Dallas – Samsung’s
flagship 3G smartphone, the Android 2.1-based Galaxy S, will come to the U.S.
as the Galaxy Captivate when AT&T launches the phone in the coming months,
the carrier said.
The phone, featuring a 4-inch WVGA
touchscreen, will be Samsung’s first U.S.-market phone with 1GHz processor and
the company’s first U.S. phone with thinner, brighter, less-reflective and
more-responsive display using proprietary Super-AMOLED technology, executives
said. It will also be one of a small but growing number of smartphones with
720p HD video capture.
Sometime down the road, the device will
access the Samsung Media Hub service, which will deliver video and book content
“powered by some of the biggest names in entertainment,” the company said. When
the phone was introduced
during
March’s CTIA convention
, Samsung said the phone would download movies and
TV shows from Paramount and books and periodicals from Skiff’s planned online
store. Movies would be downloaded by the phone’s built-in Wi-Fi, and books would
be downloaded via Wi-Fi and 3G.
Also during the convention, Samsung said the
phone would support Wi-Fi tethering to a single Wi-Fi-equipped device at a
time, but AT&T didn’t say whether that feature would be enabled in its
network.
AT&T’s version will feature Samsung
Social Hub, which integrates a user’s social-networking services, messages,
personal and business email, calendars and contacts.
The Galaxy S has already been launched in
Europe, and the U.S. version will operate in AT&T’s domestic 850/1900MHz
network and in foreign 2.1GHz networks in 7.2Mbps HSPA mode (7.2Mbps down/
5.76Mbps up).
Galaxy S features previously announced and due
in the Captivate include six-axis sensing, which combines an accelerometer and
gyroscope to provide a fluid gaming experience when someone tilts the device up
and down and pans the device to the left and right, AT&T said. Advanced
touchscreen gesture capabilities, including multi-touch pinch, long tap and zoom
as well as vertical and horizontal swiping, all to provide quicker access to
applications such as location-based services, web browsing and digital photos.
Other features include Digital Living Network
Alliance (DLNA) technology to stream user-generated video with such DLNA-enabled
devices as TVs and PCs. The 5-megapixel autofocusing camera features 720p HD
video recording, onboard 16GB of memory, MicroSD card slot for an additional
16GB of storage, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, full HTML browser with tap-and-hold zoom),
Bluetooth 3.0 and AT&T’s navigation service.
An audio technology delivers surround sound
through hard-wired headphones, and the virtual QWERTY keyboard features Swype
technology. Swype speeds up text input on the virtual QWERTY keyboard by
letting users slide a finger across the keyboard to press virtual keys.
