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The next "competitor" (Samsung Instinct)

tomegun

tomegun

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 29, 2007
350
49
Las Vegas
What does everyone think of the Samsung Instinct?

http://www.nowisgood.com/

I'm currently on Sprint and use a Sprint Touch. While it is a good phone, I like the user experience of the iPhone more. I know the form factor of the Sprint Touch is better than the iPhone, but it just isn't doing it for me. I know it might have more apps available and all that, but the browser sucks and I don't listen to music on it. The Samsung Instinct looks promising, but for someone with two cars with iPod hookups and two Macs, the iPhone is a no-brainer. I'm just in wait and see mode like many others.
 
It doesn't look completely awful but the UI doesn't look too nice. I'm not sure about Sprint, do they bog everything down with their own junk a la Verizon? Plus it says memory is only upgradable to 8GB.

Anyway, I'm with AT&T and I need a phone that works internationally... the iPhone is a no brainer. :D
 
Sprint still has the "ugliest" phones around. There's nothing pretty about this new phone that doesn't get released until June '08? I can remember my summer trips to Hawaii with my ugly Sprint phones and "NO SERVICE" on the island of Kauai, and they billed me for the entire 30 days with no service! Are there only 13 icons? At least that's what I counted. Sprint has a bunch of ground to make up, at least IMHO. :(
 
extraextra said:
Anyway, I'm with AT&T and I need a phone that works internationally... the iPhone is a no brainer. :D
Click to expand...

The iPhone seems like a poor choice for international usage, unless you're okay with paying AT&T international roaming rates, at one or two or more dollars a minute.

Most other GSM phones can use inexpensive rates with local SIMs from the country you visit.
 
kdarling said:
Most other GSM phones can use inexpensive rates with local SIMs from the country you visit.
Click to expand...

Is that true for other locked US phones? My impression was, "No." So since you can unlock the iPhone just like anything else, isn't it a wash? I can take my iPhone to Europe and use local GSM SIMs instead of my US T-Mobile roaming service, can't I?
 
Looks like the next knockoff in a line of many.

I love the term "fast" Internet. Quick, someone tell me what "fast" is! I'm assuming it's some marketing azz too afraid to say "3G." But the iPhone will have 3G this summer most likely, so there's no benefit of that.

The interface looks like a blown-up RAZR. Considering every other mobile is about that *fun* to use, it probably is.

GPS looks to be the only useful feature it might have over the iPhone, but what will that do to battery life?

Live TV...no thanks.
 
its like a iphone clone there are so many companies that are making iphone killers. i mean if the iphone is so bad then how come so many companies are targetting it? so its safe to say the iphone set a bar or level for other cell manufacturers.
the funniest thing is the lg voyager the ui is so dark and boring compared to the iphone atop that the realease at least 2 other phone that are both still targetgin or trying to copy the iphone. what a joke!!!!

the evdo on the voyager is probaly the only good thing.
 
Michael CM1 said:
Quick, someone tell me what "fast" is! I'm assuming it's some marketing azz too afraid to say "3G."
Click to expand...

Well, 3G doesn't really mean anything. It's generally considered a 3G technology, but it's not HSDPA -- it's EVDO (similar to Verizon's EVDO, but with some subtle differences, apparently in its ability to fallback to EDGE-like speeds in places where the full speeds are not available).

As much as I don't like either of the CDMA networks, AFAIK, Sprint's 3G coverage is *much* better than AT&T's, as is Verizon's.
 
mkrishnan said:
Is that true for other locked US phones?
Click to expand...

Yes. You can ask ATT to unlock their other phones for international use. They'll also usually unlock domestically right away if you're a good customer, or after 90 days otherwise.

So since you can unlock the iPhone just like anything else, isn't it a wash? I can take my iPhone to Europe and use local GSM SIMs instead of my US T-Mobile roaming service, can't I?
Click to expand...

Sure, you can, but that doesn't help the users who don't unlock their iPhone.
 
Go iPhone you wont be dissapointed.

I know that this phone is still in the developement stage but the comments arent very tempting from Gizmodo:

Gizmodo said:
Sprint's Instinct is so special the carrier is holding its own super special event. Unfortunately, it hasn't quite finished baking, so the full feature set wasn't entirely ready to go—we had to visit different "stations" to check out each feature individually to keep us from diving too deep. The iPhone-challenging visual voicemail, for instance, ain't quite live. Plus, it locked up when I was messing around with the music store, and needed a hard reset for the more money shot voice command features, which still didn't quite work (or finding a McDonald's is just too much). And the web browser doesn't, um, touch mobile Safari, at least not in its present state.

There's no accelerometer and website viewing is landscape only (conversely, navigation is portrait only). No pinching or pulling, either, you tap a zoom button multiple times to get the level you want. Bleh. It tries to make up for being less dynamic with a mode that lets you pan through a site by moving the phone around, using the camera as the sensor. But, it didn't quite work, at least not for Giz, which loaded painfully slow, despite the 3G connection.
Click to expand...
 
tomegun said:
What does everyone think of the Samsung Instinct?

http://www.nowisgood.com/

I'm currently on Sprint and use a Sprint Touch. While it is a good phone, I like the user experience of the iPhone more. I know the form factor of the Sprint Touch is better than the iPhone, but it just isn't doing it for me. I know it might have more apps available and all that, but the browser sucks and I don't listen to music on it. The Samsung Instinct looks promising, but for someone with two cars with iPod hookups and two Macs, the iPhone is a no-brainer. I'm just in wait and see mode like many others.
Click to expand...

It looks quite good.

The interface could be clunky (someone above posted a link to a video), but to be fair, the user was also trying to operate a video camera at the same time, so it may be a lot smoother than shown.

At the end of the day, this is a Mac website, so I doubt it will get a 'forget the iPhone, I'm getting that!' response here.

I'm looking to get an iPhone in July when my current contract ends, but I have no particular loyalty to Apple if a better phone is on the market.

In the end I'll be objective about it and if B is better than A, I'll buy B. If B turns out not to be the iPhone, then there may even be the chance I'll get it for free on a contract, as opposed to shelling out hundreds plus the cost of the contract.

C
 
mkrishnan said:
Call me when it can sync with a Mac without having to buy PITA add-on software.
Click to expand...


This is my main reason for getting an iPhone in the future. I use my Windows desktop less and less as time goes on - it is a nice machine with dual 20" widescreens.
The iPod feature of the iPhone will be used daily for me and all my music is either purchased through iTunes or ripped to my MBP.

I have Sprint now and I'm not too impressed with EVDO. For one, if the browser sucks it doesn't matter what speed it is. I would rather use my co-worker's iPhone with Edge than my Sprint Touch with EVDO to browse. Yes, Safari is that much better.

I'm not close to the end of my contract so when I switch, and I am switching, I will have to pay $400 for two termination fees and buy two iPhones - my wife wants one too. $400 plus two iPhones is worth it to me, but I might be different than others.

I tried to stay neutral (maybe slanted towards Sprint) when I made this thread and I do the same on the Sprintusers site. But the truth is I'm moving further away from Windows everyday. My wife telecommutes so Windows will always have a place in my home though.
 
tomegun said:
This is my main reason for getting an iPhone in the future.
Click to expand...

I can totally sympathize. I used Sprint for my first two phones, from about 1997 to about 2003. In 2003, I wanted a smartphone that had a camera, could talk to computers and sync a calendar and contacts, had bluetooth, etc, and Sprint really had nothing. So I went to T-Mobile to get a Nokia 3650. It synced out of the box with the iBook I bought later that year. My next phone was a RAZR in 2005; it too synced out of the box, although it had some limitations (e.g. couldn't handle my whole address book because it didn't have enough storage space for contacts).

My next phone was a Blackberry 8700g, last year, which I've used for about eight months. The e-mail is amazing, and for getting things done, it's very practical (the biggest feature I miss, besides mark all as read :p is being able to keyword search e-mail and calendar appointments). But Pocketmac, which came with it for free, stopped working when I upgraded the phone's software. Missing Sync works, but I had to pay for it, and it's a pain in the ass. It creates all kinds of sync conflicts, doesn't handle full day appointments correctly, ...

I used Missing Sync briefly also on WM5 -- I bought an Axim sometime during the time I had my RAZR, but I sold it after a year because I rarely used it. Similar experience with Missing Sync.

And let's not get started with the fact that many of these devices end up needing a firmware reflash at some point, and this can only be done from Windows. :rolleyes: And it can only be done from Windows with admin privileges, for that matter, which means I can just do it on one of the computers at work without making an IT person come down and waste their time installing my software. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

So finally, I decided I'm done. iSync worked, by and large, flawlessly. I'm very happy to be back (for the past two weeks) to using Apple's software (now iTunes) to sync my new iPhone.
 
At the end of the day, all phone lovers will at some point come to the iPhone. No matter what the technical specs of an "iPhone Killer" are or what this network has better, for me its all about the Mac OS. Its untouchable. I think the instinct will be a good phone, but its starting to get old comparing phones to the iPhone and seeing phones horribly fail. I haven't heard anything about or seen one person randomly out with a Voyager as of late. Phones will get hyped as iPhone Killers, sell a few units, and be thankful they had there 10 minutes of fame. When it comes down to it, by the time a real iPhone killer comes out, Steve Jobs will have something new up his sleeve.
 
Ooooooooo. Check this out, on a related topic:

AT&T is going to be using Microsoft Surface interactive tables to demonstrate and sell their phones, starting April 17:

ATT and Microsoft Surface

That article lists the stores where you can see it.

You'll be able to place a demo phone(s) on the table, see what its features are, compare two phones side by side, view interactive coverage maps, and in the future drag and drop ringtones, demo photos, music, etc.
 
as gizmodo says, the ads are missing the point of the iphone
iphone has a few features missing - like gps, video recording etc - but thats not the point
iphone is nice to use, most other phones aren't - which is why its outselling most other phones
 
I laugh right back at my friends or co-workers when they point out to me that their RAZR (or other phones) has MMS, Video Recording, Ability to share media through bluetooth with each other, and some having higher res cameras and some even have the internet.

So I always ask back "Can your phone play 2,000 songs?", "Do you Have Cover Flow?", "Does Your Phone have a 3.5inch Screen for browsing or watching Movies?", "Does Your Internet look Like This?", "Do You Have YouTube on Your Phone?", "Can you scroll through your pictures like this?" and so on and so on......

I think it's funny that people make fun of the iPhone for what it lacks but quickly shut up when they realize what it can do and how easy it is to use. Same thing with this new sprint phone, they are focusing on what it can't do but don't bother to show what it can do next to there own phone and in just three weeks when the new SDK is finally released and for example when we start having the ability to play full multi level games from EA or SEGA, what are they going to have?
 
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