Comments FeedHands On With the Samsung Fascinate for Verizon Wireless
Verizon's star in Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone line is the Fascinate, a speedy, slab-style Android smartphone with a sleek body and a lot of unique software. It'll have to work hard to differentiate itself from other top Verizon Android smartphones in the carrier's very strong lineup, but it has its own strengths.The Fascinate is slim, smooth, and comfortable. The body design is a lot more generic than that of Verizon's other top Android smartphones, the HTC Incredible and Motorola Droid X, and the bland case throws the 4-inch, 854-by-480 Super AMOLED screen into sharp relief. That screen is really bright, too – 80 percent less reflective than the standard AMOLED on the HTC Incredible, according to Samsung. We'll have to see what that means for visibility outdoors.
The Fascinate's software is a mix of Samsung, Google, and Verizon contributions. The home screen features Bing and Bing Maps, a little Verizon jab at Google.
Verizon confirmed a Blockbuster app will come to this phone, just like on the Droid X. Blockbuster's app offers $3.99 movie rentals and movie purchases for $10-20, but no subscription plan. Verizon's Skype software makes an appearance as well, along with the ability to act as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five devices, Verizon's VZ Navigator for driving directions, Nuance voice commands, and Verizon's Rhapsody music-syncing and subscription software.
Samsung's contribution is TouchWiz 3, a skin over Android 2.1 that does some useful and some annoying things. The custom apps look useful: a "social hub" merges Facebook and Twitter contacts into home screen widgets and the contact book, and a "daily briefing" app combines news, weather, and calendar appointments neatly. But Samsung also changed a lot of Android icons and screen layouts seemingly pointlessly, or just to make all Samsung phones look similar.
Notably, Samsung's Media Hub app was missing from the Fascinate I examined. Media Hub will be Samsung's TV and movie store. Samsung emphasized that this was a pre-production model, so Media Hub might appear on the phone at a later date.
Samsung said that the Fascinate will get an upgrade to Android 2.2 with Adobe Flash, although Verizon wouldn't confirm timing on that upgrade.
The Fascinate enters a very strong Verizon Android lineup, slotting neatly between the smaller HTC Incredible (with its 3.7-inch screen) and the vast Motorola Droid X (with its 4.3-inch screen.) How will Verizon differentiate between the three phones? Size is one major component, a Verizon rep at the launch said.
But it will be interesting to compare some of the subtle differences between the three phones. Verizon's three high-end Android phones run three different versions of Android 2.1: Motorola's Blur, Samsung's TouchWiz, and HTC's Sense. They have three different 1 Ghz processors: the TI OMAP, Samsung Hummingbird, and Qualcomm Snapdragon. And they use three different screen technologies: OLED, Super AMOLED, and LCD. That's sure to make for some differences.
Verizon doesn't have a launch date or price for the Fascinate yet, but they said it will come out this summer.
See also, PCMag's hands on with the Samsung Captivate for AT&T and the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile.
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