Impressions: Bell Samsung Vibrant (Galaxy S)

A very nice phone with all the bells and whistles but just a little bit uninspiring.

For the last week I have been using the Samsung Vibrant from Bell and am liking it.  I can’t say I love it, but it really is quite nice.

The Samsung Vibrant is part of the Galaxy S line with a design that looks very much like the iPhone.  Certainly, its meant to compete with the iPhone and it does a nice job at doing so.  This is really the part of this phone that is a let-down for me.  I stay away from the iPhone simply because everyone else on the planet seems to have one.  I don’t really want a phone that is a carbon copy.

Don’t tell Mike I stole one of his pictures!!

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Bell’s Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant in Pictures

Late last week Bell released their Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant smartphone. If you’re not familiar with the Vibrant, it’s very much like Samsungs Captivate offered on AT&T but with a slightly different body. Overall, the Vibrant is a thin and light powerhouse of a device. The AMOLED screen is super bright and crisp to look at. When put beside Apple’s new Retina display on the iPhone 4, the Galaxy S screen puts it to shame with brighter, more vivid pictures.

Thanks to the faithful Mobile Jaw reader, and super nice guy, Matt Reeder for letting me spend some quality time with his hot new device. I’ve snapped a number of pictures of the phone for everyone to see. If you click on the image it will open a larger version of the picture. Enjoy!

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Bell Launches Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant

Not to be left behind, Bell Canada has officially made the Galaxy S Vibrant available on their network. The Vibrant is pretty much the same – spec wise, as the AT&T Captivate, but the body of the devices are a little different. The Vibrant offers 16GB of memory that’s expandable to 32GB thanks to MicroSD support. There’s a 4-inch AMOLED screen with a 480×800 resolution, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD video recording (720p), Bluetooth 3.0, and powered by Android 2.1.

The Galaxy S Vibrant should already be in stores. In fact, we heard reports late yesterday that some stores had stock and were already showing them off to customers. The Vibrant will run you $500 without a contract, which is $50 more than Telus is asking for the Desire. If you look at the features, I think that’s $50 well spent. If you’re going to sign a contract, you can expect $450, $350, and $150 for 1, 2, and 3 year contracts.

Check out Bell’s website if you’re looking for more information about this hot new device. What are you going to pick, the Desire or the Vibrant?

Unboxing the HTC Legend from Bell and Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile and it’s parent company Bell, have launched the HTC Legend with North American 3G frequencies. Until now, if you live in the US or Canada and wanted the Legend, your only choice was the European version but with that version you never get the nice 3G speeds. Now that Virgin and Bell have launched a North American version, you can enjoy the device and the super fast 3G network that goes along with it. It appears that the only difference between the Virgin Mobile Legend and Bell’s Legend is $50 of your hard earned cash. So with that, I picked up the Virgin Mobile edition today and shot this unboxing video. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions. A more detailed review of the Legend will be coming along soon!

HTC Legend Available from Bell and Virgin Mobile

Late last week Virgin Mobile was the first to announce availability of the HTC Legend to Canadians. Now Bell has added the Legend to their list of devices. Of course, that’s not much of a surprise, as Bell is the parent company of Virgin Mobile. What is odd is the price difference between the two related companies. Bell is offering the Legend at an off contract price of $399 while Virgin has a price of $349.

The Bell/Virgin version of the HTC Legend is the first version of the device that supports North American cellular networks. The Legend supports Quad-band GSM/GPRS/Edge on 850/900/1800/1900 and for HSPA it uses 850/1900 with speeds up to 2 Mbps for uploaded and 7.2 Mbps for download. It’s powered by Google’s Android v2.1 on a Qualcomm 7227 processor at 600MHz. The body on the Legend is cut from a solid piece of aluminum and includes other features like 3.2 inch AMOLED screen with 320×480 HVGA, 512MB ROM / 384MB RAM, 5 megapixel camera with flash, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi 802.11 b/g, a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, a 1300 mAh battery. All of this is cramped into a footprint of 112 x 56.3 x 11.5 mm (4.41 x 2.22 x 0.45 inches).

The Legend is feature packed and at a price to move! The full press release for Virgin Mobile can be found after the jump.

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Mobilicity Gets the Green Light to Launch

Late last week the CRTC gave the green light to Mobilicity to launch their mobile service Canada. Mobilicity is not ready to give out a date of when you will be able to subscribe, but they do say that they are expecting to launch in Toronto before the summer and then in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Ottawa before the end of the year.

When Mobilicity does finally launch, it will mark the second new carrier to enter the Canadian market. These new guys are a direct result of the limitations that were placed on the spectrum auction a couple years back, preventing the big 3 from locking up the spectrum and keeping the competition out.  In the last 6 months, since we saw the first new carrier enter the market, Bell, Telus, and Rogers/Fido have been dropping their prices like nothing Canadians have seen before.

We’ll keep you posted on the prices and launch details as we learn more.

Update on Wireless in Canada

It’s no secret that Canadians have been at the mercy of the “big three” cellphone carriers in Canada with little to no competition for far too long. 

So, how are we doing now that we have at least one new choice?

The honest truth about consumer choice in Canadian cellular is that for a long time we have had none.  Sure, there has been three carriers but if they haven’t been secretly meeting in dark alleys to discuss rates they at least have not been competitive.  The result is that pricing for voice and data has been extremely high in Canada until recently.  So, what changed?  New blood!

The latest carrier to enter the scene in Canada is WIND Mobile and they bring with them a refreshing focus on consumers.  While their plans are not earth shattering they at least represent a decent option for some.  I’ll get back to WIND in just a bit.

Our big three – or rather, ‘big two’ since Bell and TELUS are conjoined twins – milked consumers to the point of breaking but with no choice, what could we do?  The government dragged their feet for a long time but FINALLY offered cellular spectrum in an auction open to everyone but Rogers and Bellus.  These companies finally saw that some form of competition was coming and I think that is when they decided to become more competitive; well, at least Bellus did.  Roger’s plans have changed very little, probably because they are still on a high from being the exclusive carrier of the iPhone.  But of course, that is no longer true either, so hopefully we will see changes from Rogers.

I personally use Bell and am happy with the rates they have for data.  I still pay far too much overall for my cellphone but they have improved.  Of course, they still are not connecting with their customers in any measurable way.  While Rogers has made strides on Social Networking sites like twitter there is nothing from Bell that I have seen and little from Telus.  I’m pretty sure Bell executives are still scratching their blue hair over that new fangled site “MySpace”. [to any Bell executive reading this I apologize.  You hair is actually a very nice shade of blue, I meant the guy in the office two down from you.]

WIND Mobile does represent the kind of company we have been waiting for in Canada but how are they doing so far?  Apparently they signed up 10,000 subscribers in their first month.  Uhhhh…

Ok, maybe some would think that is good considering they are new, they have limited coverage, they spend all day playing with Microsoft Surface, but the point is they need to do MUCH better.  They are currently looking to raise money to roll out in other cities, but return on that money would have to be extremely speculative at this point.  Lets hope they are able to get on Dragon’s Den and win over at least a couple Dragons.

Things are looking a bit better for Canadians but we have a long way to go.  Let’s try to support new carriers as much as possible, or at least the carriers that are trying to change for the better.

Rogers Gets its Hand Slapped

In a mirror image of what is happening in the US, Rogers has been told to stop making claims of being the “most reliable’ network in Canada. Rogers has been making this claim for a long time now but Telus has finally taken them to task on these claims.

What I’m really surprised at is Telus’ slightly between-the-lines assertion that this has actually been true until November 6th when they rolled out their HSPA network. If you think about that, this claim isn’t actually saying that Rogers’ network is inferior now but that there is simply no basis, or no third-party data to assert this claim. In other words, it’s actually possible that Rogers’ network is the more reliable but they need the backing of a third party in making this claim.

The flip side of this could very well be that Telus and Bell may actually have the more reliable network but they too would have to have confirmation to make that claim. At this point they don’t seem to be making trying to lay claim to these bragging rights, they simply want Rogers to stop their advertising campaign.

I’m personally a Bell user and find their network to be as close to rock solid as wireless can be. Their HSPA network actually gave me better signal strength than their own CDMA network.

The New Cellular Competition in Canada

FINALLY there is some competition happening in Canada. Unfortunately it isn’t a new cellular provider but at least there are some new and decent things happening. How does some competition for Rogers stranglehold on GSM and iPhone sound?

I’m referring to the launch of the new HSPA network by Bell and Telus. Ok, ok, I suppose its technically “networks” but there is so much sharing going on with these two companies we really have to call it a single network. That’s not really a bad thing as it means exceptional coverage for Canadians; up to 93% of the population of Canada according to Bell.

While we are on this topic I should mention that coverage will continually improve over the next short while. Bell and Telus are both in the process of identifying coverage gaps and applying to use each others towers for those gap areas.

Since I’m a Bell customer I’ll let you know my experiences with their network. I’d rather give more print time to Bell right now anyway, because their data plans are fairly decent. More on that in a bit.

Bell’s HSPA network went live on Wednesday, November 4th, well ahead of their original schedule. The plan initially was to launch in early 2010 which was then bumped to late November. Bell moved that date to Friday the 6th and just a week before launch bumped it again to be on the 4th. I like that! I don’t remember the last time Bell was aggressive with a roll out. Maybe spells a new mindset at Bell? I hope so.

Bell’s real motivation for rolling out in November was to be all set for the Olympics in Vancouver in February 2010. They even signed a sweet roaming agreement with AT&T to snag all the roaming iPhones when they visit.

Being the cautious Canadian that I am and in showing great restraint I didn’t run right out and hook my plan to Bell’s new network at the time of launch. I waited a good and proper 4 hours…then ran in! I had an unlocked AT&T Fuze (aka a GSM version of the HTC Touch Pro) burning a hole in my pocket.
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A Couple New Toys for Me

Recently I was able to get together with our Editor in Chief, Mike Temporale for a quick bite and snag a couple of great phones to play around with; the Samsung Omnia and HTC S740 (THANKS MIKE!!).

The Omnia is a slate-style Windows Mobile Professional device running on the Bell Mobility network. I already have a Bell account, so I just switched over to this phone. Using it as my main phone and loving it. The screen is a good size and it is quite lightweight.

It does take a bit of time to get used to a new phone, so I will be sharing some thoughts.

Since the Omnia is still available from Bell I will be posting about some of the apps I have put on it and how I have customized it for my liking. It may not be the latest Windows Phone but it is a great smartphone that is a little less expensive.

The HTC S740 is a Windows Mobile Standard device that is unlocked for use on Rogers. Since I don’t have a Rogers account I am simply using WiFi with this one. Its a great little smartphone with a very nice sliding keyboard. I gotta say, this is one well made piece of hardware.

This one is just going to be for playing around. I actually have always used the Professional version of Windows Mobile and wanted to see what the Standard version was like.

More to come.

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