Today’s mobile phones are an undeniable improvement over their predecessors in virtually any way you choose to compare them. Still capable of making and taking calls from anywhere on the road, modern mobiles benefit from improved reception, signal strength and call clarity, as well as the speakerphone function that eluded older phones –newer, higher-end mobiles even come with video-call and conferencing capability. This is thanks to higher-speed data transfer, which has enabled a whole host of new features by itself, and to integrated mobile cameras, which are themselves a decidedly modern mobile feature that have evolved over time to be capable of sharper images and video.
One of the new features integrated into modern mobile phones is the more sophisticated hardware platform, upon which new operating systems and apps can be run. The Android platform is one of the most popular new introductions, and mobile phone manufacturers have been working to outdo themselves and each other by turning out better and better mobiles using the platform. Samsung’s latest effort for AT&T [the carrier’s first solid Android smartphone for the US] is the Samsung Captivate, which offers a gorgeous AMOLED display, great call quality and HD video capture capability along with a great lineup of wireless options and Samsung’s signature user-friendly interface.
Foregoing the sleek and sexy look that most smartphones seem to be going for, the Captivate suits itself up in a fairly direct-to-the-point slate design that evokes the words “clean” and “simple”. It’s got a good solid heft at 4.5 ounces and is fairly sizeable at 4.18” tall by 2.5” wide by 0.39” deep, but what really catches the eye is the rocking Super AMOLED touch screen, which at 4 inches is pretty huge – but its 16 million color support and 480×800 WVGA resolution show that there’s more to its impressive nature than size. One of the best-looking smartphone screens is also a capacitive touch screen, which offers great responsiveness and a smooth scrolling experience, and a six-axis accelerometer that comes in handy for display shifts and games.
Running on Android 2.1, the Captivate also features Samsung’s signature TouchWiz 3.0 interface, which offers more functionality than the revisions used in previous releases. For instance, new widgets like Feeds & Updates and Buddies Now enhance the mobile experience by more tightly integrating social networking connections – Feeds streams updates from Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, which you can display all together or individually [you can also set the refresh rate from every 30 minutes to once a day], and Buddies Now is a favorites list that highlights specific contacts. More Samsung and Android widgets are available, and can be added to any of the seven home screens given. These screens can be further customized with live wallpapers.
The features packed into the Captivate make it easily AT&T’s most feature-rich phone from the Android range. This quad-band world phone has GPS, 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth, with plenty of email support [Gmail, POP3 and IMAP as well as Microsoft Exchange] and social networking support. A variety of apps including Mobile Banking, IM clients for AM, Windows Live, Yahoo and Google Talk, as well as AT&T-specific ones like AT&T Radio and AT&T FamilyMap and others, are all on the Captivate.
The multimedia end of things is a mixed but generally pleasant bag. While not as endowed with entertainment features as the Vibrant, the Captivate gives you 5.1-channel surround sound support for the music and videp player, as well as a 5-megapixel camera that doesn’t have flash but is otherwise accompanied by plenty of editing options.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
