By
now, you most likely know all about Samsung's
Galaxy S line of smartphones, including T-Mobile's
Vibrant, AT&T's
Captivate -- which saw July releases -- and Sprint's
Epic 4G, set to launch August 31. The only carrier "officially"
missing from the mix thus far is Verizon... until now.
Phandroid, going
on some screenshots from a tipster, is reporting that Verizon's
Galaxy variant, the "Fascinate," is beginning to arrive in
stores, fueling speculation of a September launch. This release
schedule would make sense for Verizon because the carrier has been
busy the last few months launching all of its new
Droid offerings. A September release would give the Fascinate
more visibility in what's quickly becoming a saturated market for
Android-based phones.
Specs
on the Fascinate are almost identical to the
Vibrant. BoyGeniusReport has
obtained training
documents that confirm the following:
- 1
GHz Hummingbird processor
- 4-inch
Super AMOLED display
- 800
x 480 resolution
- 5
megapixel camera with LED flash
- 720p
video recording
- ActiveSync
support for Exchange 2003, 2007, and 2010 servers.
- 512
MB ROM
- Either
336 MB or 384 MB RAM (weird, considering other variants have 512 MB
RAM)
- 16
GB microSD card pre-installed (with support for 32 GB)
- 2
GB of onboard memory
- Bluetooth
2.1 + EDR (not 3.0, like the newer Droids)
The
Fascinate will be running Android 2.1 at launch. According to the
training documents, Flash support will be available by "Year End
2010," which means the device will be seeing an update sometime
in Q4. Who knows, by then it may be getting Android
3.0 Gingerbread --
an unlikely prospect given Samsung's previous issues rolling out
Android updates.
Androinica is
reporting that
Best Buy Reward Zone customers can pre-order the Fascinate starting
today, while regular customers will be able to pre-order on August
29.
