The Samsung Instinct is a touch screen device from Sprint that is positioned to compete with the iPhone. The Instinct is a single black block dominated by the 3.1-inch display on the front, which you use to interact with the interface. Larger than the average phone, it’s still small enough to fit in most pockets. The Instinct is available exclusively from Sprint for $129.99 with a two-year contract and requires you to sign up for a Sprint "Simply Everything" plans.
The touch interface on the Instinct is well organized and responsive. The home screen is organized into four tabs that give you access to favorite features and applications. Dialing a number on the Instinct is a bit slower than average as you have to use the touch screen interface rather than a real keypad. We did notice some instability with the phone; it crashed on us on several occasions.
The Instinct offers you fairly standard organizer features. Unfortunately some of the design decisions for doing things like adding a calendar appointment make the process very slow. The Instinct can interact with an Exchange server to access push email, and it will also synchronize your contacts, but not calendar appointments. You can also use the phone with a wide variety of other email services.
Text messaging on the Instinct uses a threaded interface so SMS messages are organized into conversations. There is also support for picture messaging. The Instinct’s web browser is used in landscape orientation and displays web pages as they would appear on your computer. The browser provides good tools for getting around pages, like an overview mode that allows you to find the content you want and then zoom in.
The music and video software on the Instinct is rather slow to load, but once up gives you a good interface for managing your media. The Instinct will play back AAC, Mp3 and WMA music files and also allows you to purchase and download music directly to your phone via Sprint’s music store.
Also on the Instinct is support for GPS, with good mapping and search software that allows you to get voice guided directions and quickly do local searches. The search feature is integrated with the Instinct's voice command software, so all you have to do is say "Pizza" to find local pizza joints.
The Instinct supports Sprint’s high speed data network for fast web browsing and music downloads. Sprint’s network is widespread in the US so you should be able to access it in most areas. As the Instinct will only run on Sprint’s CDMA network it’s not a good choice for world travelers; it won’t function on GSM networks that are used in most of the world.
Performance
Read the full lab performance results at Wirelessinfo.com.
The Instinct did not perform particularly well in our tests of audio quality. Sound received by the phone was reasonable, but sound sent by the phone showed some serious problems. In particular, others may find your voice exagerrated by the Instinct. Side tone, the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear so you can judge how loud you are speaking, was also very low. This means you may find yourself raising your voice to compensate.
The Instinct sports a two megapixel fixed focus camera that also supports video recording. We found the quality of photos captured by the Instinct to be unimpressive. Photo resolution was very low and colors were extremely innacurate. Video quality was much better, but that comes with the caveat that no cell phone will be able to replace your camcorder. The camera interface is fairly straightforward, but lacked options to adjust things like white balance, which may have helped address some of the problems with color.
The Instinct lasted four hours thirty-eight minutes in our test of call time. This is just about average for a cell phone and should be sufficient for most users. Those who spend a lot of time on the phone may find it a challenge to get through a day, however, especially if you use a lot of the phone's other functions as well. Music playback time was very good at almost fourteen hours, but web browsing time was poor at only three hours.
The Instinct will be compared most often to the Apple iPhone 3G. Although the Instinct does have it beat in some areas - for example, the price is better both up front and over the course of a contract - the iPhone's new support for third party applications gives it a leg up over the Instinct. Compared to other phones, the Instinct fares better, with one of the best touch screen interfaces we've seen on a non-iPhone device and a plethora of features that you will actually use, if only for the fact that you're already paying for them with Sprint's "Simply Everything" plan. If you can't, or simply don't want to, switch to AT&T for an iPhone 3G, the Instinct is a worthy alternative.
