14 DAY TRIAL // Rumored a week ago, T-Mobile's Samsung Vibrant successor has been spotted again and seems to be very close to an official release. The new smartphone cannot be considered a second generation Vibrant, as it offers almost the same features as the original Samsung Vibrant, with a few exceptions.
According to TmoNews, who got their hands on a few internal T-Mobile documents, the Samsung Vibrant is the best-selling Galaxy S device across all U.S. carriers with nearly 1 million units sold.
Built on the success of its predecessor, Samsung Vibrant 4G will be the fastest device on T-Mobile’s network offering speeds of up to 21+ Mbps. The carrier is also retailing the myTouch and T-Mobile G2 smartphones with 4G speeds that are capped at 14.4 Mbps.
Furthermore, the leaked documents mention that the Vibrant 4G will be exclusive to T-Mobile and that it will receive the “highest level of marketing support from T-Mobile, plus additional support from Samsung’s Galaxy S campaign. This includes TV and Cinema advertising among other marketing methods.”
Samsung Vibrant 4G is powered by the same 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, which is also embedded in the original Vibrant. However, unlike its predecessor which is still running on the Android 2.1 (Eclair) platform, the Vibrant 4G comes with Android 2.2 Froyo out-of-the-box.
Other specs leaked include a front facing camera with T-Mobile Video Chat powered by Qik. This might seem odd, especially that the company has just been acquired by Skype who intends to add Qik's video chat technology to its portfolio as soon as the transaction finalizes.
The rest of the Vibrant 4G specs seems to be the same as its predecessor: 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors and 480 x 800 pixels resolution, 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection, 16GB of internal memory, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
No release date has been mentioned in these documents, but the smartphone will most likely be officially introduced by the end of January.
