Samsung sold more than one million Galaxy S Android smart phones in the U.S., the company announced. In a month and a half, the combined sales of T-Mobile Vibrant and AT&T Captivate topped one million, in a boon for Google Android's fight for supremacy against Apple's iPhone.
AT&T released the phone on August 15, while T-Mobile, the smallest of the major wireless carriers in the U.S., introduced its version of the Galaxy S on July 21. For comparison, the iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million devices in the first weekend of availability.
Samsung employed a multicarrier strategy with the Galaxy S platform. The phone comes in four different flavors for the four U.S. carriers, with slight differences in appearance and functionality. It's called the Vibrant on T-Mobile, Captivate on AT&T, Fascinate on Verizon and Epic 4G on Sprint.
The four phones have the same main characteristics: a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz processor, 5-megapixel camera and WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. A notable difference is with the Sprint Epic 4G, which also has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a front-facing camera. See all the differences between the four versions of the Galaxy S here.
The Samsung Galaxy S phones are shipping with Android 2.1, which is not the latest version of Google's mobile operating system. Android 2.2, dubbed Froyo, brings full Adobe Flash support, mobile hotspot capabilities, and speed improvements, among many other features. Samsung did not give a specific date for the Froyo update for the Galaxy S phones, saying only that support is coming later this year.
The Samsung Galaxy S range phones also received positive reviews. PCWorld's Ginny Mies gave both the Vibrant and the Captivate 4.5 stars, with extra marks for the crisp display and multimedia features. T-Mobile and AT&T sell the Vibrant and Captivate for $199 with a two-year contract, but you can get the Captivate for free with a plan from Amazon, and the Vibrant for $50.
As the Galaxy S ships on more carriers in the coming weeks, expect more good news from Samsung. Sprint's version of the Samsung Galaxy S, the Epic 4G, will be available from August 31, while the Verizon version, the Fascinate, is expected to arrive later this fall (rumored date is September 9).
