Many people have heard of the Samsung Instinct being called the “iPhone killer”, but I do not believe that to be so. The Instinct is on the Sprint network and costs $129.99 after a $220 instant savings then a $100 mail-in rebate, and Sprint offers their Simply Everything Plan with unlimited everything for $99.99.

The instinct is the first Sprint phone to launch with EV-DO Rev. A, which is Sprint’s 3G network.  It has a candy bar design that weighs 4.4 ounces and comes in basic black, and also comes with two batteries and a standalone battery charger for the second battery.

This phone is loaded with features:

Camera/Camcorder

It has a 2 megapixel camera/camcorder, which could be better. The camera has no flash, no zoom, and I found if I try to take a picture in a low lit area I get a fuzzy picture warning.  Also with the camera you can’t adjust any of the settings which is a big set back. The camcorder also lacks editing options but does record sound along with the videos which you can send to your friends with multimedia messaging. The only thing is that the video can only be 30 seconds long. The phone only has 32MB of internal memory, but has an micro SD card slot which can hold up to 8GB. The phone does come with a 2GB card out of the box.

Menus

The home screen on the phone is a favorites menu that is fully customizable with the menus you use the most. The Next menu on the phone is the main and it has the icons for the email, text and video messaging, and navigation. It also has a fun menu that has your music, TV/Video, and games/apps.  The last menu holds all the web apps like the web browser, and a quick weather and sports shortcut, that is customizable to your local area and your favorite teams. The Instinct does have three hard buttons at the bottom of the phone one being the back button, the home button, and the call button.

Voicemail/Email

The Instinct has visual voicemail very similar to the iPhone’s voicemail, which gives you quick access to the messages you want to listen to without having to listen to all the other messages before it. The email on the phone is nice and supports Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, AIM mail, AOL mail, and mail from Microsoft Exchange 2000, 2003, 2007.

Speech To Action

The Instinct also has speech to action button on the side which can be used to place calls, store voice reminders, and record voice memos. This button can also bring up the weather, news, sports, movies, and traffic in your area.

GPS Navigation

Where the Instinct excels at is its navigation feature. It has voice turn by turn which I found to be very accurate. Also I have found that if I drove off route the reroute is done quickly. Also integrated with the navigation is the ability to find local business using the GPS in the phone. The Navigation also does 2D maps and 3D maps and can give you a local traffic report. Also you can send a friend your location with the share option.

TV/Video/Music

The Instinct has access to Sprint TV and Sprint’s music store which are really nice features, I did find the TV to be a little pixelated and it could not keep up with fast movements very well. The phone does have a 3.5mm headset jack to get better sound quality while watching the videos.

Web Browser

The Samsung Instinct has a full html web browser that is very nice but a little on the slow side. The page looks a little crammed too because of the menus on three sides of the screen. The browser does have the ability to view a page in 1x, 2x and 1/2x.  It also have the ability to drag and drop a blue box over an area you want to see zoomed. The browser is also integrated with Windows Live Search, and to get to that you just click on the magnifying glass in the top right corner. There is also a pan tilt feature with the browser, to use this all you do is push and hold down the camera button and tilt the phone.

App. Store

Sprint also has an app store in the works. Sprint is giving the Java mobile developer that comes up with the best app for the phone $20,000 cash and a free membership to the Sprint Professional Developer Program valued at $5,000.

Problems

Sprint did release an update yesterday to fix some of the phone’s minor issues. The Instinct still does have a few issues, the biggest one being that the phone does not have support for MIDP compliant UI, which is the software standard for mobile phones that use java. So what that means is, yes, you can download applications for the phone, but there is no way to bring up the keyboard to enter text into those java applications. Sprint has said that a software update in August will fix this problem. Another big problem is the phone has no instant messenger apps built in, which is a major drawback.

I believe the Instinct to be a great attempt to keep up with the iPhone, but it does have some little bugs that need to be worked out. Sprint says all the issues are in the process of being fixed within the next month or two.