Bell refers to the Samsung Instinct on their billboard ads as the “apple eater”, a thinly veiled attack on the iPhone 3G being sold by competitor Rogers. My guess is that their confidence comes less from the idea that they have the better phone and more from the assertion that they offer the better deal. You can buy the Instinct with any yearly contract or even no contract at all. They offer an unlimited data plan for a mere $10 per month, cheap compared to other wireless providers. The box includes a 2GB memory card, stocked full of music from BMG Canada. And, at least on paper, the Instinct has the same main features as the iPhone 3G. On the surface it’s easy to see how this might be an attractive offer to anyone who feels they don’t need the latest and greatest, especially if it saves them money.
Once you turn on the Samsung Instinct, it’s a different story as many of the features included with the phone are locked until you pay a set of monthly subscription fees. That’s $8 per month extra to your phone bill if you wish to use Windows Live Instant Messenger or e-mail (Hotmail), another $8 per month to unlock the GPS navigation, $8 monthly again for Live TV and again for video clips, and once again for satellite radio. The 226 “free” songs included on the memory card are also locked and cannot be played or used until you sign up for a $15 monthly music store subscription.
The services included with the iPhone 3G, which include weather reports, stock quotes, Google maps, YouTube videos, e-mail, GPS, are all free, making the Samsung Instinct more of a “wallet eater” than an “apple eater” by comparison.
Design
Like many other touchscreen phones, the Instinct is built around its display. There are a few buttons hidden along the side of its dark gray body for volume, camera, and voice command controls along with a top button to deactivate the screen, but the main functions are controlled through the reflective, touch-sensitive face. The screen is unusual in that it is as tall as the iPhone’s, but very narrow. The idea isn’t to offer a theatrical, widescreen aspect ratio, but instead to allow media modes to include toolbars on the sides, so that the actual video clip, web page, or photograph only takes up the middle of the screen and so is closer in size to a regular cellphone display in use.
Touchscreen Controls
The Instinct’s screen uses pressure controls based on a single finger or stylus which is less responsive and accurate than Apple’s multi-touch, heat-sensitive controls. You can use your finger to scroll up and down through menus, many of which will vibrate roughly in response. The stylus is included in the box should you want to use the handwriting recognition mode in place of a virtual keyboard. It works well although not as fast as typing and the phone itself offers no place to keep the stylus so you’ll need to work out another place for it.
As A Phone
While the reception has been good, I find the sound quality a disappointment. Even listening to my outgoing voice mail message I find the sound muffled compared to other phones.
The Instinct has a nice-sized virtual keypad and a contacts organizer that’s a breeze to keep updated and make both calls and text messages from. Speech-to-Action allows you to use your voice to place calls, send text messages, and launch applications by simply saying their names although it takes awhile to train yourself and the phone to get it right. “Say a command” is a phrase that I find annoying, but I know others have gotten past it.
Text Messaging, E-mail, And Instant Messaging
The virtual keyboard features wide keys that make it very easy to use in landscape view, although the narrow screen means that there isn’t as much space to see your results up above. Writing and sending a message is a breeze.
E-mail is troublesome in that it is designed to handle one e-mail and instant messaging system only. Once I activated Windows Live as my option I couldn’t go back to add another account or choose a different e-mail provider. I can’t remove the accounts without wiping the entire phone. Unfortunately there isn’t a notification system for in-coming messages, it’s up to you to check manually. This is workable for e-mail, but useless with instant messaging, and so hardly worth the $8 monthly subscription fee.
As A Camera
The Instinct has a simple, 2 megapixel camera with a 4x digital zoom. The camera button is placed on the side so you can hold and shoot the phone as you would a regular digital camera. It works both for still photos and video clips (limited by the storage on your memory card) and although there are no editing options, you can directly e-mail or upload your content from the media album. The album features one of the phone’s best effects as you can choose to have your pics and clips displayed as virtual slides and use your fingertip to gently cycle through them.
Browsing The Web
The mobile browser is about as useful as an elevator that is always stuck between floors. Both the right, left, and top sides of the screen are taken up by toolbars, leaving but a small window pane to try to view web pages within. The browser loads pages at their full size, making no effort to fit them to the screen’s resolution, the result is like trying to make out a giant through a keyhole and that’s without the zoom mode activated. You can switch between a “mobile mode” and a “standard mode” which tries to package web pages to better fit them onto the screen, and you can remove at least the right-sided toolbar for a better view, but considering the trouble the browser has just trying to load web pages in any state, most are broken, most load slowly, it doesn’t make a difference which settings you use. It’s appalling.
GPS Navigation
GPS on the Instinct is designed specifically for turn-by-turn driving navigation. You can search the maps for a specific address or service and it will provide driving directions along with colour-coded traffic information through either a 2D or 3D view. Maps are displayed in portrait mode while information is inputted in landscape mode forcing you to constantly flip the phone in your hands as you use it. The screen isn’t bright enough to see clearly from a dashboard, so you’ll need to rely on the digital voice to give you directions. There’s a selection of digital voices including novelty ones you can purchase, but the sound isn’t very loud and may be hard to make out in loud traffic. Although I don’t recommend the feature for day-to-day use, it will certainly work in a pinch when needed.
Playing Media
The Instinct has a standard headphone jack and can store its content on a micro SD card. The phone comes with a 2GB card in the box, but it can accept cards as large as 8GB. Although neither Bell or Samsung offer a list of file formats supported, I’ve played with transferring files over using the phone’s USB connection and it does accept MP3 music files, but not common video files, including the clips offered from Bell’s own Online Video Store.
The push instead is towards Bell’s mobile subscription services which include both live TV broadcasts, downloadable clips, and even full TV shows from HBO. Despite using an EV-DO connection and having a high resolution screen, the clips play with a blocky, pixilated quality, sometimes falling completely apart and the results are rather unsatisfactory. The connection is far more clear with the streams from SIRIUS Satellite Radio.
Data Connection
The Instinct uses high-speed, EV-DO where available and Bell’s slower, core 1X service where not. Bell makes the claim that their data network is the fastest in North America, but the Instinct’s poor ability to load web pages and streaming video make that a hard boast to test with any confidence. The Instinct doesn’t offer Wi-Fi, but in its place can use the Bluetooth 2.0 connection to transfer files and contacts with a computer.
Bell’s website lists the ability of the Instinct to tether via USB to a computer to act as a data modem, but at this time there are no driver files included within Bell’s Mobility Connect software and so it will be a feature added some time in the future.
Third-Party Software
Although Bell’s online store does offer a small selection of downloadable applications, most such as Facebook and YouTube are web apps, meaning that they merely act as short cuts to the websites, not as full programs or interfaces. The full programs come in the form of video games including Scene It?, Sudoku, and Zuma, the last of which works surprisingly well with the touchscreen controls. Bell does have an Application Store in place with categories for Email & Messaging, Health & Lifestyle, Movies, and others, but at this time the store is empty and we’ll have to wait to see what Bell does with it.
Too Many Half Measures
The strength of the Instinct can be found more in its ability to trade text messages than its capability as a smartphone where its poor web browsing, lack of true desktop synchronization, and limited selection of non-subscription-based features make it the handset to avoid and the most unlikely choice for Bell to position against the Apple iPhone 3G.
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