Samsung Instinct for Sprint Review

We've covered the hyper-marketed Samsung Instinct since Sprint first announced it in April at the CTIA trade show. The Instinct will be available June 20th, but we received our review unit in advance of the release date. Sprint has been pitching the Instinct hard with TV commercials, movie theater spots and of course on their web site. Pitting the Instinct vs. the iPhone, Sprint has reminded us that the Instinct has key features that the 1st generation iPhone lacks including the ability to send MMS pictures and video, GPS, a removable battery, streaming TV content over EVDO and voice dialing. Yes, 'tis true the Instinct has all these and so far, they've worked extremely well for us. Cool. However, Apple has narrowed the gap somewhat by announcing the second generation iPhone with 3.5G HSDPA and a GPS on June 9th, 2008.

Beyond that, there's more to being an iPhone killer than filling in the missing features. The iPhone has an incredibly cool and easy to use interface that brings "fun" to the phone. Likewise, the recently released touch screen LG Vu on AT&T brings some of that fun to the phone experience-- it's very easy and intuitive, and it has broadcast TV, which adds a special something. The Instinct is by no means hard to use-- in fact, Sprint and Samsung worked hard to make it easy to use because they understand therein lies some of the iPhone's power. The Instinct even has a "Fun" tab. But it takes more than a label on a tab to make something fun and pleasurable to use.

The iPhone and Instinct.

The Samsung Instinct is pleasant to use and we particularly like the Favs tab where you can put your most used applications, web pages and even TV or radio stations as shortcuts. The touch screen with haptic vibration feedback generally works well- it's responsive and accurate. Not as good as the iPhone's, and there's no multi-touch but it's worlds better than the Samsung Glyde for Verizon we recently reviewed, and on par with the LG Voyager (Verizon's fall 2007 attempt at an iPhone killer). The 3.1" screen is huge by phone standards and is fairly bright, though not as color-saturated as the iPhone or Vu.

The interface with its tabs reminds us of the Samsung Glyde, LG Voyager and LG Vu, and in terms of form and function, we'd say the Instinct is more aptly a Voyager competitor than an iPhone competitor. In fact, the fierce comparisons with the iPhone may hurt the Instinct because the iPhone is an impossibly tough adversary with a unique user interface. The Instinct is no iPhone (duh) and while it's generally easy to use, it hasn't found that holy grail of near-perfect usability combined with the iPhone's fun factor.

Sprint will sell the Instinct with a mandatory $69.99 "Everything 450" plan which is Sprint's Simply Everything plan with 450 minutes of talk time rather than unlimited voice. This gets you Sprint's GPS Navigation service, unlimited data, Sprint Music Premier with approximately 50 commercial free radio channels and Sprint TV Premier with approximately 25 TV channels that are served over the data connection (not broadcast TV over the air). If you need more minutes you can go for a higher Simply Everything plan, likely the $99 plan with unlimited voice since the "Everything 900" minute plan isn't a bargain at $89. So the cheapest Sprint plan is $10 more per month than the cheapest 1st generation iPhone plan, but you do get lots of streaming media content and the GPS service. Both AT&T and Sprint's plan include 450 anytime minutes and unlimited data. AT&T's raised the price for the 3G iPhone data plan, making it $69.99 as well, and we're not sure if any navigation service is included.

The combined power/screen lock button and headset jack are up top.

Sprint TV has been enhanced on the Instinct and fills up a large portion of the 240 x 432 pixel display in landscape orientation. Video quality is variable, from fairly sharp and in-sync to blocky, balky, and seriously out of sync, even with 1 bar short of a full signal. Generally, the stronger the signal, the better the video quality on the Instinct, but we found it hard to get a full strength signal unless we were outdoors and the Instinct's display is nearly impossible to view outdoors.

Design and Ergonomics

Like the LG Voyager, the Instinct is large and isn't a lightweight at 4.4 ounces. It's not too wide to be comfy in hand, even for a woman though and we really like the black soft-touch finish on the back, making it one of the few touch screen feature phones that isn't too darned slippery to hold. The Instinct is attractive and looks more chic and high-ticket than the Voyager but not as good as the glass, metal and chrome iPhone.

The entire front surface is covered with highly reflective clear plastic that shows fingerprints and creates glare. The screen is quite hard to see outdoors but looks good indoors as long as you avoid windows and overhead lights which bring out the glare. Fingerprint smudges increase the glare, so keep this baby polished. Three touch controls live below the display: the back button, home button and what looks like a call end key but is actually a phone functions keys: it brings up the phone-related applications at any time with a press. The buttons aren't really buttons, they're touch-sensitive controls and they require a much harder press than the display. The display itself requires a firm touch compared to the iPhone, Palm OS Treo smartphones and Windows Mobile PDA phones. However, you need not beat on it, as we sometimes felt we had to do with the Glyde and it's easier to adjust to the required pressure than the HTC Touch Diamond which requires more finesse.

Like the iPhone and HTC TouchFLO Windows Mobile Pro phones, you can swipe to move through photos and lists, but this isn't a multi-touch display so there's none of the iPhone's pinch. Swiping, tapping and scrolling work well enough, though occasionally we found ourselves accidentally selecting an item in a list we didn't want when finger-scrolling.

The screen automatically locks after a set period of time (you can set the timeout). Unlocking the screen is annoying-- first you must press the power button to wake up the phone, then you must press and hold the power button until the device unlocks. If you don't hold it down long enough the screen turns off again but if you hold it too long the phone doesn't power off, thankfully. We're thrilled that the screen doesn't turn off during a phone call so you can use the on-screen keypad, speaker controls and etc., though this takes a toll on battery life. To hang up a call, you must slide the red end call button on screen; just tapping it doesn't work. To dial a number, select the keypad from the 4-tabbed phone application (the tabs are Speed Dial, Contacts, History and Dialer), tap out your numbers on the large keypad then hit the green window near the top that shows the numbers you've tapped in so far. Kinda weird-- when you first open the dialer that green window says "TALK" with a phone icon beside it; just the kind of thing you'd figure you should press to start the call. Once it shows numbers instead, it's a bit unintuitive.

On the sides, the Instinct has dedicated keys for voice command, the camera and volume (yay!). There's also a Samsung blade-style connector socket for charging/syncing/headphones and an SDHC microSD card slot under a rubber door. Sprint includes both a stereo earbud headset and a 2 gig starter card: very nice! In fact they also include a stylus (though there's no silo on the phone to stash it), a second battery with external charger and a slip case. Good stuff.

The UI and On-screen Keyboard

A picture tells a thousand words, so we'll show you a video of the 4 tab UI rather than describe it. I will say that the UI is very responsive, accurate when it comes to touch and fairly fast. Most everything we wanted on a high end phone is here, except a file manager.