Washington Post reviews Samsung Instinct: ‘It only looks like an iPhone’
Sunday, July 06, 2008 - 10:08 PM EST
"The popularity of Sprint Nextel's Samsung Instinct -- the company says its first-week sales beat those of all its other broadband-capable phones -- represents a bit of a puzzler," Rob Pegoraro reports for The Washington Post. "Yes, this device bears a resemblance to Apple's iPhone. But the Instinct doesn't come with features to rival those of the iPhone. Nor does its price, $229.99 before a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract, offer a big discount over of Apple's creation."
"Like many phones, the Instinct looks much better than it works," Pegoraro reports.
"The Instinct comes with a long inventory of added capabilities: Web browsing, e-mail, text/picture/video messaging, digital music and video playback, photography and video recording, GPS navigation and so on. But it fumbles most of these more ambitious tasks," Pegoraro reports.
"Start with its on-screen keyboard, which offers neither effective spell-checking nor tactile feedback, ensuring plenty of typos," Pegoraro reports. "The Instinct also doesn't make enough use of its mobile broadband Internet access (limited to Sprint's coverage, as the Instinct lacks a WiFi receiver). Its Web browser struggles as much with full-size sites as the antiquated software on Palm OS phones, taking an irritatingly long time to display some of them. Its e-mail software ignores Web formatting in messages and can't read PDF attachments, one of the most common kinds of files to arrive in a message."
There's more in the full review, "It Only Looks Like an iPhone," here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "John H." for the heads up.]

My instinct is to not get within 100m of this phone.