Samsung brings Fascinate, Vibrant and Epic 4G on the US market

2nd July, 2010 by adina
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Samsung has launched a strong attack on the smartphone market of the United States with the unveiling of four versions of its Galaxy S.

Sprint has the Epic 4G in its network. The phone is probably the most unique of the series and uses the WiMAX speeds of the carrier similarly to the Evo 4G. The device is able to share its connection like a Wi-Fi hotspot and sports a front-facing camera for chat. It is also unique among other US launches thanks to its sliding QWERTY keyboard.

The Vibrant model of T-Mobile features a touch-only design and is HSPA-based 3G, with a 7.2Mbps speed. Focused on bundles, T-Mobile offers the phone with a copy of Avatar on the 2GB microSD card together with free GoGo in-air Wi-Fi for a month and also preloaded Amazon Kindle copies for MobiTV, Android and Slacker Radio.

Early plans for the Fascinate were also presented by Verizon. It is an EVDO-based 3G variant of Samsung’s phone. US Cellular has also the intention of producing a similar model. Neither has however mentioned which would be the details to differentiate the two phones.

All these phones are sporting the same four-inch Super AMOLED display that is supposed to have one hundred times the contrast any rival display could have and still be viewable outdoors. All the versions share the quick 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a five-megapixel video camera with 720-pixel recording capability placed on the rear side and 802.11n Wi-Fi DLNA media sharing. Android 2.1 is delivered with customized user interface and Swype keyboard. Android 2.2 will come in the future, according to Sprint, but the exact moment has not been mentioned. Consequently, Flash will not be supported out of the box by any of the variants.

Launch details are unknown for all the models with the exception of the Vibrant, which is promised to ship on the 21st of July at a price of $200 on contract. Although AT&T has so soon previewed its Galaxy S variant, it has not firmed up any launch details.

This campaign represents for Samsung a major return on the American smartphone market. The company has the top rank in overall share of phones in the United States, but virtually has lost ground compared to other firms like Apple, Motorola, HTC and Research in Motion which have dominant positions. With only few exceptions, all of Samsung’s smartphones on the US market have been based on Windows Mobile and this was the reason for a smaller attraction. Android is also advantaged because of Galaxy S being the first Google-based handset in the United States which is not locked exclusively into a carrier.


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