By September 9th still sounding fishy to you? One of Engadget‘s sources – an employee of one of Verizon’s corporate locations – has confirmed to them the arrival of the long-awaited Samsung Fascinate. Verizon’s not made any noise themselves leading up to the launch of this thing, but Samsung’s been putting out ads and Best Buy’s been taking pre-orders. It feels like a launch is looming, but at the same time it feels like Verizon couldn’t care less to generate any hype. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun – their marketing strategies are unpredictable as we’ve seen with the rather quick and dirty Droid 2 launch – but I’m still content just knowing that the last Galaxy S device in America is finally set to make its rounds.
Not the last! U.S. Cellular is awaiting theirs (read: I’m awaiting mine), though admittedly it will look a heck of a lot like the Fascinate….
I’m really on the fence about this one. On one hand, I like the Super AMOLED screen and I’ve always liked Samsung’s phones.
What concerns me is that the phone is pre-loaded with a lot of bloat-ware (not just Bing, but the Blockbuster app, VCast video, Amazon Kindle) that will tie up a lot of space for me. Plus the phone only has two gigs of internal memory (the Epic 4G has even less at 512 MB). Granted, I have a Droid Eris and have thirty apps installed and still have 35 MB free, but I feel like the two gigs stinks compared to the 16 gigs that the Captivate has.
I’ll go play with it in the store. My wife and I aren’t due for an upgrade until late October, so we’ll have to wait and see.
My thoughts exactly, Lewis, though I’ve made my peace with it. I know once we have root access we can remove the bloatware and eventually use custom ROM’s. Galaxy S devices on other carriers have already been rooted, so that should be a short wait. As far as the storage, I’ve decided to just bust open the piggy bank and snag a 32GB card. That should be enough so I can leave it in there permanently. By the time I upgrade the Fascinate, it might still be a useful card to have.
My only issue at this point is Gingerbread compatibility, but from my research that 512mb requirement claim seems to be recommended RAM, not minimum.
I’ll be using the “NoLED” or whatever app as a notification light, and I’m all set. Now to wait until the 9th…
Looks just like the droid incredible, minus the optical trackpad and the red accents.
still a good looking phone. Im torn between this one and that EVO looking device.
i’m on a lame droid eris, and i want out too. only problem is that my warranty won’t be up for another year. has anybody heard anything about the prices? i heard a rumor saying that with upgrade: 250, without: 699. but i just wanted to confirm.. can’t find anything on the web so far
@Lewis This phone should be rootable just like all the other Galaxy S phones. If you’re concerned about the bloatware, root it and uninstall them. Should be a fairly painless process. I haven’t done this on my Epic yet since it still seems to have plenty of app space and I haven’t come anywhere close to using it up yet.
I don’t think Verizon has too much incentive to advertise this phone too much. Since late Spring, they’ve added 4 top of the line phones, (X, D2, Droid Incredible, and this). This is the one phone that technically isn’t exclusive to them. Heck, they aren’t even tagging it as Droid Fascinate, I thought that was pretty strange since its a top tier phone.
Also, these phones are coming out so quickly together that there doesn’t seem to be much different between them (under the hood at least), so at this point, unless you love one manufacturer over the other, you may just get this phone b/c of availability
@eric if you look at the others they are around 199 on contract and 5something off contract so i would look for the fascinate to be the same i mean the droid x, droid 2 are both 199 and they are top of the line so the fascinate should be around the same price maybe less who knows.
eric, after 1 year on a two year contract, you can upgrade your phone to aphone you want at that phone’s current two year contract price plus $20 for early upgrade.
i wish this one came to to sprint instead of the epic.
Check it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6KgaI47wY
1:17 confirms memory.
@Lewis & @Brandon
BTW, the 2GB of internal memory is for the OS. It should have 16GB of space on an additional internal SD card, and then you can stick in another 32GB SD card in the external MicroSD slot. Space should not be a problem :-)
I have a droid x and im seriously considering switching over to the fascinate because it has a WAAYY better GPU than the droid x’s. Does the fascinate have anything else over the droid x or the other way around? Suggestions please!
To all those complaining about the bloatware. Root your phone and flash custom rom. The galaxy s lines are the easier android phones to root. Even a caveman can do it! ;)
I’m with JoshUng. I have preordered the Fascinate because of availability. I don’t love the Droid 2 and the Inc. and X are in my book only available in theory. I have been looking for a new Android phone for months but the Inc. and X launches are failures in my book. Verizon launches a phone, then they are available for 1-2 days and by the time an ordinary person gets to the store to try out a phone to consider buying it is backordered for weeks. I would prefer to try a phone before buying it, but that just isn’t working for me. I like the idea of 4.0 inch screen and the Incredible’s AMOLED was gorgeous so I have high hopes for the Fascinate. I also love Samsung’s design sensibilities. My phone died last week so now I am really awaiting the Fascinate’s launch. They may be low keying the launch to mitigate availability expectations.
I have been teased with the Samsung vibrant. I purchase an account with t-mobile and absolutely love the phone!! Unfortunately, T-mobile does not have service in my area So I went to verizon to get a temp phone until they launch the Samsung vibrant. Meanwhile, I am stuck with a droid 2. There is no doubt about it… the fascinate with blow it out of the water! The super amoled 4″ screen is the best I have ever seen. It is extremely amazing how clear everything is on this phone! This phone supports a humming bird processor… which is also amazing all in its self. There is NO lag or “freezing” of the screen when swyping from screen to screen. Which is one of the many problems I have found with my droid 2. All in all, the samsung galaxy s series is an amazing line of products!!