Philip Berne explains how Samsung and Sprint finally got it right, in our exclusive in-depth Samsung Instinct review.
Review summary of the Samsung Instinct:
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 Perhaps its time to dispense with the Apple iPhone comparisons and simply ask: is this a good phone? To that we answer a resounding yes. True, the Samsung Instinct is so much like the iPhone that the similarities cannot be ignored. But at the end of the day the phone makes great calls, acts as a top-notch Web browser and packs many features that the current iPhone (at time of writing) lacks, like GPS navigation and speech recognition. Best of all, though, this isn't just a copycat, it's a very good phone in its own right, and it was genuinely fun to use. This may be the iPhone's game, but the Instinct has grabbed the ball and is running with it. Release: June 2008. Price: $130.
Pros: Great call quality. Excellent Web browser, with cool browsing features. Great navigation, well-integrated with the rest of the phone's features.
Cons: Not as responsive as it should be. No IM client. Lacks a load of onboard memory. No tethered modem support.
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Full Samsung Instinct Review:
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Design - Very good
The Samsung Instinct is not an Apple iPhone, and it's one of the nicest not an Apple iPhones we've seen. To be frank, the design borrows liberally from Apple's playbook, and the Instinct isn't the first to do so, but on this device the effects actually work, so we're much less bothered. In fact, in many ways the Samsung Instinct has improved on some of Apple's best features, though it doesn't quite achieve the same responsiveness with the touchscreen input. However, the haptic feedback is a winning feature, and we enjoyed the way it ticks off items in a scrolling list, like a big "Price Is Right" wheel ticking by. We liked the quick vibrations for typing and input, and it helped to smooth over the rough surfaces of the slightly unresponsive screen and touch buttons.
Calling - Very good
Above all else, the Samsung Instinct made phone calls that sounded great. Before we jump into the loads and loads of features and pieces of flair, we're pleased to report that calls sounded crisp and clean, with no static or drop-outs in our test period. Reception was a steady three bars in lower Manhattan, which seemed a bit low, but this didn't affect calling, messaging or data, so we didn't let it bother us. We had trouble getting the Sprint Desktop Sync software to work on our pre-release unit, but it should have no trouble synchronizing an Outlook or other popular address book. Unfortunately, Visual Voicemail was also not active on our review unit, but it will be working around the time the phone launches, so we'll have an update about that feature.
Otherwise, the phone makes great use of its all-touch interface. Conference calling was an easy, icon-based process that was intuitive enough for us to connect on our first try. Bluetooth paired easily with all our various and sundry handsfree units. For speech dialing, the Samsung Instinct has some of the most robust software available. In addition to speaker independent voice recognition, the phone also uses Live Search for voice-activated location-based searching. Once you find your spot with live search, it's also easy to dial directly from the app or jump to Sprint Navigator for driving directions.
We haven't been able to give the Samsung Instinct a proper battery test, yet. But, we are happy to find two batteries in the standard retail pack. Not a short-life and an extended, but rather two 1100 mAh batteries, along with an external charger to juice one up while the other is working.
Messaging - Good
The onscreen keyboard is the most important part of a touchscreen phone's messaging experience, and Samsung hasn't completely blown it with the Instinct's onscreen QWERTY. It isn't quite large enough, thanks to the smallish 3-inch screen, and it was easy for our fingers to cover our letter choices as we typed. Instead of auto-correcting misspelled words, the Samsung Instinct uses a sort of spell checker and highlights bad words in red. When you tap the word, you get a selection of choices in a grid menu. It was an interesting and innovative solution to the problem. We're not sure we liked it better, but we imagine some folks might. The Instinct also has handwriting recognition built in, but we had serious problems. The handwriting software never recognized our "W," no matter how it was written, which hurt when trying to enter in our site name.
The Samsung Instinct has great SMS and MMS messaging, but lacks any instant messaging clients, which seems to be borrowing a page from the wrong chapter of Apple's playbook. The e-mail app is well designed and very clean looking, but it lacks html viewing capabilities. Still, it loaded our Gmail account quickly and was ready to report new messages when they arrived.
Multimedia - Very good
Sprint has done a nice job updating their music and media transfer software for the Samsung Instinct, and we found it to be quite simple and easy to use. It wasn't as responsive and quick as Apple's iTunes suite, but it is one of the better pieces of carrier-supplied software we've used in a while. Similar to Windows Media (though a bit simpler), it was easy to find and synchronize pictures, music and movie files to the 2GB microSD card that comes packed in the retail box. Once our music was on the phone, we had fun with the music player, which was nice and responsive to touch input for shuttling through songs. The Instinct handles scrolling well, for instance scrolling through long lists of songs and artist names. It isn't as flick-responsive as the iPhone, but it does tick off selections with a bit of vibration, and looks superb as the list comes crashing to a stop.
The music store has seen a visual update for the Samsung Instinct and, when paired with the new Sprint Media Manager, made it very easy to transfer downloaded tracks, purchased on the phone, to our PC. The Instinct wisely includes a 3.5mm headphone jack, so all our standard headphones worked fine (no silly adapter necessary!). Sprint TV wasn't working properly during the roll-up to launch, but Sprint promises a larger screen experience. We suspect it won't rival the mobile TV services we're seeing on other carriers, but our favorite way to get movies onto our device has always been sideloading. Too bad Sprint doesn't have a major movie store, then.
Web browsing - Excellent
For a non-smartphone, the Web browser on the Samsung Instinct is excellent, and it packs a few tricks we haven't seen before (or haven't seen performed this well). Most importantly, it did a fine job loading complicated Web pages. Of course, the New York Times defaults to its mobile page for the Instinct browser, but it could handle the real thing, no problem. Not the flash bits, mind you, but that would be too much to expect, right? Scrolling pages by finger wasn't as responsive as we'd like, but the Instinct has a very responsive mini map view, similar to the Symbian S60 browser on the Nokia N95, that gives an overview of the page. With the touchscreen, this mini map was very useful and quick. We also enjoyed the camera-based navigation. While browsing the Web, the camera can act as a sort of floating optical mouse, while the button is held. This was more than a gimmick, and it would have been a very useful tool for browsing, except that the screen had a tendency to dim as we were scrolling long pages. Still, the trick worked much more smoothly than we imagined it would, and we'd like to see it implemented in other aspects of the phone, like the music player or perhaps a game or two.
Navigation - Very good
If the Samsung Instinct simply used Sprint's Navigator app for driving directions, we would have been satisfied, but Samsung and Sprint have gone the extra mile to link the navigation software to other apps as well, notably the address book and Live Search. So, clicking a contact will also bring up directions and a map. It's more difficult to search the contact list from the navigation software, but at least there is more integration than we normally see. Sprint Navigator has gotten a boost from the touchscreen and the fast EV-DO Rev. A networking, a combination that makes the maps quick and easy to use for driving directions. We would have liked geotagging for photos and perhaps a buddy-oriented location-based service, but we're happy with real GPS for a change.
Camera - Mediocre
This is a sort of kick in the pants as we finish this review. For all the great features, including the cool camera panning on the Web browser, Samsung still seems to be skimping on camera lenses, at least for their American phones. The pictures we took with the Samsung Instinct's 2-megapixel sensor were pitiful. They looked washed out with jagged edges and fuzzy details all around. We wish photography was taken more seriously, with touch sensitive focal points and real autofocus, but this isn't the case.
The obvious question
So, how is this phone better than the iPhone, and how is it worse? We could make a federal case out of this question, but here are some striking differences. The Samsung Instinct is not as responsive as the Apple iPhone, and this makes the interface just a bit less fun to us. iTunes is still the best media management software, and the movie experience on the iPhone can't be beat, even by Sprint TV.
The Samsung Instinct comes with two batteries (removable, of course), real GPS navigation and very fast networking, though it can't be used as a tethered modem, which is a real disappointment. It has some cool tricks up its sleeve, like the camera scrolling in the Web browser and better multimedia messaging, as well as a great suite of speech recognition apps.
In a few days, when Apple releases the new version of the iPhone, these comparisons will need rethinking, but for now, with this pre-release unit in our hands and the future iPhone only a rumor, this is our answer to that obvious question.
Price and availability
The Samsung Instinct will be available on June 20 on Sprint, selling for $230. A $100 mail-in rebate is available when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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