Sprint Instinct - First Thoughts

Michael Gartenberg | June 19, 2008, 05:21 PM

Thanks to Sprint and my colleague Julie Ask, the Sprint Instinctshowed up today. There's been a lot of comparisons with the Instinct and the iPhone but I'm not going to get into that and keep the focus on the Instinct itself.

I spent some time with it this afternoon and it shines. While it's not a productivity phone, it is a great high end media and entertainment phone with some killer features. Some things, like the voice search based on location are fantastic (just say Starbucks and it will tell you where the nearest ones are and how to get to them). Mobile TV works well as does streaming music. I had no problem getting to GMail as well as my Exchange mail (it recognizes OWA but no calendar or contact sync at the moment)

The touchscreen (but not multi-touch) was fast and responsive. Typing is a little awkward as the screen shifts to landscape for all text entry). Camera is blazing fast with near zero shutter lag and very responsive for this class of device. Sound quality was excellent and volume was great,

Overall, this is an impressive effort from Samsung and Sprint and at a $130 price point a great value. It's not an iPhone killer but it is an iPhone alternative that offers some nice features still not seen from Cupertino.

I'd love to see better sync options for PIM stuff (honestly, this is table stakes at this point) and better support for Office files but that's a quibble. This isn't meant to be a Blackberry replacement, it's a high end feature phone with some support for more advanced functions. Overall, if you don't want a more productivity oriented device, definitely worth taking a look and