The Samsung Fascinate is one of the most eagerly awaited upcoming Android phones on the market, and it is intended to directly compete with the iPhone 4 in the features and ease of use departments. It is based on the Galaxy S prototype platform, presented by Samsung earlier this year, and it will be one of the few phones that come unlocked from the factory, which means you can use them with any network you want.
Samsung Fascinate
The Fascinate itself is a model made for Verizon, but Samsung will also be manufacturing other Galaxy S phones in different configurations for other networks. For example, Sprint will get the Epic 4G, which will be a copy of the Fascinate, T-Mobile will get the Vibrant, which lacks a hardware keyboard (and is, therefore, a bit slimmer) and AT&T will get the Captivate, another model that slightly differs from the Fascinate in exterior appearance and pre-installed software.
Anyway, the Samsung Fascinate will include the 2.1 version of Android, with the capability to upgrade to 2.2 immediately, of course and will come with some extra software included by Verizon, which can fortunately be removed. The Android OS is not encrypted and locked, just as Verizon did with the Motorola Droid (as you may know, the European equivalent, called the Milestone, and many other Android phones, are locked and cannot be flashed to another version of the OS by the users), so it will be another Google experience phone, but with a different manufacturer.
The hardware specs are pretty impressive and will definitely hold up to any competition, including the iPhone 4 and Motorola Droid 2 and X. Samsung has equipped the Fascinate with their own, unique Super AMOLED displays, which they don’t manufacture for other companies (they do produce OEM AMOLED screens for anyone who wants them, but they specifically kept the Super AMOLED for themselves – good move on their part).
These screens look better, have an amazing contrast ratio and brightness and have a faster response time than anything else on the market, while consuming very little energy, especially when displaying text or a still picture. The Fascinate has a big 4 inch with a capacitive touch panel and multi touch capabilities.
Samsung Fascinate-HomeView
The processor in this phone is Samsung’s own Hummingbird 1 GHzCPU, which is actually better than the competing 1 GHz Snapdragon found in most other phones because of its better integrated video chip that is capable of rendering any graphics 2-3 times faster. So your games, videos and any graphics intensive apps will be much faster and smoother.
Memory wise, the Samsung Fascinate is equipped with 512 MB RAM and 2GB integrated NAND-Flash for storing data, as well as a microSD slot for cards up to 32GB. That should be enough for almost any kind of tasks short of storing HD videos, but even that may be possible with the newest 64-128 GB microSD cards that are coming out next year (hopefully, the Android OS will be updated to support them, as it’s not a matter of hardware).
Samsung Fascinate-Back
Other specs include the usual Bluetooth 2.1 EDR with A2DP support, so you can listen to your music through wireless stereo headphones or speakers, Draft-N Wifi, which is pretty good for such a small device, a 3.5 mm audio jack and a 5 megapixels camera with autofocus, 2 LEDs flash and 720p video recording capabilities. Pretty impressive!
Samsung Fascinate
The selling price will be $199 with a contract and $499 without one, though these prices are subject to change. The Samsung Fascinate is actually already available in Europe under the name Galaxy S i9000, but it doesn’t have a hardware keyboard (just like T-Mobile’s Vibrant), which may be a bad thing for some people.
Samsung Fascinate For Verizon Wireless
But don’t go and buy it from some European website, as the Fascinate is coming out in September 2010, which is an acceptable waiting period for such a great phone.
Image Source: AndroidCentral
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