quote: Claude S. Ayakawa

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I work with a Mac and I was told, the VIBRANT is compatible with Apple and there will be no problem downloading pictures into the unit with my computer USB but how about downloading music and movies when the VIBRANT does not support iTunes. Is there another way to do it with my Mac without iTunes?

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quote: Bobby Henderson

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When it comes to smart phones isn't iTunes totally exclusive to the iPhone?

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There are a couple pieces of software out there to allow itunes to sync to generic music players, mass storage devices, etc. But they don't work with drm-wrapped files afaik. So I don't see why this wouldn't work with a smart phone.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 07-30-2010, 06:43 PM:
 
Bobby,

When I realized it was not practical to switch to AT& T for a iPhone, I did the next best thing by buying a iPod Touch because it is practically a iPhone without the phone.

The reason I am considering getting a Samsung Vibrant is for the photo display features and it must also be a reliable telephone that I could use just as easily as my current Nokia telephone that has Bluetooth and a fairly decent camera and nothing else. I am not getting it to listen to music because I already have a iPod Touch and a iPod Classic. The photo display feature on the Vibrant is very important to be because it will give me the opportunity to show strangers some example of my work when they realize I am a photographer and curious about the kind f work that I do. I managed to use the iPod touch for exactly that purpose but there have been many times when I did not have the player with me and had to do without it by trying to convince the interested person I do excellent work. Since I never go anywhere without my phone, it will be great if the device will be like a iPhone and allow me to store some of my best work and show them to people on a four inch screen the Samsung Vibrant features.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Matt Johnston (Member # 5457) on 07-30-2010, 07:27 PM:
 
The Vibrant is part of Samsungs new Galaxy S line. Sprint is getting the Epic, AT&T got the Captivate, Verizon got(getting) Fascinate. All are essentially the same phones with minor variational differences.

As far as transferring photos, music, movies, etc. It's easy to do as long as you are "fluent" with computers. You basically just drag and drop it onto the SD card on the phone and access it through the photo/music app on the phone.

I would thoroughly recommend going to AT&T or Verizon and playing with the other versions of the phone and seeing if it's something that you like or not.

For what it's worth, it's an android phone and android isn't as user friendly as the iphone, but once you get used to it you'll imagine how you ever used anything else.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-31-2010, 04:58 PM:
 
I think Samsung has some sort of UI layer on top of the Android OS, similar to the HTC Sense UI for HTC-brand Android phones. HTC Sense is pretty easy to use. Don't know about the Samsung UI, but I hear it's better than a vanilla Android OS UI.

The Samsung Vibrant's AMOLED-based screen is one of its big selling features. Very good color/contrast quality. To be fair, most new smart phones do a very good job of displaying graphics.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-08-2010, 07:03 PM:
 
I finally bought a Samsung Vibrant yesterday from Costco at a a terrific price. The T Mobile store sitlll wants two hundred fifty dollars plus tax up front with a two year renewal. The only good thing about their offer is a mail in $50.00 rebate. Most other stores representing T Mobile including Best Buy are selling the phone for $99.99 plus tax with no rebate. Costco is selling the phone for $150.00 plus the tax for the full price of the phone and the total comes to about $170.00. The best part of Costco's offer is a $100.00 mail in rebate and I got a nice case and a car battery charge for the phone. After the rebate, the out of pocket cost was about $70.00. None of the other stores give you a case and the charger including the T Mobile store.

I originally wanted an iPnone but I have enjoyed the service T Mobile had provided me since 2002 and because of my loyalty, I have a plan that provides me with unlimited minutes for about $40.00 and unlimited wireless internet service for another $40.00. With the wonderful T Mobile service I have been enjoying, it was not worth switching to AT & T for a iPhone. I am glad I had waited because my new Vibrant looks exactly like a iPhone and does everything I think a iPhone does. Loading photographs and music from my iPhoto and iTune library into my new phone was not as difficult as I thought it would be after the young man at Costco who sold me the phone had downloaded some software into my new phone.. All I had to do was to just drag what ever I want downloaded on the phone into the Vibrant Icon on my computer desktop. The only think I now have to learn is how to use some of the other usual applications that came with my phone.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-09-2010, 05:01 PM:
 
I am extremely happy with my Samsung Vibrant except the sound when I listen to music. Compared to the excellent sound I get on my IPod Touch and Classic when I listen to music with my Shure noise canceling headset, the sound from the Vibrant really sucks. I do not know if my phone's sound setting is not set properly or the sound is really that bad. You would think since Samsung went to all the trouble creating a great phone with a lot lot of cool features, they wold make sure the sound will also be fantastic when listening to music with a high quality noise cancelling headset.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-09-2010, 06:21 PM:
 
Check your sound codec and bitrate.

Many sound files obtained through iTunes Store and ripped from CD via iTunes are coded in the AAC format. (Advanced Audio Codec) IIRC, it is supposed to be a lossless format but I think the bitrate can affect quality.

Regardless of the technical details, if your music files are obtained from the iTunes store they might be coded in a format optimized for the iPod. In which case, another non-Apple device might not give optimal playback.

I'm not sure but this is my first thought.

I'm not familiar with the Vibrant but there might be a setting that can be changed but I don't know for sure.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-09-2010, 07:43 PM:
 
Thank you, Randy,

After playing around with my Vibrant phone today, I did find a way to adjust the sound quality. The simple way is to select the type of muisc I listen so I selected Classical. When I did, the sound quality was very good but my two iPods still sound better. I think I will play around with the stereo sound equalizer on the phone tomorrow and perhaps I can get my Vibrant to sound just as good or even better than my iPods.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-10-2010, 07:10 PM:
 
It looks like there is no more interest in this thread anymore but I would just like to sign off on it by saying that I was able to get my new Vibrant to sound better. Not only is the sound better, it is now comparable to my iPod Touch or just slightly better and sounds awesome!. Now that I got the problem solved, it s time to download a lot of my favorite music from iTunes into my new phone

-Claude
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-10-2010, 11:46 PM:
 

quote: Randy Stankey

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Many sound files obtained through iTunes Store and ripped from CD via iTunes are coded in the AAC format. (Advanced Audio Codec) IIRC, it is supposed to be a lossless format but I think the bitrate can affect quality.

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Standard iTunes AAC files are not lossless compressed. They are data lossy. AFAIK, Apple boosted the standard bit rate for iTunes songs from the stupidly puny 128kb/s level to 256kb/s. Nevertheless, that's far from lossless quality. Apple's iTunes does support an Apple Lossless format. I don't know if you can actually buy iTunes songs in a lossless format.
 

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Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 09-10-2010, 11:54 PM:
 
Thanks for reminding me.
 

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Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 09-11-2010, 12:13 PM:
 
A friend of mine was between the I-Phone 4 and Galaxy S Samsung. I am not sure if the Samsung Vibrant is of the same family. I have forced him literary to NOT buy and I-Phone and buy and Android phone for I have an HTC Hero for a year or so and I am very happy with it. The Galaxy S has Amoled display and the video and picture quality of capturing is simply astonishing. Also video playback is excellent. Nice to know you are happy with your choice Claude.
Demetris
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-11-2010, 02:28 PM:
 
Hello Demetris,

Samsung's Galaxy S is a series of four almost identical phones each offered by four different carriers. The VIBRANT model I have is offered by T Mobile. The CAPTIVATE is a AT&T phone. The EPIC is sold by Sprint and the FACINATE is a Verizon phone. Like I said they are all almost identical with a few special features in each of the models.

One of the thing I was concerned about was downloading music and pictures from my iTune and iPhoto library to my new phone and was assured by many people on the web how easy it is if I installed a simple free software on to my Apple computer. I forgot what it is called but I downloaded it from the web and yes, downloading pictures and music on to the Vibrant was very easy and I had no problem at all. In fact it was so easy, it was just as though I was doing the downloads on a Apple device. I am glad I was able to figure a way to get the best sound quality from my Vibrant because it allowed me the opportunity to sit down in the dark in my living room last night listening to some String Quartets by Franz Joseph Haydn with my Shure noise cancelling headsets on my new phone. It was heavenly!

The look and the feel of the Vibrant is exactly like a iPhone but my device is slightly larger and I love the image display of my photographs because that was one of the primary reason I originally wanted a iphone. Even the movie AVATAR on the phone look and sound awesome. Like I just said on another thread, "All good things comes to those who wait" I am glad I did.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 09-11-2010, 06:49 PM:
 
If the Samsung Vibrant is like most Android phones you should be able to connect it to a computer via USB and have it work as an external disk drive. I can see all of the folders on my HTC Evo 4G phone via USB connection to my computer and move files back and forth freely. That's in addition to the Bluetooth and Internet connections. AFAIK, the iPhone doesn't allow such easy file movement.
 

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Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 09-11-2010, 07:12 PM:
 
Bobby, it doesn't unless it's jailbroken and even then it's somewhat complicated to use.

The Samsung looks great Claude but didn't they require you to purchase a data plan to use it?
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-11-2010, 07:52 PM:
 
Mike,

Yes, I had to buy a data plan for about $30.00 a month. I will be paying T Mobile about $135.00 a month including the data plan for my Vibrant, Unlimited wireless internet for my computer and unlimited minutes cel phone usage. Up until now, I have been paying T Mobile about $65.00 for only my cel phone unlimited minute usage and about $70.00 for 5 gb. of wireless internet service to Verizin . I had to go with Verizon because T Mobile was not offering wireless internet service about two years ago but switched to T Mobile about a month ago from Verizon because of a cheaper rate and UNLIMITED internet service when they started to offer the service. Now that I am with T Mobile for all of my wireless service, the total pay out a month will be just about the same as I was paying before.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-12-2010, 06:42 PM:
 
I might have done something stupid! I spent some time happily downloading some more pictures and music into my new phone last night and guess what happened? The pre loaded file of the movie, AVATAR just vanished. I was told by T Mobile, the movie was stored on my memory card and I think they said my music and pictures are stored on the phone itself so adding music and pictures could not have done it. I would like to think the movie was a locked file and to delete it would require a special effort on my part to do it. Al though I have the movie on a Blu-Ray disc and DVD, I think having it on the phone is kind of cool and I want it back. T Mobile had suggested I call Samsung tomorrow and see if they would be willing to replace my memory card with a new one with the movie I hope they will do it.

-Claude
 

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