Hands On With the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile

Finally, the first Android carrier has an Android-powered super phone. The Samsung Vibrant will be T-Mobile's top-of-the-line smartphone when it launches on July 21, and I got some hands-on time at Samsung's Galaxy S launch party.

T-Mobile brought Android to the U.S. market in September 2008 with the G1 phone made by HTC. But as Sprint and Verizon ramped up with 1-GHz Android super phones, T-Mobile made a critical miscalculation, throwing its lot in with Google's failed Nexus One direct-sales strategy. The Vibrant evens the playing field again.

The new phone is part of Samsung's Galaxy S line, a sextet of 1-GHz, Android 2.1-powered smartphones coming to six different carriers in the U.S.: AT&T, Cellular South, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless. The models all share 1-Ghz Samsung Hummingbird processors, 4-inch 854-by-480 Super AMOLED screens and 5-megapixel cameras, but they have different body styles and software builds.

The Vibrant is a traditional slab-style touchscreen smartphone. I like its body the least of Samsung's various slabs, because the plastic on the back feels a bit cheap and greasy. There are four touch buttons below the big, super-bright screen.

T-Mobile's software build really shows off the high-end graphics processing capabilities of the new Hummingbird CPU. For example, T-Mobile includes the game Sims 3. I played it for a few minutes and was very impressed by the smoothness of pivoting around the game's 3D layouts. A full copy of the movie "Avatar," in 480p format to fit the phone's screen, is also included on the phone, and it looked sharp and smooth on the Super AMOLED.

More video and TV content will come from Samsung's upcoming Media Hub store, which was present on the Vibrant I tried, but not yet fully operational.

Like the other Galaxy S-class phones, the Vibrant runs Android 2.1 with Samsung's TouchWiz 3 overlay. Samsung said that an Android 2.2 update with Adobe Flash would come to the Vibrant, but T-Mobile wouldn't commit to a specific date.

Like other current T-Mobile smartphones, the Vibrant doesn't connect to T-Mobile's new HSPA+ network at the fastest possible speeds. It's an HSPA 7.2 phone, so it will probably get speeds up to 3 Mbps for downloads, but not more. That's still plenty fast.

TouchWiz has its ups and downs. Samsung's Social Hub and Daily Briefing are major ups. Social Hub integrates Twitter and Facebook into the phone's contact book and into various home-screen widgets. Daily Briefing is a nice app that combines news feeds, calendar appointments, and the weather into a single home-screen widget. But Samsung also changed a bunch of apps and icons pointlessly, or for the sole point of making all Samsung phones look alike.

Unless TouchWiz really damages the Vibrant's performance, this phone will probably be a hit for T-Mobile. While T-Mobile has some decent Android phones - most notably the MyTouch 3G Slide - it doesn't currently sell any top-of-the-line Android phones to compete directly with barn-burners like Verizon's HTC Incredible and Sprint's HTC Evo. The Vibrant puts T-Mobile back in the game.

The Samsung Vibrant will be $199.99 with a two-year contract when it comes out on July 21.

See also, PCMag's hands on with the Samsung Captivate for AT&T and the Samsung Fascinate for Verizon Wireless.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

Read the latest from Sascha Segan

Read full bio