Is Sprint's high-end multimedia phone a deep improvement over the original, or did it just get a facelift? Find out in our Samsung Instinct S30 review.
Review summary of the Samsung Instinct S30:
 |
|
Scoreboard » Features » Side-by-side » Gallery » |
 Like the original, the new Samsung Instinct S30 is supposed to go toe-to-toe with the iPhone as an easier, feature-rich alternative. In some ways, it still holds up. Sprint's 3G network has been faster than AT&T's network in our tests. The Samsung Instinct S30 has great turn-by-turn GPS navigation, a feature the Apple iPhone 3G lacks. But while Apple's device has exploded with extra apps and possibilities, the Samsung Instinct family has remained stagnant, falling behind competition even from Samsung itself on other carriers. The Instinct S30 may look better than its predecessor, but it needed to see improvements in the camera, the music and video player, and even in the messaging apps to remain compelling. We like the Work E-mail app that let us check in with our Microsoft Exchange accounts, but this feature is a nice bonus on the Instinct, while multimedia is much more important. As the top of Sprint's multimedia phone range, the Samsung Instinct S30 is a good phone, but not as good as it easily could have been. Release: April 2009. Price: $130.
Pros: Snazzy interface in an improved body. Good calling features. Exchange support, even for calendars and contacts (kind of). Very good GPS performance.
Cons: No significant improvements to feature set or UI since the last version. Great Opera Web browser is hidden in the menus. Disappointing camera. Lacks any IM options.
| Poor |
Mediocre |
69%
GOOD |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
|
Full Samsung Instinct S30 Review:
|
Design – Very Good
The new Samsung Instinct S30 certainly looks better than its predecessor, the original Samsung Instinct on Sprint. Our review unit had a metallic copper finish around the bezel and the battery cover, and we liked the new color scheme and the smaller form with its compact, rounded corners. The main buttons on the phone's face are unchanged, still a "Call" button, a "Home" button and a "Back" button. We wish these weren't touch buttons. Even with the vibrating haptic feedback, we miss the reassurance of a click from time to time, and these particular keys should be much more responsive than they are. Still, we like the inclusion of a voice dialing button.
The new display looks very nice, but it doesn't really stand out from the crowd of tablet phones on the market, of which, Samsung makes quite a few (to see our comparison, click here). The Samsung Impression, with its OLED touchscreen, still takes the cake. Still, the screen looked good for pictures and Web browsing, and the Instinct S30 was just as responsive as the original Instinct.
The interface on the Samsung Instinct S30 is almost completely unchanged from the original phone, and that's too bad. The original was released shortly before the Apple iPhone 3G was announced, so it's been nearly a year, and we were hoping to see a few improvements. The gimmicks have worn off, and even on non-smartphones, most manufacturers are using flashier and more customizable designs. The phone is still very touch friendly, but its starting to seem a bit sluggish compared to the competition, and it could use a few new tricks up its sleeve.
Calling – Very Good
Calls on our Samsung Instinct S30 review unit sounded very good. We had significant reception trouble, and at times it seemed as though the phone would not be able to complete a call. But this seemed to cause no trouble for the Instinct S30, as even calls with 0-1 bar of service still sounded crisp. Battery life could have been better. The Instinct S30 ships with a smaller battery than its predecessor, and it also comes with only one battery, while the original came with two. We got almost 5.5 hours of talk time out of the Samsung Instinct S30, which was okay, but we've seen better.
We liked the calling interface on the Samsung Instinct S30, but some of the Samsung TouchWIZ phones we've seen do an even better job managing calls, especially conference calls. As we said earlier, we appreciate the dedicated button for voice dialing, and the phone uses a great version of Nuance's speaker-independent voice dialing software. Nuance heard us correctly every time.
For contact management, the Samsung Instinct S30 has a basic online contact sync, so it will store your contacts in case you lose your phone. The phone has a Work E-mail app that can access an Exchange server for an address book. The phone won't synchronize contacts with Exchange, but you can copy a work address book entry to the phone fairly easily, if not en masse. We also like that the Instinct S30 creates a History screen for every contact. Click on the button and you get a list of recent calls as well as text conversations with a contact. It's a well organized and useful feature that makes this feature phone a little more like a smartphone.
Finally, it's worth noting that the Samsung Instinct is Sprint's only visual voicemail phone. The Instinct S30 uses a great visual voicemail app, and its an undoubtedly useful feature. Surprising that neither Sprint nor AT&T have spread this feature beyond a single device family. Only Verizon Wireless has started bundling the service on numerous phones, but on The Network it costs a premium.
Messaging - Good
The Samsung Instinct S30 has surprisingly robust messaging capabilities, albeit with a glaring omission. We wish the keyboard had been improved since the original Instinct. The keys themselves were average for a tablet phone, with an auto-correct feature to help us if we missed. Auto-correct wasn't perfect, but it's certainly a necessary feature on a software keyboard. There's also no accelerometer help for the keyboard. If you turn the phone to the side, you get a sideways keyboard until you press the onscreen button to cycle through keyboard layouts. These include a landscape keyboard, a very silly alphabetic keyboard for portrait mode, and handwriting recognition.
Text messaging is threaded on the Samsung Instinct S30, which made conversations show up like instant messaging chats. This was helpful, especially since the Samsung Instinct S30 had no instant messaging apps to speak of. This was an omission on the first Instinct as well, and we're surprised to find no support for IM chatting on this phone.
For e-mail, however, the Samsung Instinct S30 makes up for some lost ground. The phone uses a fine e-mail client, and it was able to check our Gmail account on a regular basis and keep us up to date by including subject headers on the Favorites shortcuts screen. Even better, the phone uses Sprint's Work E-mail app, which is able to access Exchange servers using Outlook Web Access. It wasn't a perfect sync, and the phone doesn't really get all the benefits of a true Microsoft Exchange-capable device, but in a pinch, the Work E-mail app provided access to our work accounts, with contacts and calendar entries at hand as well. Unfortunately, the 25 message limit on our Inbox seriously hurt the apps usefulness, and the inability to access subfolders kept important messages from view. But basic Exchange access is better than none at all.
Multimedia – Very Good
The Samsung Instinct S30 is a strange bird when it comes to multimedia. It's a mix of hits and misses. For music, we liked the music player. It wasn't anything too special, but it did a fine job helping us control our tunes, with great EQ options and some interesting sound effects, and we always appreciate when our album artwork comes through properly. We simply dragged and dropped tracks into the Music folder on the included microSD card. That card is a miss, by the way. The original Instinct came with a 2GB card, but the new Instinct S30 ships with half the memory (even though the slot can handle up to 16GB), for the same price? Seems fishy to us.
Using a standard 3.5mm headphone jack is a hit with us, but sticking with the proprietary Samsung USB cable is a total miss. Sprint did a nice job getting Samsung to adopt microUSB for its Rant and Highnote phones, so why not for Sprint's flagship multimedia device?
For video, we were disappointed with the Samsung Instinct S30. First, we loaded our test videos in a variety of resolution choices. At 240 by 432 pixels, the resolution of the Instinct, our video wouldn't play. QVGA clips played with no problem, but looked blocky and posterized on the Instinct S30's screen. Also, the video player lacks many onscreen options to help control and adjust playback. We also fired up Sprint TV, and were equally disappointed with the streaming video experience. Perhaps our poor reception was part of the problem, but the streaming clips still looked jerky and pixilated. Audio would start and stop during the program, and was usually slightly out of sync. This is too bad, considering the phone's super-snappy EV-DO Rev. A networking.
Web browsing - Good
Sprint and Samsung have taken stride to improve the Web browsing experience by handing over surfing duties to a third party, names Opera's Mini browser. Opera Mini is a great tool. It uses a special relationship with a central server to load pages extra quickly. You don't get advanced capabilities like Flash support. Sometimes images didn't load completely, causing us to have to reload. But otherwise, it's a slick browser that loads fast and responds very nicely to touch.
So why is the poor old Samsung Instinct browser still the default? It's impossible to remove from the phone, and in fact most of the preset Web links, like the download links for new apps, use the older Web browser instead. Sprint clearly wants buyers to notice Opera Mini, after all, it is featured on the retail box for this phone. So we're confused as to why Opera is hidden so deep in the phone, and why the inferior Web browser is so prominent.
Usually we don't miss Wi-Fi too much on a 3G phone, but we had some reception trouble with the Samsung Instinct S30, so we occasionally found ourselves wishing we could just hop on our home network. When the signal was strong, we never missed the extra radio, and the phone was good at roaming for data, but sometimes we missed the option.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera on the Samsung Instinct S30 is a real disappointment, especially when we consider the shooters on other recent Samsung models. We weren't expecting the massive 8-megapixels from the Samsung Memoir, but how about the 5-megapixel auto focus lens on the Samsung Behold? Instead, the Instinct S30 keeps the 2-megapixel sensor from the original Instinct. Beyond megapixels, the camera also lacks many features or options. Samsung seems to have taken a page out of Apple's book and the camera has only one or two onscreen buttons, but the user has no control over white balance or color features, and there are no panorama or scene modes available.
Images taken on the Samsung Instinct S30's camera were mediocre. Colors looked okay, though occasionally some pics were overtaken by a bluish tint. Details were fairly muddy, but at 2-megapixels you can hardly zoom in close enough to notice. Overall, pictures were pleasant, good for mobile use, but not good enough for desktop wallpapers and certainly not for printing.
Saucer Magnolia
Magnolia and Forsythia
Livingston Rd
Self Portrait
Navigation – Very Good
GPS Navigation, using Sprint Navigator, was a standout feature on the Samsung Instinct S30. The phone gets one of the better implementations of Sprint Navigator we've seen, and it was surprisingly useful and responsive. Maps would scroll neatly under our fingers, and the multiple views were easy to access and understand with the tabbed interface. The GPS sensor found us quickly and followed us smoothly, loading maps in a hurry over the phones 3G EV-DO Rev. A network. This phone has quickly jumped to the head of Sprint's GPS-enabled devices, and its one of the better GPS phones we've used.
Price and availability
The Samsung Instinct S30 is available now from Sprint for $130 with a contract agreement.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive