Bell launching Samsung Galaxy S Android smartphone soon

What is a ‘Superphone’? A smartphone with a large high-resolution screen, fast (1 GHz +) processor & HD video capture? If so, then the Sony Ericsson X10 on Rogers, a phone sadly hobbled by its out-of-date OS, could be considered Canada’s first Superphone. The Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant would be the second. Announced earlier this year, and released in Europe at the beginning of June, the Galaxy S was announced on June 29th to be coming to Canada with Bell. This was surprising news to us, since usually Canadians have to wait a lot longer for the latest phones to hit our shores.

The Bell launch of the Galaxy S Vibrant is part of Samsung’s larger assault on the North American high-end smartphone (Superphone) market, the crown of which the iPhone 4, HTC Evo, and Droid X are battling over. The same week that the Bell model was announced, Samsung released news of four other Galaxy S phones – the T-Mobile Vibrant, the AT&T Captivate (both of which have been released as of now), the Verizon Fascinate, and the Sprint Epic 4G.

All these phones, including the Bell model, share a similar form factor, except the Epic, which has a slide out keyboard. They all have a 4″ Super AMOLED (800 x 480) screen, 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor, 16GB of internal storage, 5MP Camera with HD capture, Swype keyboard, and run Android 2.1 with Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 UI overlay.

There are however a few small differences in the physical enclosures, and some small additional features – this is where there is some slight confusion.

The Bell Galaxy S Vibrant, in all the pictures and videos released so far, is exactly the same as the European model, which includes a front-facing camera for video calling (and it not called a Vibrant). However the T-Mobile version, also called a Vibrant, omits the front camera and has a different button layout. Why Samsung has decided to call two slightly different models Vibrants is a little confusing!

The two big advantages the Galaxy S phones currently have over other Superphones are what is claimed to best the best phone screen ever, the Super AMOLED screen (which is exclusive to Samsung at the moment), and the fasted GPU of all Android phones. Both these claims have been proven to be true, with benchmarks showing that the Galaxy S GPU bests all other Android phones, and the screen being as good as the iPhone 4G’s much lauded ‘Retina Display’. Samsung has also promised quick upgrade to Android 2.2.

Samsung has also stated that the more Galaxy S models will be coming to other Canadian carriers later this year:

“Canadian consumers can anticipate the release of additional Galaxy S smartphones throughout the rest of 2010.”

The price, and release date, for the Bell Galaxy S Vibrant have not been announced yet, but expect it to be available in the next couple of weeks, probably for $199 on a 3-year contract. To sign up for more info about the Galaxy S from Bell, you can register your interest here.

Official Press release

Engadget’s preview of the European Galaxy S

Samsung Hub’s review of the Galaxy S

A short hands-on from HowardForums.com