Digital Trends

Samsung Instinct

July 14th, 2008 | by Mike Kobrin

Features and Design

The candybar-style Instinct is only half an inch thick because it doesn't have a physical dial pad or keyboard. It's a little narrower than the iPhone and slightly longer, at 4.6 by 2.2 inches. The 3.1-inch plastic touchscreen is set into a dark gray faceplate framed in a smoky chrome trim. Beneath the screen are touch-sensitive backlit Back, Home, and Phone buttons, and the earpiece is above it.

On the left side are volume buttons and the charge/sync jack; the voice-command and camera buttons and microSD slot are on the right. Along the top are a standard 3.5-mm headphone jack and the power/lock button. The pinhole mic is on the bottom. A 2-megapixel camera with a tiny self-portrait mirror is set into the back cover, which slides off to reveal the battery compartment.

We love the phone's styling and feel -- thanks mostly to the handset's 4.4-ounce weight and the back cover's nonslip coating. The craftsmanship is decent, though our review unit's touchscreen appeared to be coming apart at one corner.

Accessories

The included accessory bundle is a clear tipoff that Samsung has been listening to consumer demands. An extra battery fits inside a little charging pod, which in turn connects to the included wall charger; that eliminates the need to have the phone tethered to an outlet for charging. The phone also comes with a USB cable, a stylus, a leather case, a wired headset, and a generous 2GB SanDisk microSD card.

Interface

The screen unlocks when you hold the power/lock button for a second or so. The pressure-sensitive touchscreen is very responsive to fingers, nails, and the included stylus, and you can adjust the sensitivity. The phone vibrates when you touch a button or other active screen area, giving the virtual buttons a good tactile feel. Unfortunately the screen doesn't automatically re-orient depending on how you hold it, since there's no accelerometer. And even with the brightness set as high as possible, the screen looks very dim outside on a sunny day.

A virtual QWERTY keyboard pops up for text entry, but only in landscape orientation; when you change it to portrait mode, the keys rearrange alphabetically, which can be awkward. You can also use the handwriting-recognition tool to write notes and messages with your finger or the stylus; it works, but it's slow.

The animated menus are reasonably polished, and they have nice touches like a draggable thumb tab at the side of lists for scrolling by letter. Navigating by swiping and tapping is easy, but we sorely missed the iPhone's "pinch" zoom for pictures and Web sites. The phone is fairly speedy opening applications, previewing images, and registering keypresses, but there's room for improvement.