Exclusive: Samsung Captivate for AT&T preview
By Joanna Stern 
posted June 22nd 2010 11:25AM
posted June 22nd 2010 11:25AM
- Hardware: The 4-inch Captivate isn't as large and in charge as the 4.3-inch Droid X or EVO, but in our opinion it's just the right size. While the design isn't all that unique, there's something about the all-screen phone that is pretty striking, and there's no denying that the hardware was very thin and light in hand. The curved bottom lip reminds us of the BlackBerry Storm for some reason, and it too has four touch sensitive buttons. Oh, and for those that were hoping the Captivate looked like the Galaxy S, we can confirm that the two look more like distant cousins than siblings.
- Screen: The Captivate has the same Super AMOLED display as the Galaxy S, and we'll have to agree with our English counterpart who said "it is one of the finest displays you can hope to lay eyes on." We didn't get to test the display in sunlight, but indoors and outdoors (around dusk) it was seriously bright and crisp. The photos and video below don't really do justice to the quality, but when we watched a video clip colors just popped and looking at the preloaded wallpapers was all sorts of glorious. We found the capacitive touchscreen itself to be mighty responsive.
- Software: The phone we saw was running Android 2.1 and some version of Samsung's TouchWiz -- we're assuming it's 3.0 like the Galaxy S we saw in London a few days ago. The skin isn't too distracting and actually polishes up Android a bit. There's the ability to decorate the panes with Samsung widgets, one of which includes a funky social networking feed. There's also a helpful settings bar that reveals itself when you slide down the Android window shade. Samsung's also preloaded Swype, which is always a welcome addition. All in all, we're just happy to see AT&T hasn't done much to the OS, or at least as far as we could tell. Sure, there are the usual carrier applications, like AT&T Navigation, Music and Tones, but that's really about it.
- Camera: For some reason the Captivate doesn't have a dedicated physical camera button or a flash, but its 5-megapixel camera took some decent quality shots from what we could tell in our short time with it. We didn't have any problem focusing and snapping some pics. When we went to shoot some 720p video, there wasn't any lag in capturing, and for whatever it's worth, playing the video on the screen looked crisp and clear.
- Performance: Here's the part where we hope to the powers that be that Samsung is hard at work or the Captivate we saw was an extremely early model. The phone we demoed was powered by an ARMv7 processor running at 800MHz -- though according to the official press release the phone is planned to have a 1GHz ARMv7 core (a Samsung Hummingbird, to be specific). Regardless, it was quite sluggish when maneuvering through menus, launching apps and trying to back track to the homescreen -- it was nowhere near as snappy as what we've seen in videos from the Galaxy S or as the Droid X we saw last week. The model we saw was confirmed to be a few months old, so our guess is that the final version will be a whole lot snappier than what we saw. Or at least that's what we're really hoping since the rest of the Captivate experience was pretty, well for lack of a better word... captivating.
Editor's Note: Yes, we realize the video quality is less than stellar -- we blame our one handed video work and our broken Flip HD. We're working on both!
Not a fan of the skin but the actual build looks really sleek
@commenter7
Looking at the design, it looks like they have everything necessary to upgrade to WP7 :) Too bad HTC didn't do that with the HD2...
@Joe Cool
you do know that this is an *android* phone, not a winmo phone, right?
@Joe Cool
(and yes, I know this is an Android phone. It was a joke)
@commenter7
the world needs more stock android experience phones. :[
@commenter7 Looks a little too big, i think the 3.5-3.7" range is perfect for a smartphone. Other than that, I like it.
@commenter7 so its a 4 inch dell streak? mini 5?? call me crazy but that Htc Aria is the ATT android phone for me.
@Alexandertron
IPHONE FTW! SAMSUNG SUCKS BOOO!
No wander apple picked AT&T and now samsung wants to copy apple huh. Idiots.
I assume they announced this phone and are showing this preview to Engadget because they are trying to stop non iPhone people from leaving AT&T for the EVO/DROIDX/DROID 2 who wanted Android from then a year ago.
Nice specs, but I don't trust Samsung to update this phone.
@Apple is the best company in the
Correction: "wonder"
@commenter7 And it doesn't look like an iPhone like the Galaxy S released in other countries. Frankly I like iPhones except the physical design, which has too much glass, metal, and hard plastic. It's very cold and off putting. Why ape that? I would be much more interested in this, except it apes the other big problem with iPhones: the AT&T network.
@commenter7 This looks a whole lot like the blackberry storm 2!
@commenter7
Holy WHOA!!1~!
AT&T is delivering an Android Phone that ISN'T nerfed?! What will Jobsy say?
@commenter7 exactly what I thought as well. the hardware looks nice enough, but I really don't care a lot for Samsung's Android UI. Sense or stock please! (or well, just root and put whatever ROM/UI you like on it, of course)
@electron
At last somebody pointed out it's not a Android Phone! BUT BUT BUT I's NOT a Winmo phone either. It's running Samsung's "bada" OS.......
JS, I cannot believe nobody know about this.
@phinn That's funny. I was drunk the other night and sent Jobs a long-winded email about how he should show off that Retina tech on a 4" screen. Really, the only reservation I have about the iPhone 4 I just ordered is the 3.5" screen. The PPI would drop to what, 290? That's still the best by far. All that bezel really looks silly on the gorgeous hardware (the iPhone). I think 4.3"+ is overkill, but 4" to me is perfect. Just another .5" for me - and yes, I know that's what she said.
@Little P
Huh? Mind explaining to the class why there's an Android Market icon clearly displayed on the home screen then?
This is not Bada.
Good for AT&T.
Never.
Luckily they didn't &%#$ up the Pre Plus either. As far as I can tell, the only AT&T crapware on my Pre is AT&T Navigator. After the Backflip came out, I was apprehensive about the WebOS/AT&T launch. No worries, though . . . Loving my Pre!
@Rick Astley
Hello, my next phone.
@Rick Astley I'm glad AT&T will finally give me a decent phone other than the iPhone
After watching countless Snap Dragon vs Humming Bird youtube.
I have to say Samsung's Bird can fly, sorry Qual but Sammy owns this generation.
It would be interesting to Bench Mark the Bird vs A4. They do share the same mother rite.
@Zylam The Apple A4 and Hummingbird are very similar apparently, though I'm told the Hummingbird edges past with a better GPU. Both beat the Snapdragon though, and all 3 are Cortex A8 CPUs anyway.
@r3loaded
My guess here is that the OMAP is faster than all three of those. Look at the score the Droid X gets on Quadrant. Easily faster than the Galaxy S and kills the Snapdragon based phones (Desire, Nexus and Incredible).
Time will tell but I would put money on the OMAP 3640 in the Droid X and Droid 2.
@JXCGunrunna
The Cortex A8 in the OMAP appears to be faster than the A4 or Hummingbird but the latter chips have better GPUs than the OMAP (SGX535 and SGX540 respectively).
@Homies
Are you guys serious, OMAP's better? i must have been living under a rock, behind all the bitter touch wiz i was falling for the Bird.. but looks like i better take a closer look at the new Droids.
I gotta feeling things are just starting, the mobile power wars just went neculear.
But id have to say, the Birds GPU is so far the best. Sammy!
@Zylam
Check out the scores. http://picasaweb.google.com/MFUntch2/MotoDroid#5480633964195182082
The hummingbird is way better than what we have seen with the slower OMAP and Snapdragon SoC but this 1ghz OMAP is blazing fast. The SGX535 and 540 are impressive but until Android can offload to the GPU like Symbian^3 can, they do not not that much of a difference in general use.
@r3loaded "Hummingbird" is the name of the CPU, not the SoC. Both the A4 and Samsung's SoC use the Hummingbird CPU with different GPU's. Also, Hummingbird is a Cortex-A8. It is functionally and timing-identical to the Cortex-A8. It runs at a faster clockspeed due to having dynamic circuits vs static. That's it.
When comparing benchmarks, you're comparing performance of the SoC. This includes the memory interface, on-chip bus, GPU, etc.
@JXCGunrunna you mean BITCHING FAST.
TI Omap is the best, it will be very interesting to see there new generation of Omap 4 with PowerVR SGX545's come out later on this year.
@Homies
Wow, holy cow thats insane.. but look at the 2.2 Nexus almost matches the Droids 2.2, either Google found some magic codes or we'll all paying for undercoded hardware, you're rite all this 1Ghz talk falls apart without the OS grilling the GPU for acceleration but if 2.2 makes over 100% difference imagine what Gingerbread would be like.
But than again Galaxy S on 2.2 would come out top as well, theres alot more to the software side than i thought. I dont think they where ready for the mass 1Ghz attack, its resulted in inefficient results.
@JXCGunrunna
this Shadow score was with experimental Froyo:)
@cryingfreeman
Source? It reads it right from Quadrant that these are pre 2.1. It reads that right from the kernel.
Hummingbird is a SoC just like the OMAP, A4 and Snapdragon
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Cellphonehardwarecompari1.png
@Zylam all this banter debating the best processor is funny, considering they're all fast enough for the phone not to lag. hell, if the original droid had 512MB RAM its processor would probably be fast enough not to lag. as indicated by the legend and aria, processor speed isn't *that* important for a good android experience, and Snapdragon, A4, Hummingbird, and OMAP in current/soon to be released phones are all wicked fast and relatively close in speed. It'll probably be at least a year before we see software/games on Android that can truly push the CPU
@JXCGunrunna
BWAHAHAHAA NOOOO
Your benchmark is comparing oranges to apples. The galaxy s is running 2.1 and your droid is running 2.2. Version 2.2 has JIT enabled which improves speed by at least 2x. Galaxy S will get updated to 2.2 later.
@fizx
If you read you will see we are actually comparing the Droid X to the Galaxy S. By Droid is on there because i was benchmarking it.
I wonder if we can grandfather over our iPhone unlimited plan to this...?
@Alone in a Crowd
Yes. I called and asked that specifically.
@Alone in a Crowd
Sounded like if you sign a new contract, which this will require, you're no longer a grandfather. No?
@joe23521
If you're upgraded from your iPhone line then yes you can still keep the plan. Open a new line then it's a no go.
@joe23521 I would not trust AT&T at all. They want all unlimited plans gone. One way or another they will get rid of them.
They will start gently at first, then by next year simply announce there's no more unlimited, grandfathered or otherwise.
The technique is to do it in phases so to prevent the roar of complaints. Bit by bit, by January next year everyone will be used to the concept that AT&T does not have unlimited data plans, so when they get rid of the grandfathered unlimiteds, the your complaints won't matter.
It's like a business changing its name, like Datsun to Nissan. They just did it over time until Datsun was no more. AT&T will get rid of unlimiteds in phases until they no longer exist. After all, your contract with gives AT&T to change its plan any time they want, for any reason, no reason or even unfair reason.
Sorry AT&T unlimited data people, there is no such thing as a grandfathered data plan and you have no right to it.
AT&T all of a sudden has Android options. I just hope they aren't this sluggish bringing Windows Phone 7 on board.
@TheBennettBrigade
I should hope not, they're supposed to be the first to have a device.
http://www.crn.com/software/222900777
I still don't understand why designers put glossy coats on everything. No one wants to see fingerprints on their devices. >_
Should have gone to T-Mobile also......
@TheSunman89 http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/06/22/galaxy-s-has-another-identity-chrisis-to-hit-t-mobile-as-vibrant-in-july/
@TheSunman89
tmobile has plenty of android devices! i've been waiting for a halfway decent at&t android phone for a while... the backflip was such a junker compared to any other android device out. be happy you have something to choose from with 2.1 on it !
@TheSunman89 According to Android Police it's coming to TMobile as the Vibrant. http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/06/22/samsung-continues-to-imitate-genghis-khan-expands-galaxy-s-to-t-mobile/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+AndroidPolice+(Android+News,+Reviews,+Applications,+Games,+Phones,+Devices,+Tips,+Hacks,+Videos,+Podcasts+-+Android+Police)
How could you NOT LOVE ENGADGET!... EXCLUSIVE!
All I need is a release date.