By 
Well, AT&T’s just getting on a roll here with unveiling some pretty nice devices ahead of dooms-day (June 24th, if you’re not sure what day that would be). The HTC Aria’s been announced and will be heading to stores in three days, and now AT&T’s finally announced their second high-end Android handset (first if you don’t count the Dell Streak for some reason): the Samsung Captivate.
We’ve been hearing about the existence of this device for a while now, and it feels good to finally get some hard facts on what AT&T and Samsung’s bringing to the table. Specs? Don’t mind if I do: this thing comes packed with a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a 5-megapixel camera, 720p video recording, and up to 32GB of combined internal and external storage.
It’s launching with Android 2.1 which will be playing host to Samsung’s unique TouchWiz 3.0 interface. Chances we’ll see Froyo sometime down the line? We can’t make any promises yet (especially if Samsung’s history is anything to go by). Still, it’s a great looking device (on paper) that should satisfy some AT&T fans who aren’t too fond of the iPhone and aren’t fond of AT&T snoozing at the wheel in regards to their Android line-up.
No pricing and availability, but this summer is always a good assumption when they mention “the coming months”. You guys are basically getting a slightly different version of the Samsung Galaxy S. Will you be passing AT&T stores up on June 24th to wait for this thing? Press details right ahead.
AT&T AND SAMSUNG MOBILE ANNOUNCE UPCOMING AVAILABILITY OF THE SAMSUNG CAPTIVATE™, A GALAXY S™ SMARTPHONE
New breed of smartphone powered by the Android™ 2.1 platform features 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen, 1GHz application processor and innovative entertainment and social networking features
DALLAS, June 17, 2010 – AT&T* and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile), the No. 1 mobile phone provider in the U.S.**, today announced the upcoming availability of the Samsung Captivate™, a Galaxy S™ smartphone. The Android™ 2.1-powered Samsung Captivate will bring users a fully integrated entertainment, messaging and social networking experience packaged in an alluring, streamlined design surrounding a stunning 4-inch display.
The Captivate’s powerful set of Web-based features is maximized with the addition of AT&T’s High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 Mbps technology, which provides a considerable speed boost to the nation’s fastest 3G network when paired with expanded backhaul. Speed plus AT&T’s dedicated focus to mobilize everything – including video content, social networking, music and messaging – is reflected in Captivate’s strong feature set.
The Captivate represents a new breed of smartphones powered by the open and innovative Android platform, with full support of Google Mobile Services including Android MarketÔ, Google SearchÔ, Google MapsÔ, GmailÔ, YouTubeÔ, Google TalkÔ and more. Users can also access the Android Market™ and customize their experience with more than 60,000 exciting and useful applications. The Captivate also features Samsung’s Super AMOLED display screen technology, a 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird Application Processor and Samsung Social Hub, a feature that integrates the user’s social networking services, messages, personal and business email, calendars and contacts.
“Add up Captivate’s amazing screen, huge amounts of onboard storage, a super-fast processor, all fueled by the nation’s fastest 3G network and a nationwide Wi-Fi network and you get a smartphone we know our customers will crave,” said Jeff Bradley, senior vice president, Devices, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets.
“With the launch of the Captivate, AT&T customers will experience a groundbreaking handset with world class features that are unique to Samsung’s Galaxy S class of devices, including Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen technology and 1GHz Hummingbird Application Processor,” said Omar Khan, chief strategy officer for Samsung Mobile. “The Captivate represents a new breed of smartphone that will truly change and enrich the way consumers interact with their device on an everyday basis.”
Leading Hardware Features
The Captivate provides a premium viewing experience on its large, brilliant 4-inch display powered by Samsung’s Super AMOLED touch screen technology. Super AMOLED technology yields thinner displays, delivering one of the thinnest, most responsive full-featured smartphones in the industry. Samsung’s innovative display technology makes watching movies, viewing videos and playing games come to life like never before, even in bright light and outdoor environments.
In addition, the Samsung Captivate is designed with a six-axis sensor that combines the smartphone’s accelerometer and gyroscope to provide a smooth, fluid gaming experience when the user is tilting the device up or down or panning the phone to the left or right. The Captivate’s user interface also supports a series of advanced touch screen gestures capabilities including multi-touch pinch, long tap and zoom and vertical and horizontal swiping. This series of versatile gestures provide easier and quicker access to many applications including location-based services, Web browsing and digital photos.
Powering the Captivate is a 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird Application Processor, which produces amazing 3-D graphics, faster upload and download times and full richness of HD-like multimedia content. The Captivate is also outfitted with 3D sound capabilities, giving the user surround-sound stereo quality, when listening on hard-wired headphones.
Features for All Users
The Captivate keeps users connected with Samsung’s Social Hub, which is built around Messaging and Contacts, both of which initiate the sending and receiving of information, whether it is e-mail, instant messaging, social network updates or SMS messages. Additionally, calendar information from portal calendars, such as Google Calendar™, and social networking services are displayed together in one calendar with two-way synchronization. The familiar text messaging experience is enhanced with group messaging and “reply all” functionality for up to 10 contacts, a threaded conversations format, a consolidated inbox, and enhanced multi-media display.In addition, AT&T customers who choose Captivate can take advantage of AT&T Address Book. A Web-based service, AT&T Address Book syncs contacts to an online address book so customers can access and manage their mobile contacts from their handset – or their PC. Also available to users at no additional charge is access to AT&T’s entire national Wi-Fi network — any Captivate with the Wi-Fi turned on will automatically connect when in range.
Not just for social networking and messaging, the Captivate truly brings your home and office computer to the palm of your hand with support for push email and integrated calendar services, including Google™ and Yahoo for consumers and small businesses and ActiveSync for enterprise users. Messaging is simple and easy with the Captivate’s virtual QWERTY keyboard with Swype technology, which allows users to input text faster and in a more intuitive way with one continuous finger motion across the screen keyboard.
True Mobile Entertainment
In addition, the Captivate features best-in-class entertainment features, including future access to Samsung Media Hub, a full library of video and literary content powered by some of the biggest names in entertainment. Samsung Mobile looks forward to sharing additional information about Media Hub in the near future and the Captivate will feature a pre-loaded app that can take users to download Media Hub in the future. The Captivate features Samsung’s All Share application, which enables inter-device connectivity through DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) technology, allowing users to send user-generated video content wirelessly to other DLNA-enabled devices, such as TV’s, monitors and laptops, allowing for a rich, interactive entertainment experience.The Captivate is packed full of features that enhance users’ daily life, including a 5.0-megapixel camera/ camcorder with auto-focus and HD video recording (720p)***, MP3 player, 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and expandable memory for photos, videos and music, up to 16 GB. This combined with an on-board 16 GB of storage allows for up to 32 GB of capacity for music and video.
The Captivate also includes AT&T Navigator, which offers voice-guided and visual turn-by-turn GPS driving directions with automatic reroute, full-color maps, and real-time traffic alerts and AT&T Family Map, which gives families the ability to track a child’s location from a PC or cell phone and request location updates at any time.
Additional key specifications of the Captivate include Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), full HTML browser with tap & hold zoom), Bluetooth® 3.0 technology. The Captivate also includes tri-band 3G connectivity and quad-band GSM technology, which allows AT&T customers to make calls in more than 220 countries and download data in more than 195.
The Samsung Captivate is scheduled for release in the coming months at AT&T retail locations nationwide or at http://www.att.com/wireless. For more information or to register for notification when available visit www.att.com/captivate . For the complete array of AT&T offerings, visit www.att.com.
ITS AMAZING!
FINALLY!!!
And then comes the conversation with Steve Jobs…
Knowing how much influence Apple has over AT&T I can see the conversation now.
AT&T: We’re releasing a high end Android phone.
Steve Jobs: Ooh really? I guess the iPhone will make a surprise debut on Verizon!
AT&T: OK, OK. We will lock it down so no untrusted apps can be installed and we’ll tell Samsung to hold off on Froyo until at least 6/2011 when the iPhone 5 comes out.
Steve Jobs: Excellent news! Looks like you can now continue to cradle my nutsack for at least another year!
Tmobile are you watching? Even the “anti-google” att has a high end phone, time to speed up project emerald…
In addition, the Samsung Captivate is designed with a six-axis sensor that combines the smartphone’s accelerometer and gyroscope to provide a smooth, fluid gaming experience when the user is tilting the device up or down or panning the phone to the left or right.
–
–
ok so this has everything now. And AT&T finally has a good phone
g1: tmobile is also getting a Samsung Galaxy. Samsung wants it everywhere and around the world. That means it will be a standard for developers so they can take advantage of hummingbird and other features.
So in terms of hardware, its an iPhone with more ram/bigger super AMOLED screen/Android 2.1
@Ace that would make it an Android handset, not an iPhone ;)
Howzit compare to the N1?
YAYYYYYY!!!!!
Yep, that’ll do.
Congrats to all AT&T sufferers who have been dying with the lack of decent Android Phone.
I finally had to bite the bullet and pre-ordered the iPhone 4 :-(.
If they gave an actual date, I might be tempted to flip the iPhone on ebay and grab this…..but knowing AT&T’s ability to hit a date/announce a date I think I am out of luck.
Its gonna be real interesting to see how the iPhone screen stands up against this Super AMOLED displayed in the same store.
Phandroid mentioned is was slightly different from the Galaxy S. How so? UMTS bands? I hope that is it.
In the AT&T press details it says, “Samsung Captivate™, a Galaxy S™ smartphone.”
I meant by design, for the most part. I also can’t find any mention of a front-facing camera, though there looks to be a spot for one in the press pictures.
The hardest decision I’m ever going to make next year besides choosing what college I’m going to:
Nexus One or Captivate?
@Quentyn
Is this six-axis sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S? I never saw that in recent specs for the samsung galaxy s, unless i missed it.
sort of looks like Xperia X10
FINALLY!
As an AT&T user who is stuck using AT&T (family plan and company discount) I am glad to see them FINALLY announce a good Android phone. Ever since I saw the Galaxy S, I wanted one, and while this isn’t exactly the same, it looks to be the same where it counts. As an AT&T user who doesn’t wet myself over everything Apple does, I am very excited for this phone. Now I’m just hoping a Summer release doesn’t mean the very end of August or something.
Hey Darkseider..that was hilarious
I love the screen on this phone and the processor, but No LED flash and Samsung’s Touch wiz on top of Android kills this for me..
Not to mention they removed the front facing camera that’s on the Galaxy S.
Don’t want to have a true competitor for the precious iphone you know…
@elijahblake
yeah, I’m waiting to see it on other carriers. Verizon and T-Mobile will hopefully have this soon and won’t lock it down like ATT might.
About Touch wiz, I heard it is drastically improved on this device and is really great. I haven’t played with it yet, but from what I have heard.
Wait so this is basically att’s galaxy s right?
finally att. finally!!!! this further confirms my belief that the exclusive iphone deal is done after Q3!!!! and they are rolling out the adroid only after 600k preorders have been locked into 2 yr contracts.
I don’t think they removed the front facing camera. It’s just to the left of the speaker instead of to the right of it.
I have to agree – this sounds an awful lot like a confirmation that iPhone exclusivity is coming to an end. But I’ll take it. Been up for renewal for 9 months now, waiting on a good Android phone to show up on At&t. Finally!!
Galaxy S devices? Are they going xperia on us?
@SteveJobs’Liver I had a guy at Sprint tell me that iPhone will be on T-Mobile in the fall so that seems to jib with the Q3 theory.
@uly Looks like it. There is a article on here about a media player they are calling the Galaxy Touch.
I am now kinda glad I didn’t get a pre order to go throught on Tuesday. Hopefully it will be available sooner rather than later. I Am in the same boat as @Chosen1 and was about to get an iPhone then pass it onto my wife when her upgrade becomes available next year and hoping AT&T had a decent android phone by then.
:( no front camera? Market has changed…to be high end..it has to have a front camera!
Who uses front facing cameras anyways?
No joke. Nobody would ever use it in public as it looks dorky to be walking around with a phone in front of your face talking. And if you are at home, you can always use the Webcam on your computer if you want to.
Europe/Asia have had phones with front facing cameras for years but nobody uses the damn things.
I think it is even dorkier to walk and talk to ‘yourself’ but that doesn’t stop people. With a video call you don’t have to wait to get home in order to see your SO or family and you can pick up on their facial cues. You can see if they are just about to say something or if they are upset at you.
–
Europe/Asia also had symbian for years and not much happened with that OS. The US does seem to set the culture for the rest of the world.
good lord not another skin over android. So we have:
Sense(HTC)
Blur(Moto)
Touch(Samsung)
and all of their successors.
Google should have figured out a way to get all of those companies to work together to make one unified skin that could be incorporated into android at some point. Oh to dream.
Who no LED flash? Another missed opportunity AT&T. And Samsung, how dumb to you have to be to release a “superphone” in 2010 without a camera flash when all of the competing devices have them?! Not to mention Android 2.1 which I guarantee they’ll never update. What a bunch of idiots!
oh yeah and no front facing camera?! so much for using gesture control on this piece of junk.
its a good phone but I want something better…
Gay Hardware GAY NAME.
And it’s not even HD too forget to mention that.
They removed the front facing camera? ffffail
Yes, but can you sort your contacts by last name or category like you can on a Windows phone….oh wait… no you can’t without buying/downloading an app. Until a feature as basic as this is added is why I will never buy, nor let my wife and children buy a non Windows or RIM phone.
WHICH BLOWS because I really, really, really want an Andriod (I don’t allow slapple products in my home).
Records 720p HD video. What do you mean, not HD?
Did anyone else notice that the phone does not look like the Galaxy S that was unboxed?
http://www.slashgear.com/att-getting-galaxy-s-with-samsung-captivate-1790362/
The buttons are different and the lack of a front facing camera
Also the back of the phone looks nothing like the unboxed Galaxy S.
Actually the AT&T version looks cheaper / low-end compared to the Galaxy S.
True, they messed by not including the front camera or an LED flash, but the Galaxy S doesn’t have flash either. What I really want to know is if they are going to come out with a “Pro” version like they are with the Galaxy S. I’m not a huge fan of touch screen and would LOVE if they made this thing with a physical keyboard. I wouldn’t mind the “bulkyness” and for those who do, there’s still the original that doesn’t have it. If they do, hopefully they have enough sense to include the front camaera and flash on that one like they did with the Galaxy S Pro.
What are you guy’s talking about it has a front facing camera and flash watch the video in flash gear. The buttons are different but that’s it.
Anyway great phone looks like a good phone to wait for. Don’t think it’ll be too long since AT&T already put up a page for it on their website. Hopefully AT&T doesn’t mess with it.
I’m just waiting for the required 30 dollar feature I need to add on.
Well here’s a “valid” opinion from who actually owns the phone, It’s the best phone i’ve used to date. If you’re not a yuppy looking for a phone to “keep up with the Jones’s” then you’ll love this phone. It’s a simple, yet advanced smart phone with awesome apps. Screw what anyone else “claims”…