Samsung Captivate review

Samsung is the second biggest cell phone manufacturer on the planet. But even though it sells more phones than the next five manufacturers on the list combined, Samsung is known mostly for selling what are now known as feature phones, or "dumb phones". These are the less capable models that don't multitask and are usually a bit cheaper than smartphones.

That is why it's huge news when Samsung releases four new Android smartphones -- for each of the four major U.S. cellular carriers -- at nearly the same time.

It calls its new line of super phones, Galaxy S.

One of the first Galaxy S phones to hit the market stateside is the Captivate for AT&T. All the others have similar, very forgettable names. The differences between the models are mostly cosmetic except for Sprint's upcoming Epic 4G, which has a physical keyboard.

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Samsung Captivate
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The Captivate has Samsung's 4-inch, 480 by 800 pixel, WVGA, Super-AMOLED touchscreen display. It utilizes its proprietary LED screen technology that produces amazing bright and colorful visuals. These displays also provide users with absolutely amazing color density and contrast. Samsung says it worked hard to perfect this technology, and it shows.

There is also a major secondary benefit that comes as a bonus with using this type of cell phone screen -- it saves battery power.

Samsung has designed its Super-AMOLED screen to turn off battery power to all the black pixels on your screen. This means that instead of lighting up the entire screen to produce an image, Samsung's screen only lights up white and colored pixels. Since black is scientifically a total lack of color, black pixels don't need electricity to be wasted on them.

As you might expect, turning off unused parts of the screen should extend battery life but I wasn't expecting it to be so efficient at doing so.

Samsung claims up to 6 hours of talk-time and as much as 300 hours of standby on each full charge of its 1500mAh battery pack. With moderate use (phone calls, downloads, Web browsing, Wi-Fi and playing games) I got almost two days of battery life before I was warned to plug in and recharge. That's remarkable for a 2010-era super smartphone -- and raises the bar for everyone else.

The good news is that all of Samsung's new Galaxy S phones share many of the same core features, including the Super-AMOLED screen and incredible battery life.

In preliminary testing, the screen performs extremely well, too. It looks amazing in nearly every lighting condition, with the possible exception being blindingly bright sunlight. It really is remarkably impressive for a battery-saving design.

The Captivate is squared-off and relatively small and thin for a smartphone with a 4-inch. Dimensions are listed as 4.18 by 2.5 by 0.39 inches and it weighs in at only 4.5 ounces.

This quad-band world phone runs on the Android 2.1 operating system, has a 1GHz Cortex A8 "Hummingbird" processor and 3D graphics processor, 16GB of on-board memory, a 6-axis motion sensor, a 5-megapixel camera, 720p video recording and playback, stereo Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, GPS, TV out, integrated social networking, a Swype keyboard, something Samsung calls "Surround-sound stereo audio" and lots, lots more.

I've downloaded dozens of apps from the Android store already and all of them seem to work perfectly. That's not always the case on some phones.

As a matter of fact, the only questionable item on the Captivate that I could find is the microUSB charging port located on top of the phone. I'm so used to finding it on the bottom or in the case of many Samsung phones on the side.

On the other hand, the Captivate's port has a sliding door to protect it when not in use. And all Samsung phones tell you when your phone is fully charged with an on screen message and a suggestion that you unplug the device and save electricity -- very green indeed.

AT&T will sell the Captivate for $199.99 without any sort of annoying rebate but, of course, with an appropriate two-year service contract.

The handset goes on sale this weekend.

I have to admit that I have waited a while for Samsung to show me a premium Android super smartphone -- and then deliver it -- and I'm happy to report that it was well worth the wait.

Now let's see what the other carriers will do with their Galaxy S phones.