Thus we have a review video of the Google Nexus S smartphone courtesy of the guys over at Daily Mobile with the review being done by the guys over at Phone Arena and delivers an eleven minute review of the firstAndroid 2.3 Gingerbread toting handset which shares a fair bit of similarity with the Samsung Galaxy S.

Naturally if you wish an in-dept written review along with numerous images you can also check out the Google Nexus S review over on Phone Arena website, but if you haven’t got the time for the full review then skip on down and mash that play button.

As you are probably aware, the Google Nexus S is available via Best Buy across the US on T-Mobile 2 year contract that commands a price tag of $200 or unlocked Nexus S for $529. So all you need to do now is check out that Google Nexus S video review below…enjoy.

Read on, to see what the critics are saying — including Wired’s Christopher Null , Harry McCracken writing for Time , The New York Times’ David Pogue, The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg,Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan, and, of course, PC World’s own Melissa J. Perenson — about the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Screen and Size

The critics can’t agree on whether the Galaxy Tab’s 7-inch screen size is big enough compared to what you get on the 9.6-inch screen. Most, however, say the screen is better than you would expect. Writing for Time magazine, McCracken said the Galaxy Tab’s “display is impressive … with a higher dots-per-inch count than the iPad … even though the resolution is lower.” Null agreed with McCracken, saying the Samsung tablet’s “1024 x 600-pixel resolution makes this less of a big deal than you might expect.” Several critics also noted that the Galaxy Tab’s screen was not as bright as the iPad’s.

But two reviewers weren’t pleased with the Galaxy Tab’s display. Buchanan said the tablet’s screen wasn’t big enough, while Mossberg echoed an argument made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in October. “The Tab has a 7-inch screen versus the 9.7-inch display on the iPad … but the numbers are deceptive … the actual screen real estate on the Tab is less than half of the iPad’s.”

Multitasking, Camera and Flash, Oh My!

All of the critics were quick to point out that the Galaxy Tab has a few advantages over the current state of the iPad. Namely, the Galaxy Tab has front- and rear-facing cameras, Adobe Flash for viewing online video and multitasking. (The iPad will get multitasking later this month with the iOS 4.2 update.) But these added features aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, according to the critics.

Camera, meh

The first thing to note is that taking photos with a giant slab of technology is not as subtle as taking a snap with your smartphone. “The big viewfinder (otherwise known as the screen) was a kick, but no way are you going to be subtle when taking a photo with the Galaxy Tab,” Perenson said.

Give Me Face Time

Video calling doesn’t appear to be that great either, and some experienced problems with Qik, the Galaxy Tab’s third-party video calling app. Mossberg said he experienced dropped calls and at one point lost all audio on the call, while Pogue called the whole video calling experience “flaky.” Qik is reportedly working on a fix for the app. Perhaps the most telling comment came from McCracken who said Apple’s “FaceTime video-calling software [was] sorely missed” on the Galaxy Tab.

Galaxy Tab’s Bad Browser: Blame Flash

Another near-universal comment was the Galaxy Tab’s considerably slower browser speeds compared to the iPad. Null said Web pages “loaded more slowly than the iPad – sometimes taking twice as long.” Mossberg said the browser was a bit “jerky in zooming into text and scrolling through long pages.”

Gizmodo’s Buchanan, who generally hated the Galaxy Tab, was heavy on the spite, saying the browser was “miserable, at least when Flash is enabled. It goes catatonic, scrolling is laggy, and it can get laughably bad.”

McCracken disagreed, however, saying the browser “stacks up well against the iPad’s, and can play the Adobe Flash videos that remain banned from Apple devices.” Then again, both Pogue and Mossberg said that playing Flash video was a little hit and miss; sometimes the videos worked, sometimes they didn’t.

Apps Don’t Scale

Aside from a few apps that Samsung redesigned for the Galaxy Tabs screen size such as e-mail, calendar and contacts, most reviewers found that Android apps originally designed for smartphones didn’t scale that well. Just like with the iPad, the Galaxy Tab can use almost any Android app, and just blows it up to account for the bigger screen. “Some of my downloaded apps scaled fine to tablet size. Others were surrounded by large black bars,” Mossberg said. While Pogue disagreed saying Samsung’s tablet either “blows them up, at the expense of clarity, or lets them float in the center of the larger screen with a Texas-size black border.”

Pricey, but Pretty Good

One problem the reviewers pointed to was also the Galaxy Tab’s price. Unlike the iPad, you have to purchase the Galaxy Tab through the four major cellular carriers including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — US Cellular is also selling the Galaxy Tab in some markets. Two carriers — Sprint and T-Mobile — offer a contract-free version, but if you want a cheaper upfront cost for the device, you have to make a two-year commitment. The iPad, by comparison, offers a Wi-Fi only version and the 3G models are contract free.

Despite some of the complaints, almost all of the reviewers said the Galaxy Tab was a good device and a workable alternative to the iPad. Just make sure you think about the Galaxy Tab’s cost and maybe try it out for yourself before buying.

Epic 4G, the phone that brings thinnest screen display, also offers you the enjoyment through music listening and the great thing is that you will still be able to listen to the music even when device is turned off. Moreover, Epic 4G should become the right choice for gamers since the Super AMOLED touch-screen display has the ability to feature the faster response time and wide viewing angles to prevent blurring or distortion.

Furthermore, there is a futuristic touch visible on Epic 4G and it is especially seen through the modern design of side-sliding full QWERTY keyboard. You can type the text by swiping finger with one continuous finger of sing stylus across the interface keyboard.

This Android-base handset also equips the ultra-fast 4G wireless connectivity and it also comes with wireless service offers in 32 markets which will be able to deliver download speeds more than 10 times faster than 3G. this makes Epic 4G becomes the fastest data speeds handset out there.

Epic 4G is packed with GPS couples Spring Navigation which can be very useful for you to give directions as you are driving either through voice and onscreen directions. In addition, this phone is integrated with a 5.0MP camera that gives the equal result with a digital camera. In fact, the camera keeps providing you good quality as you are moving or pause for a minute. This way, you still can capture and save the greatest moment in your life through a great device, Samsung Epic 4G.

It is available now for $200 with a two-year contract and a $100 mail-in rebate.

BUILD & DESIGN

When I took the Omnia II out of the box, the first word that came to mind was “sexy” — this really is a nice looking device. It’s a little on the large side compared to other phones, but that’s due to the 3.7-inch, AM-OLED screen, which is absolutely gorgeous. The overall design is sleek and modern, mainly black with chrome accents on the buttons and hematite around the edges of the device.

The battery cover on the back is basically black, but it has really cool red accents that show up more depending on how they catch the light. It’s a subtle effect, nothing too over-the-top or cheesy, but just different enough to set the Omnia II apart from the crowd of similar-looking devices. The top of the back panel is where you’ll find the lens for the 5.0 megapixel camera with flash and video capture capabilities.

This devicehas a nice heft to it — it’s not so heavy you don’t want to carry it with you, but it’s not so light it feels like an insubstantial toy. At 4.75 inches tall, 2.4 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick it’s not something you’ll forget that you have in your pocket, but it does fit.

Buttons and controls are relatively minimal, though there are quite a few of them. The call and disconnect buttons on the front of the phone are lightly textured, while the navigator button in the middle is smooth. The left side houses the standard headphone jack, the very small volume up/down buttons, the uncovered microSD slot, and the OK button. The right side has the covered charge/sync port, the lock button, and the camera button. The lock button is easy to manipulate and is cleverly recessed in comparison to the camera button, so you shouldn’t have any problem with the phone being accidentally unlocked when in your pocket or purse.

Display
I’ve already mentioned the display, and for good reason — it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s a bit larger than usual, and everything is so big and bright it made me realize just how much squinting I seem to do with other devices. Everything is sharp and neon bright, with saturated colors. Video looks great, with no ghosting issues.

Whether you’re viewing pictures or video or just composing a text message, you’ll like what you see on the Omnia II’s stellar display.

Keyboard
This devicehas a virtual keyboard, not a physical one, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the same-old, same-old. This is the first device I’ve used with Swype technology, and it’s nifty.

Instead of picking up your finger or your stylus each time you want to move to the next letter, you just slide your finger or stylus to the next one. It was a little strange at first, but I’m really starting to like it. It’s easier on my fingertips than pounding the virtual keys (I always tend to push harder than I need to) and it’s fun too.

If Swype perfectly understands what you just entered, it’s exactly like typing. If it doesn’t, you’ll get a selection of as many as eight different possibilities. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how the Swype system works. Typically turning off the auto-complete or word suggestion utility is one of the first things I do when I get a new device, but so far I really like how Swype is working for me on the Omnia II.

If it turns out that you’re not a big fan, you still have your choice of block recognizer, letter recognizer, the standard Windows Mobile keyboard, the Samsung Keypad, or Transcriber.

PERFORMANCE

The Omnia II runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional, but it looks a lot different than you may expect. Samsung has really jazzed things up the user interface with TouchWiz 2.0, homescreen widgets, and the multimedia Cube.

There’s a lot going on here, and even after spending a couple of weeks with this device I can still lose my way now and then. Thankfully performance is nice and fast — I really haven’t seen any delays or hiccups, and applications like Word Mobile start quickly.

You can putwidgets on the three-panel homescreen, and everything is fully customizable. You can even shop for new widgets in the Widget Store. You’ll find a wide variety, with everything from E! Online, G4TV.com, and the Urban Dictionary to entertainment apps like a lighter, glow stick, and Magic 8 Ball. All of the widgets currently available are free, though of course that can change at any time.

Tap the Menu button at the bottom of the screen to bring up a list of all the software installed on the device. It runs several pages and includes absolutely everything, from My Contacts and My Pictures to games and Office Mobile. You can move things around if you like, and you’ll probably want to do so — the Office applications are buried on the fourth page of the menu, with all of the carrier-specific stuff like V Cast Music and V Cast videos on the font page.

Wireless/Call Quality
My call quality tests have been OK, but not stellar — my callers can definitely tell that I’m using a mobile phone. Background noise wasn’t too much of a problem; the issue was more one of volume, making me feel that I needed to talk somewhat louder than normal in order to be heard.

3G mobile broadband, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work exactly as expected, without any issues.

Productivity
Since this is a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, there are plenty of productivity applications included, from the usual suspects like Office Mobile and Outlook Mobile to extras like MSN Money and Adobe Reader.

Voice Recognition from Nuance is also included, and my results are quite positive. If you find the five(!) pages of menus and the 3D Cube media interface overwhelming, you can say any command from “Call Brad” to “Go To Calendar” and things happen exactly as you say. It works very well, and was a joy to use, unlike most voice recognition apps.

The Opera Mobile Web browserworks great, and I like how text is re-flowed as necessary when I double-tap the screen to zoom in.

The e-mail experience is, however, extremely frustrating. Everything seems to have been optimized to minimize bandwidth usage to an unreasonable extreme. Do you want to browse folders, not just your Inbox? You can do it, but you have to change the settings to choose which folders to access, and that menu option is pretty well hidden.

Even worse, only message headers and the first 2 Kb of each message are downloaded by default, without any graphics, unless you tap to “download Internet pictures” on a per-message basis. You also have to tap to download the rest of the message, which will only happen the next time you “connect and receive e-mail” unless you choose send/receive in the menu to make it happen immediately. Want to scroll to the right in order to see the other half of your message? You have to tap in a specific place to enable horizontal scrolling, which is a real pain. I’m hopeful that some of these settings can be tweaked on a global basis; otherwise the Windows Mobile e-mail experience will be extremely unpleasant, and not one to which I would wish to subject myself on a long-term basis.

Entertainment
There’s a lot of fun to be had with the Omnia II, and it starts on the home screen. When you select the Cube menu option at the bottom of the screen, you’re presented with a really cool spinning cube that highlights your available options, from games to V Cast music and videos, to photos and the Web.

If you don’t want to use the cube, you can make your selections at the bottom of the screen. Choose video and you’ll see a flip list of every available video on the device, whether it was preloaded or something you shot with the phone’s camcorder feature. It’s a nice interface that works well and quickly gets you where you want to go.

Entertainment options include Media Player for music and videos and a collection of games and demos such as Solitaire, Bubble Breaker, Dice, and Ferrari GT Evolution (which utilizes motion controls).

The external speaker is loud enough and clear enough to offer a good gameplay experience without requiring the use of headphones.

V Cast Song ID is included with the phone, and it works very well, even with the relatively obscure songs I tested.

Camera
The 5.0 megapixel camera takes really good quality photos and videos, with a nice array of options for scene settings and special effects. The zoom is quite nice — it gets you much closer to the action, though the picture quality does suffer a bit.

I’m quite pleased with the quality of both still photos and video I’ve been able to take with the Omnia II — it won’t replace a standalone digital camera, but it’s much better than what you’d typically expect to find on a mobile phone.

You can also edit photos on the phone: flip, resize, rotate, crop, brightness, contrast, and color effects.

Battery Life
Battery life has proven to be a real standout with the Omnia II, though I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised considering how the e-mail experience has been throttled back so severely. I was able to get a full week on standby, and probably could have eked out a couple more days before plugging it in.

CONCLUSION

There are parts of the Samsung Omnia II that I really like — the beautiful display, the fun gaming experience, the Swype keyboard, the excellent camera, even the cool red accents on the battery cover, etc. There are also a few things I don’t like, most notably the almost wretched e-mail experience.

If you want a phone that offers a lot of entertainment options and don’t plan to use the e-mail functionality too heavily, the Omnia would be a solid choice. If however you tend to get the shakes if you don’t check your e-mail every five minutes, this isn’t the device for you.

Pros

• Gorgeous display
• Innovative Swype keyboard technology really works
• Good quality camera with video
• Offers a strong mobile entertainment experience
• Good battery life

Cons

• Painful e-mail experience
• Average voice quality
• Somewhat confusing UI/menu system

BUILD & DESIGN

TheSamsung Fascinate seems to have beenat firstconfused for an AppleiPhone, but then turned around so thatit offers an exciting opinion that it is very much not an iPhone.

Overall, there’s no creak or bend to the Fascinate. But I have this weird feeling that it might be a bit too slick. Many times after sliding it into my pocket, I flat out forgot that it was there. Some other people that I asked about it expressed similar concerns, but were overall impressed with the weight and design.

Screen
As with many smartphones these days, everything starts with the screen, and the Fascinate doesn’t disappoint. The 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display is bright and clear in most situations, taking solid advantage of the Super AMOLED screen technology which is both thinner and gives off some truer blacks than other types of screens.

I did notice though that the default (and adjusted) brightness levels were noticeably lower than that of the Epic 4G (the Sprint variant of the Samsung Galaxy S). I’m not exactly sure if this is a manufacturing issue, or a conscious decision on Verizon’s part in order to eek out a bit more life from the Fascinate

An improvement seems to have been made with the screen’s refresh rate, though. With other Galaxy variants, I noticed just a little bit in the way of screen lag with gestures, but not so with the Fascinate. And there was even a bit of an improvement after a recent system update in terms of how fast touches and gestures register.

The screen is not a fingerprint magnet. Most taps on the display are acknowledged by an audible “pop”, but you can turn this off if you wish.

Keyboard
As the Fascinate is a tablet-style smartphone, all input is done via the screen using either the landscape keyboard, portrait keyboard, or voice.

By default, the keyboard is set up to use the Swype input system. This works very well, and after using it with various Android OS and Symbian devices I’m finding it very easy to use for all but the most complicated of words.

The landscape keyboard is well spaced and easy to deal with for most input needs, but I find that it takes a lot of the screen real estate and I only use it when I needed longer phrases, or when Swype in portrait mode was becoming cumbersome in longer SMS/IM sessions.

Other Buttons and Controls
The main buttons below the screen (Menu, Home, Back, and Search) respond nearly instantly to the touch, and nicely fade into the background when not in use. When touching them, the haptic feedback feels like a buzzing button.

Looking around the Fascinate,there’s the micro-USB and 3.5 mm headset jack at the top, and a toggle button on the left side for volume controls.

The power/lock button sits on the right side, but it sits a bit lower on the device than the other Galaxy S models and takes some getting used to in respect to placing my finger at the right spot to activate it.

The rear of the Fascinate is literally a single, hard plastic battery cover with a cutout for the 5-megapixel camera and its LED flash. Under the battery cover is a 1500 mAh battery and the removable microSDHC memory card (16 GB cardincluded with device).

As with the other Galaxy S models, there’s no camera button, but I would assume that for most people that this won’t present too much of a problem unless the picture is something that you’d like to take quickly.

PERFORMANCE

The Samsung Fascinate runs Google Android OS, a powerfuloperating system that is good for both consumers and business users. This model currently has OS 2.1, not the latest version, but an upgrade is in development. This will allow this smartphone to use websites with Adobe Flash content.

It features a very speedy and efficient 1 GHz processor. It was up to just about every task that I threw at it, and performed quite well. And unlike the other Galaxy S devices, I didn’t notice nearly the amount of heat coming from the rear of the device (near the battery) during high intensity operations such as watching longer video clips or web browsing.

While I’ve been using this device, Verizon released a system software update which brought a welcome uptake in performance.

There is about 2 GB of space internally bolstered by an included 16 GB microSD/SDHC card, which so far seems like more than enough space given how well Android works with many online services. Any issues with managing content are easily addressed with included software, and what I can’t manage (outside of Adobe Flash content) can be addressed easily through the Android Market.

Wireless/Call Quality
My travels with the Fascinate took me through Las Vegas, Atlanta, and metro and rural North Carolina. At no time did I have any issues with thedevice holding a signal or providing anything less than superb coverage.

Itdid seem to suffer from an issue that crops up whenI wason the speaker phone and the volume is maxed out –the sound would go in between sounding clear and being garbled. Afterusing thisas well asthe other Galaxy S devices, it’s probably safe to assume that pushing volume levels is probably not a great thing.

This isn’t a bad thing, as most of the time you can hear callers nice and clear unless there’s a large amount of background noise and you aren’t using a headset. With my Jawbone Prime, I was able to hear people better, but usually had to have the volume a bit higher than normal for outsidewhen inlouder settings.

Similar to other Android OSdevices, you can connect to your Google, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts to get an aggregate view of contacts stored in all these services. You can merge contacts between these on the device for easier management.

Just keep in mind, this isn’t one of Verizon’s worldphones, so you won’t be able to do much globetrotting with it,

The Fascinate includes Skype Mobile, which allows you to make calls over a data connection. This appdoesn’t integrate with the device’s Contact book, but is able to be initialized and runs easily in the background. Calls with Skype Mobile over 3G were mostly clear but there was occasionally choppy sound from either end, usually as a resultof me trying to do something elseon the device while on a call. Be aware, Skype Mobile doesn’t support video calling.

User Interface
This Samsung smartphonehas seven homescreens which can be customized with widgets, shortcuts, or themes to your liking. Out of the box, five of the screens have some kind of widget on them, such as a Buddy widget, shortcuts to Bing, the Bing search box, VZ Navigator, and a Daily Briefing widget which shows weather, finance, and AP News.

An enhancement made during the major system update to the Fascinate is the addition of a few more icons and a My Verizon Account manager app to deal with your account billing, usage, and other statistics.

Also similar to other Android devices is an Applications view which shows three screens of apps (default, there can be more.

The Android Market is available for downloading additional software. And similar to many devices today, there’s a carrier-branded tab featuring top picks by Verizon. Many of these are free apps, and produced by Verizon.

The system update featureis handled a bit different than other Google Android devices. Instead of seeing the normal Android system update screen, there’s a module called InnoPath ActiveCare that checks and manages the system update process. There doesn’t seem to be anything different here than stock updating, so again, it’s an addition, butI’m not clear of its relevance.

Communications
The Samsung Fascinate supports SMS, MMS, and email messaging methods. There’s a generic email app, in addition to the Gmail application that virtually all Android OS devices come with.

The SMS application is able to do threaded messages within the texting window. — whichallows you to see the entire back-and-forth conversation. You can also compose text messages with your voice using the built in speech-to-text engine. Outside of punctuation, I found it much simpler sometimes to speak a text than to type it.

Managing your address book is done through the Contacts application. Here, the Fascinate pulls information from your Google Address book — which might include both those people you’ve saved there and allthose persons you’ve messaged with any Google products. You can merge up to five contacts, which is helpful. Unfortunately, that merging doesn’t reflect back on the Google service, so if you ever need to replace your device, you will need to redo the contact merging. Contact cards include address and contact information, and can be linked to various social networking services such as Twitter, and even linked to media such as photos and music.

The My Verizon Mobile Account Manager program allows you to handle your entire device and service needs without calling/messaging customer service and is not only well put together, but very handy. From editing your account features, to monitoring your voice, messaging, and data usage rates, its pretty slick and many other mobile devices could use such a service add-on.

Entertainment
The Fascinate is a more than competent device when it comes to browsing, mapping and multimedia. General performance is snappy, and, despite some turning of things towards Bing, the overall experience isn’t disjointed for most uses.

The web browser is the stock Android OS variety, based on the Webkit engine. Browsing over Wi-Fi or Verizon’s 3G network is fairly speedy. I didn’t notice any issues with slow-downs on any of the sites that are heavier with JavaScript, which might point to some tuning of this versus the other Galaxy S devices. Because this Samsung model doesn’t yet have Android OS 2.2, its browser doesn’t yet support Adobe Flash.

Instead of Google Maps, the Fascinate uses VZ Navigator. On the Fascinate this uses the Bing search engine to optimize and display results as you navigate local areas. There are two aspects to VZ Navigator: VZ Navigator Maps (free) and VZ Navigator. The latter supplies maps, turn-by-turn directions, 3D navigation, and traffic, and can use speech input to find locations and places on a subscription basis (monthly, weekly, and day pass options).

Compared to the (free) Google Maps offering on other Android OS devices, I didn’t find VZ Navigator particularly compelling for navigation, but it came in handy for quickly finding events and places of interest. Most folks might be fine with the VZ Navigator Maps option which is free, and then using the day pass option for vacation or holiday traveling.

Thankfully, the music player doesn’t come with those subscription-led surprises.It showed a nice ability to scan about 2 GB of music on my microSD card in less than 2 minutes. There’s no Internet Radio feature, but applications such as Pandora or Amazon Music can be downloaded from the to play and purchase music easily from the device.

Productivity:
The Fascinateis bundledwith ThinkFree Office for viewing and managing documents. It is simply a viewer but skillfully handles Word, Excel,PowerPoint, and PDFdocuments. It also includes an ability to connect to ThinkFree’s Online document service which allows you to view/manage documents saved on its servers rather than on the device.

For simpler documents there’s the Memos application to take notes, but also included is the well-designed Write & Go application.This can not just play the role of a notepad, but can send messages via SMS or Twitter.

Calendaring is handled by the default Android OS calendar, which syncs simply to your Google account’s online calendar.

Tasks aren’t handled well, but I found that aspect easier to handle with a third-party application.

Camera
The Fascinate’s 5-megapixel camera is a bit of a mixed bag. Similar to the Captivate (AT&T) and Vibrant (T-Mobile) Galaxy S models, this device doesn’t have a camera shutter/launch button. Navigating though the Android UI can take two to five clicks to get to the app depending on where you are in the system.

However, once there you are presented with the entire screen as the viewfinder and 5 megapixels with a LED flash and auto-focus at your beck and call.

As with most mobile phone cameras, the best pictures come in bright, natural daylight. You can get some solid pics using the LED flash if you have a good rear light source that’s on the warmer side of the spectrum, as the LED tints things blue because of its intensity.

You also have the option to record video in 720p.

Battery Life
The Samsung Fascinate honestly surprised me with its battery life. I was already used to seeing better than normal usage with the Galaxy S models, butthis oneseems to have been tweaked even more. It was only when I pushed the battery with heavy Wi-Fi or video usage that it would not last all of my waking hours (about an 18 hour day).

Normally speaking, I got a clear 2 days of productive use with the Fascinate, with it needing a charge not long before bedtime on the second say. This was definitely better than the other Galaxy S models.

With heavier use, the battery life was closer to what I’ve seen with other smartphones:constant Wi-Fi usage peters out the battery in a little less than 3 hours, while extended 3G usage (or at least using many applications that use 3G) put the battery at a state where you’d need to charge it by mid/late evening times.

Most people should not have any issues whatsoever with the battery life of the Fascinate, and should in fact will be surprised without resorting to traditional battery-saving techniques.

CONCLUSION

When I initially powered up the SamsungFascinate, I expected that this would be very similar to its sister models, T-Mobile’s Vibrant and AT&T’s Captivate.I was mistaken. The deck of Verizon applications, the impressive battery life, and lack of issues with heat leads me to believe that Verizon might have done best to wait so long to bring their variant to market.

And at the same time, it’s possible that Verizon has gone too far with some ofits modifications. I don’t so much mind seeing Bing — it works, but not always as accurately as Google.

I do think that taking away Google Maps for VZ Navigator was a bit of a power grab on Verizon’s end. This is something they can do — it just seems like an area they could have left alone, or worked towards selling to users differently.

I would have no qualms in recommending the Fascinate to anyone who is interested in a Galaxy S device, prefers something that looks like an iPhone, but wants the service quality of Verizon.

Thisis nevertheless a solid model for users who are used to the type of “put together” products that Verizon offers.

Pros

• Screen has great color saturation
• Very responsive performance
• Impressive battery life

Cons:

• Dimmer screen than other Galaxy S models
• Subscription-based GPS/mapping application
• Overly intense camera flash