This is my first look review on Samsung Galaxy S Captivate i896 (Rogers version) which is a slight variation of Galaxy S Captivate provides by AT&T (i897). Major difference between this model and Galaxy S will be one extra touch sensitive button (Search button) and no FM radio. Ok lets start the review.
First thing I’ve noticed is how small the package is for this flagship smartphone. It just hold the space for the device and to squeeze it’s accessories including tiny booklet (pretty useless if you've knowledge on Android), USB cable and the earphone.
This is a inside look of the package. Pretty neat how they pack things up nowadays.
Provided earphone is typical Samsung hands-free which provides even with Galaxy Mini, which has very low sound quality and very less bass. Samsung was kind enough to provide some lengthy USB cord, seems they’ve understood still there’re many PC users who needs them.
The package doesn’t include a wall charger (still you can use provided USB cable for charging) and Kies suite CD.
Lets move to the most important part, the device. Out of the box and the first impression was, wow it’s such a gorgeous looking device. Although I’ve used a Galaxy S before, still it was shocking experience to see it out of the box.
Its really really slim (less than 1cm) body and huge display is a complete difference experience for a veteran Nokia user.
Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen is superb in display quality as well as touch responses. No any lags due to 1GHz Cortex A8 processor and had a superb experience scrolling through home pages.
Samsung have changed the Android 2.2 Froyo experience slightly using TouchWiz 3.0 (which is common in every Samsung mobiles these days) but most of the stock Android features are still untouched.
As I mentioned before unlike Galaxy S, this has 4 touch sensitive buttons which will probably ease the Android experience.
Thanks to 1GHz processor and dedicated GPU under the hood, device works flawlessly without any lags or whatever. Played Angry Birds and it was far better than iPhone 4 and HTC HD2.
This has 16GB inbuilt memory plus external memory support up to 32GB, which adds up to give storage space to store your whole multimedia collection including movies. Best thing is this beast can play any format which throws at it (including MKV) without converting them. Also the HD video playback quality is also superb and best in range.
This device supposed to provide 5.1 sound through headset, though I didn’t feel anything more than just terrible sound quality. Spending on a decent quality headset is a must to get the most out of it.
Although the EQs doesn’t help much, the external speaker provides rich and wide sound for both music and movies. Both stock Android music player and video player can help you for a start but recommend for a upgrade for more entertaining experience.
This phone has good Wi-Fi access and pretty fast internet browsing thanks to Android core engine. Needless to say devices powered by Android has lots of applications to download, on the other hand you’ll need an app to pretty much anything you do on this mobile, unlike other OS like Symbian.
My only concerns are this has no FM radio, the provided earphones sucks big time, the phone design itself need very careful handling (recommend a black silicon casing for protection and better grip) and no camera flash.
Although 2.3 Gingerbread has been announced for Samsung mobiles around July this year, need to wait few weeks for a confirmation. I’ll update this review after the update, hope it will bring more features to already amazing phone.
My verdict? Superb phone, highly recommended.
