G2 or Vibrant

[bearsfan85]

I am in the market for a new phone and am looking at either the Vibrant of the G2. I have had the G1 and the Behold 2 and Liked both of them. Anyone of from the Community have any suggestions to sway me one way or another.

 

[SamsungVibrant]

Here is my opinion, I own the Vibrant, so my opinion may be biased. With that said, I think you should get the Vibrant.

The Vibrant has a 4" Super Amoled display, with the highest contrast ratio available on any phone. The G2 is only a 3.7" WVGA Super TFT. After using the 4" screen I would never get another phone with anything smaller!

The Vibrant is very light weight, over 2oz lighter than the G2. Then again the G2 is heavier due to the physical keyboard.

The Vibrant has 16GB internal memory, with 2GB external included with Avatar. Vibrant is externally expandable to 32GB, for a total of 48GB. The G2 is only 4GB internal, with 8GB included external.

The Vibrant's screen is the most responsive screen you can purchase on a phone. The Virtual keyboard is a JOY to use! Honestly, I was worried about not having a physical keyboard, but after using the Virtual Keyboard on the 4" screen, I will never go back to a physical keyboard, ever, it is that good!

The Vibrant includes a 1ghz Hummingbird, while the G2 is 800mhz. However, mhz are not a determining factor of performance. Both chips should display similar performance, despite the Vibrant being 200mhz faster.

The Vibrant's PowerVR SGX 540 GPU is still going to be king. The G2 will perform great in graphics, however you must keep in mind it has a smaller screen, this is how the G2 will be able to compete with the powerful sgx540.

Flaws of Vibrant:
No flash, it has a night mode, however the Vibrant is unable to take true night photos, you still need some background light for night mode to function. G2 wins here, because it has a flash.

GPS, the Vibrant, and all Galaxy S phones have GPS problems. Samsung has promised an "optimization" of the GPS, they never promised a fix. Time will tell if these "optimizations" result in a functional and working GPS.

Of course there are other bugs with the Vibrant, such as lag. However, I believe these will be resolved with future updates.

You must also keep in mind, the G2 is not out yet, there are going to be a threads full of bugs and complaints for the G2 also once it comes out.

In conclusion, I will discuss HSPA+.
The Vibrant is not a true HSPA+ device, however the G2 is. The Vibrant however still does benefit from T-Mobiles HSPA+ network, despite it not being a true HSPA+ device. The Vibrant is capable of speeds up to 7 megabits per second. The G2 will give you download speeds of 7+ megabits per second. I say, who cares? Really who cares. Many Vibrant users already average 5mbps. Your G2 may get you 8mbps, again who cares? Ask yourself, is this going to make your email arrive faster? Is it going to make your Pandora music stream faster? Is it going to make youtube videos stream faster? Are you going to notice a difference in the real world on your tiny 4 inch screen between 5mbps and 8mbps. Answer is NO. You probably will notice no real world difference.

I just see no reason to get the G2.

 

[ashykat]

Here's the biggest question: Do you want/need a physical keyboard?

Secondly, even though you can root, install custom roms, and use third party launchers to get rid of the touchwiz experience on the Vibrant, the G2 comes with Vanilla android out of the box.

The G2 is also HSPA+, which could give you some great network speed. That being said, I haven't used the G2, and have used the Vibrant, and I think it's a great phone.

It's all of course going to be up to you, just list what you want out of your phone and find which one will meet those needs the best. The Super AMOLED screen on the Vibrant looks amazing, but the colors tend to be over-saturated in my opinion. Not a big deal to some. Both are most likely great phones, so it's likely you'd be happy with either one. And if you get one and don't like it, exchange it. T-Mobile is great with their return policy. Even if they charge you the restocking fee (sometimes they do sometimes they don't) it's only $10, unlike the $35 from AT&T and Verizon.

 

[justme8800]

The Vibrant's PowerVR SGX 540 GPU is still going to be king. The G2 will perform great in graphics, however you must keep in mind it has a smaller screen, this is how the G2 will be able to compete with the powerful sgx540.

What? No. The Vibrant and the G2 have exactly the same resolution, 480x800. A physically smaller screen just means a higher DPI and a more compact phone. Other than that, most of what you say is indeed helpful.

(Disclaimer; I've pre-ordered the G2)

The G2 is heavier, yes, but that's primarily because of its metal unibody construction, as opposed to the Vibrant's super-light plastic.

The screens are the G2's Super LCD vs the Vibrant's Super AMOLED. The Vibrant looks nicer, with deeper contrast and more vivid colors. However, the Super LCD is reportedly a little sharper (objective) and a lot more power-efficient (up to 5x more, I hear).

The 800mhz Scorpion chipset outperforms the Hummingbird currently, but a fair comparison isn't really possible yet because the Vibrant is still on Android 2.1, while the G2 comes with 2.2. Also, the Vibrant has a GPU, so all told, the two phones are about equal.

The power savings the G2 has from the screen and lower clock speed are partially counteracted by its smaller battery: the G2 has 1300mAh, while the Vibrant has 1500.

Now let's get into the G2's real advantages. The obvious one is the keyboard. The Vibrant has Swype, so it's almost competitive with an actual keyboard for typing words. For typing things that aren't words (code, gaming controls, URLs, app shortcuts, etc.) a physical keyboard is a million times better. The G2's keyboard is supposed to be one of the best there is, too: the unique Z-hinge design means that the keyboard is level with the screen, so there are no "hard-to-reach" top row keys.

Many people seem to not care about the optical trackpad for some reason, but I definitely prefer to not have to obstruct the screen with my huge fat fingers to do mundane tasks like scrolling or selecting. I'm in the minority there, though, it seems.

HSPA+ is not inconsequential by any stretch of the imagination. Current 3G on T-Mobile gets 4mbps up to 7mbps, whereas HSPA+ can get speeds up to 14mbps. You do need to live in or around one of the >50 big cities that T-Mobile has set it up in to see immediate results, but they're wheeling it out to more places all the time.

One last thing to note, the G2 runs vanilla Android, whereas the Vibrant has Touchwiz. Practically, this means that the G2 will get updates as Google/T-Mobile release them, whereas with the Vibrant you need to wait for the updates to go through Samsung. (This is why the Vibrant is still on 2.1). This isn't anything a little hacking and modding won't solve, if you're up for it.

Near as I can tell, most other features (camera, GPS, wifi, neither have noise-celcellation) are the same. So it comes down to:

Vibrant: 33% Lighter weight, larger and brighter/more vivid screen, Swype.

G2: Keyboard and Touchpad, metal construction, HSPA+, more power-efficient, vanilla Android.

You already know which one I chose.

You can compare specs directly here.

 

[kwiley]

There's another difference between the two phones which I see very little mention of on the interwebs. To my understanding, the Vibrant supports video-out while the G2 doesn't, so you can use the Vibrant to play TV shows and movies on your TV (say in a hotel). You'll need an adapter of some sort of course, details I am unaware of.

Just throwing that in the soup.

 

[bearsfan85]

ended up with the Vibrant, got it today, g2 is having some rooting problems so I'm pleased with my choice, thanks for all the input.