AT&T and Samsung have announced the upcoming availability of the Samsung Captivate, a Galaxy S smartphone. The Android 2.1-powered Samsung Captivate is designed to bring users a fully integrated entertainment, messaging and social networking experience packaged in a streamlined design surrounding a 4-inch display.
“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.”
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. Samsung’s innovative display technology is designed to make 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, to give surround-sound stereo quality, when listening on hard-wired headphones.
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.
The Captivate 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.
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 H L browser with tap & hold zoom), Bluetooth3.0 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.
Final release date and pricing will be announced later.