen. Dragging it downwards lets the user pause/play or skip songs without unlocking the device. It even displayed a small thumbnail of the album that was playing.
Despite the phone's zippy 1GHz processor, I did notice some sluggishness while backing out of menus to the homescreen. This could sometimes take a second or two, which could be frustrating if I accidentally clicked the homescreen icon and didn't mean to. Similarly, the photo gallery loaded in about 2-3 seconds, which was a bit slow feeling. There were also hangs when exiting a number of applications to return to the homescreen. However, in 3D games such as Crusade of Destiny, the framerates were solid and the processor held up without any issues.
Samsung has that that it plans to upgrade the Captivate to Android 2.2, but it hasn't said when.
Calling / Data
During my testing in New York City, call quality was often a mixed bag of sorts. For one, the actual discussions were solid and I could hear my callers just as well as they could hear me when the signal was strong. However, I had three dropped calls during my testing period, and a number of times where the call would get too fuzzy to understand my caller for a few seconds. Overall, though, I was satisfied with the call quality and the dropped calls have become a usual problem in New York City, primarily due to AT&T's overloaded network. While sitting at my desk in my apartment, I usually had a -51 dBm reported signal strength, which is very strong. The speakerphone was also loud enough for my tastes during a call with a AT&T support.
Data speeds were sufficient while surfing the web, and I usually was able to maintain a strong enough 3G signal during my testing to stream Pandora while cabbing or walking around New York City. Using our standard benchmark from DSLreports.com/mspeed, the phone averaged a download throughput of 965Kbps. That's on the slower side compared to other smartphones, even others from AT&T that I've tested, but I didn't experience many times where I noticed the network was slow while using it for normal activities.
Messaging
The Captivate served up a good messaging experience. It's default QWERTY keyboard reminded me a lot of the one on the T-Mobile Garminfone, and it was generally very easy to type on both in landscape and portrait modes. I tried the Swype keyboard for a few days, which is also preinstalled, but ended up not using it because it was a pain to use while entering URLs.
The Captivate comes with a chat applications preinstalled, including Google Talk, AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. However, I suggest you go to the market and install the full versions of MSN, Yahoo, and AIM, since they are installed as part of an AT&T chat application that lacks in functionality.
I was able to setup both my work IMAP account and my Google email account in under 5 minutes. The email system is very easy to use, and the device also supports POP or Exchange servers. My biggest gripe with Gmail on Android is that to reply to an email, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the email message. This isn't the case with POP/IMAP accounts on the phone, and only with the Gmail client, but I've noticed how much it's beginning to bother me when I want to reply to longer messages.
SMS/MMS texting offered up a good experience. The messages are threaded in colored bubbles on a black background, and MMS texts are automatically included in the conversation as well. I was generally pleased with the entire messaging experience, bu while entering text and editing text, I did notice that there wasn't an easy way to control the cursor. Instead I kept having to poke at the screen with my finger until I was able to get the cursor just where I wanted it.
Apps / App Store
The Captivate, like all Android devices, has access to the Android Market for application downloads. There are a bevy of solid applications in the market, but I wasn't impressed with some of the preinstalled applications. AT&T loaded the device with its bloatware again, including AT&T Family Map, AT&T Maps, AT&T Navigator (how many map applications do we really need?), AT&T Hot Spots, MobiTV, AT&T Music, Mobile Video, Mobile Banking, Where, and Yellow Pages Mobile. I have yet to use any of these applications as there are apps in the Android Market that are better than nearly all of those. AT&T needs to learn from T-Mobile USA and install applications that people will actually use. The T-Mobile Vibrant, for example, comes preinstalled with Slacker Radio, Sims3, and a full version of the movie Avatar.
For navigation, there are two solid applications available, Google Navigation and AT&T Navigator, which is powered by Telenav and costs $9.99 per month. Both offered voice-guided turn by turn directions, and it's up to the user which application they prefer to use. Both have pros and cons, but I typically gravitate towards Google Navigation since it's free.
Like on the HTC Aria, Amazon MP3 isn't preinstalled, which seems like an odd choice given that it's usually loaded as a default application on Android phones. I was able to download it from the Android Market, but it still feels a bit shady that AT&T would hide the application in hopes that you'd use its own lacking music application.
The Captivate comes with a Media Hub application that will eventually serve up full length movies and TV shows, but Samsung hasn't activated the application yet. A spokesperson told me that Media Hub will be available at the end of the summer, or in the fall.
Finally, AT&T doesn't allow you to install applications that are not in the Android Market, which means a host of beta products out there are inaccessible. It's an odd choice given that most other carriers allow you to install "unapproved" .apk files to your heart's content.
Browser
The Captivate has a top-notch WebKit browser, and its large high resolution display made browsing a pleasure. Thanks to the high resolution, even small text was usually very easy to read, and the pinch-to-zoom feature made it a breeze to zoom in and out of websites. The phone's 1GHz processor held up to quickly panning around websites, and was able to power through Flash games from Addictinggames.com without any issue.
Android's default browser is very easy to navigate around, and I liked that I was able to quickly save a bookmark by tapping a small icon next to the URL on any website. Oddly, though, this is the only way to access your bookmark list. It's a bit counter-intuitive. When loading bookmarks, I was presented with large thumbnail icons that made it easy to choose which website I wanted to load quickly at a glance.
Camera
I really enjoyed taking photos with the Captivate's 5 megapixel camera. My only gripes are that it doesn't have a flash, and that there isn't a dedicated camera button. However, shots taken outdoors were usually beautiful and I was able to focus in on a specific object by tapping it on the screen. Samsung provides a host of camera options, such as panoramic shooting, that are littered throughout the touchscreen camera interface. I loved shooting panorama views around New York City, and they came out beautifully both on screen and on my computer. Shots taken in low light and at night came out much better than I expected, and I found that the best way to take photos of friends in low light conditions was to manually change the camera's ISO setting. This resulted in lower quality, and a flash would have been the ideal fix, but it generally worked well.
The Captivate is also capable of shooting 720p HD video. A few clips I recorded looked stunning on the phone's Super AMOLED display, and I was just as impressed with the 30fps recordings when I played them back on my computer; both the audio and the video came through well.
Music
Samsung spiced up the Android music player in a number of ways, but the most compelling feature, I think, is the phone's 16GB of internal storage, which means you can load it up with tunes right out of the box. If you need more space, you can add up to a 32GB microSD card on top of that, for a total of 48GB of storage.
The Samsung Captivate also supports full 5.1 surround sound audio; I don't have a set of 5.1 surround sound speakers, so I wasn't fully able to test this feature, but I can say that even the standard audio sounded excellent through the pair of included high-quality ear buds. Volume levels were loud enough to fill my living room with music using the speakerphone, although the audio wasn't very full at higher levels. Samsung's music interface displays all of your music with thumbnails, and I was able to view my playlists, albums, and artists by clicking the respective tabs at the top of the music player. If an album doesn't have art, Samsung displays a small colorful thumbnail in its place.
Battery
The Samsung Captivate has a 1,500mAh battery that is rated for 5 hours and 50 minutes of talk time. For the most part, I was able to get to the late afternoon after a full charge, and that was after using the phone extensively with streaming Pandora, surfing the web, checking email, and playing games. If I used it more moderately, I was able to get through a full day just fine, and with lighter usage, through the night as well.
Generally, the Captivate felt like one of the longer lasting smartphones that I've used in a while, save for BlackBerry devices. You'll want to carry a charger with you if you're bringing the phone on an overnight trip, but you should be able to get to work and back without worrying about a charge unless you're using it all day long.
Reviewer Spin
The Captivate is currently the best Android smartphone on AT&T, and, in my eyes, is the only contender against the iPhone for those that want a powerful device. The Captivate has a lot going for it, from its beautiful Super AMOLED display to its chic form factor and its 16GB of storage.
Its 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor felt speedy most of the time, but the Captivate hung way too much during my tests while exiting applications. It often took a second or two of waiting just to get back to the homescreen. That's a rarity in smartphones with 1GHz processors these days, and while it seems trivial, it was actually pretty frustrating. I hope these hangs are something Samsung can fix with future firmware updates, since they were my biggest complaint with the phone.
I also loved the 5 megapixel camera, since I end up taking pictures of everything these days, but I do wish that it had a flash to really round out its awesomeness.
If you're on AT&T and shopping for a smartphone, and really want to avoid the iPhone, the captivate is one I personally highly recommend and urge you to check out. But like most smartphones, it's not without its flaws.
