How's your Instinct?
Tell us about your Samsung Instinct.
(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)Owners of the Samsung Instinct, I want to hear from you. Though the iPhone rival was one of the hottest cell phones of the summer, its successes and shortcomings haven't received quite as much attention as Apple's device. Similarly, while I see tens of iPhone users every day, I've seen nearly as many Instincts in the wild.
The first time I saw an Instinct owner using his device in public, I had to ask him what he thought of his phone. He responded that while there were certain things he really loved about it, there were also things he really hated. He loved the call quality, the design, the interface, and the general features, but he hated the Web browser and the lack of wireless Outlook calendar syncing.
In the last few weeks, I've received a few e-mails from Instinct owners voicing similar complaints. Personally, I liked the Instinct when I reviewed it, but my experience will be different from a long-term user.
One user complained about the lack of LUDCI keyboard, which makes the phone not Java-standards compliant. Also, it makes it a bit tricky to run third-party applications. Sprint, however, is aiming to add a LCDUI keyboard by the end of the year or sooner.
So I ask you Instinct owners, do you like your phone? What are the high points, and what are the low points. Spill your dirt, for I'm all ears.
Kent German is a senior editor for cell phone reviews at CNET. When he's not testing the newest handsets on the market, he's blogging about cell phone news for Crave. In his On Call column, he answers reader questions and gives his take on the rapidly changing mobile industry. E-mail Kent. 
The features on the instinct are put together in a very intuitive way. From the contact manager to texting the instinct feels natural to use. Call quality has been great, and the virtual keyboard works well. The itouch keyboard is far superior to the instinct, but the instincts attempt still works better than most.
Third party apps for the instinct are what you would expect: very weak. The games/applications just do not have the same wow factor as apps for the iTouch, but again they work better than most.
I have enjoyed the instinct greatly, and often refer to it as the best phone I have ever owned. It has the wow factor, works great, and is cheap as hell. However, if I was not locked into a Sprint contract I would chose the iPhone each and every time. There is simply no comparison.
Nice work Sprint. If the iPhone did not exist you would have created the best phone available to the US market.
1.) At this moment, the phone is NOT Java-compliant. No Java app that utilizes a keyboard will work with the phone. Sprint has promised a patch that will make the keyboard work with Java. However, they consider the patch a "planned enhancement" as opposed to a fix for a serious problem...which irks me. It is an illegal violation o their agreement with Sun Microsystems for Sprint to release a phone with Java that is not Java compliant. In the past week, a post has surfaced in the Sprint forums that a LCDUI patch is indeed now being worked on and may be released as early as late October. I believe the timing to be deliberate on Sprint's part. I believe Sprint deliberately withheld the patch to increase interest in the Instinct Developer Contest which just wrapped up a week or two ago. I believe they want to force customers to buy Instinct-specific applications created by the contest instead of allowing us to choose from the plethora of free Java apps already on the market.
2.) As you noted in your review, the web browser in ATROCIOUS. Rendering takes forever, and scrolling of any kind is choppy as all get out. And even then, many simple html sites don't render properly. Ironically, the phone can't even render Sprint's Buzz About Wireless Forums properly. Of course, with no LCDUI keyboard, the Opera Mini browser is not an option, so for the time being, we're stuck with this terrible browser.
3.) The music player's troubles begin before you even get to the phone. It is well-documented in the forums that the Sprint Media Manager that comes bundled with the phone will not load properly on many Vista computers. The official Sprint solution is to drag and drop music/videos/pictures as if your phone was a portable disk. Once on the phone, the music player has significant problems reading tags, splitting single albums into random multiple albums with no rhyme or reason. The media player also displays the artist before the title by default, so as you're browsing for music, it's often impossible to know what song you are selecting to play. Additionally, I upgraded my microSD card to 8 Gig and so far have about 4 Gigs of music on it. The music player takes FOREVER to retrieve a list of my music and playlists EVERY TIME I fire it up. It sometimes takes me, no kidding, 10 min to successfully navigate myself to the song I want to listen to. The music player is also prone to random crashes.
Those are my principal complaints. I have others, such as the spotty quality of SprintTV and the frequent crashes (mine crashes and resets once a day on average, for various reasons). I know others have had a terrible experience with the Navigation, which I don't use much. The whole phone just feels kind of slapped together and rushed to market, particularly in the software and applications department, which, on a phone like this, is EVERYTHING. It's a shame too because as a piece of hardware, I think it has tremendous potential, but right now, I cannot recommend it to my friends. We in the forums often remark that we feel like beta testers, except that we're all paying a minimum of $70 a month for the privilege. Yes this phone does a lot, but it doesn't do any of it particularly well.
Should be an easy win, right?
Wrong.
The instinct is a complete failure as a phone. I'll just go over each major problem I had with it. First being the false advertisement by Sprint. This is NOT a Java 2.0 compliant phone. Meaning all of the thousands of free applications such as Opera Mini simply can't be installed on the phone. There's just no way to bring up the Instinct touch screen keyboard with any 3rd party application unless they're SPECIFICALLY made for the Instinct.
Sprint said this issue would be fixed in August. Then it seems they stated September 1. Then the day later they retracted the Sept 1. Now it's set to enter beta testing in the middle of Oct with a release date of "hopefully" by the end of the year.
So with that, it leaves every Instinct owner with ONLY the default software on the phone and no way to expand it. That means the only web browser to be used is the default browser. And it's complete trash. It locks up at ANY but the simplest web page. And the rendering speed is horrible on the few pages that DO work. Sprint was suppose to update the browser in a patch this week, but that's been pushed back as well.
The MP3 player is very slow. When switching between songs and when it loads up each time it HAS to refresh your song list. Lame.
GPS is the best part of the phone, and even that's horribly inaccurate. Used it to find a bar I was meet a woman at. Ended up being a half hour late when the GPS told me my destination was in front of some random persons house. The next time I had a court date and needed to find the courthouse...once again, GPS failed.
The worst has been Sprint lack of support regarding their phones. The lack of updates. On their forums, www.buzzaboutwireless.com it's swamped with users trying to return their instincts in exchange for WORKING phones. Such as the blackberry's and HTC Touch Diamond.
Voicemail rarely comes through. I've gotten into an argument because someone thought I was doging them when I simply DIDN'T get my voicemail.
The sprint instinct is simply an unfinished phone. It should still be in samsungs labs getting field tested. Instead sprint users are field testing this phone for 70 bucks a month. This phone will impress the novice cell user only. For anyone that's ever used a blackberry or HTC, they'll know exactly what this phone is missing.
Just irritating that sprint could spend 100 million dollars on telling their users to buy the "iphone killer" and not even half of that on post-release software. This is what puts the iphone on a completely different plane than the instinct: Its software. Say what you want about apple "walled garden" but the core functions of the phone work. And when the don't....there's PLENTY of negative press coverage. meaning the issues are FAR more likely to get fixed. The instinct was a waste of money. Glad I terminated my contract with Sprint and sold that phone to cover the ETF. It was garbage. Picked up an iphone and couldn't be happier. I can actually surf web pages when I'm on the train to and from work.
http://www.instinct-samsung.com/index.php/topic,4197.msg33330.html#msg33330
The phone is a hugh disapppointment and even with the fixes implemented continues to have real issues.
All I can say is I'm glad Sprint stopped the Instinct adds in my area because if I had to sit through another one I'd end up with my poorly designed Instinct embedded in the screen of my beautifully designed plasma tv after I threw the Instinct out of frustration.
There is no zoom for the camera! Yet, you can open a picture and zoom in on that picture, but there's no way to save the picture after you've zoomed in on it, so what's the point?
After creating an email account, there is no way of changing most of the settings (incoming, outgoing servers, etc) without actually having to erase the entire account and start over.
The ringer options do not work properly. If you set up a voicemail ringer, it will usually ring the text ringer instead.
The phone syncs with outlook contacts, but not with the calender.
Calendar events are very limited, only allowing a certain amount. When you reach that amount, you have to go back in time and delete past events to make room.
There are so many more little things that Sprint just completely missed. But, the web browser and popup keyboard are the two biggest problems with this phone. And the worst part, Sprint creates a forum on buzzaboutwireless.com and there is absolutely no communication. Every now and then someone from Sprint will post about an update coming out, then the day of the update, they'll say it's pushed back another week, and then another week, and then it comes, but it doesn't fix anything and they will not tell us what the update was for. They've been promising updates since June 30th, and there have been a couple updates, but they have fixed absolutely nothing!
I like the nav and seldome use my garmin anymore. I love the visual voicemail, when they arrive, and the live search is amazing. I type better than on my Mogul or my BB Curve. I can't wait to be able to use a better browser like opera.
Oh yea! As a phone, it works great!!!!
This is a huge story for any media presence to report on. The phone is so faulty, and illegally listed as MIDP 2.0 compliant, that I'm surprised we haven't seen the first lawsuit yet.
1. Browser: Terrible, anyone will confirm that. Browsing Sprint's forums for 5 minutes will confirm that.
2. GPS: Great, when it doesn't freeze your phone.
3. Sprint TV: TERRIBLE, anyone will confirm that. Browsing Sprint's forums for 5 minutes will confirm that.
4. Speakerphone: Don't think about using this phone on Speaker, your voice will cut out and you will annoy everyone you talk to.
5. Music player: NO Cover support, player very basic.
6. Email: Writing long emails is a hassle, auto notification is messed up.
Touch screen and keyboard is nice, but laggy.
If you doubt any of this, read user experiences on the various forums.
Sprint's handling of this phone, the customer service, and their online support has been an INSULT.
I dub thee, Samsung *********. Say it a few times, it's catchy, and appropriate.
Not to mention they made all us UP our plans to a more expensive one (single everything plan), Than after two months they give us a update and take away alot of the popular radio stations and want us to pay mor to subscribe to them.
Sprint is failing on keeping us up to date on what they plan to do, Their own forum is Buzzing with complaints daily. And The mods keep deleting anything negative so it seems everything is all cheesey.
I believe this phone has a lot of potential and some of us are willing to wait, We wish sprint would communicate with us more.
Stop wasting your time to all of these whiners..... MY Instinct has been working perfect since release! These other people are those that RUSHED to get the latest tech or just have not done the research on it. Seriously, this is just like any other tech out there.....if you want to be the first than suffer the consequences.....I am in Greensboro, NC.....my Instinct has worked flawless(including browser and Nav) The Instinct is still fairly new........let Sprint/ Samsung fix the bugs............if not............THAN GO BUY THE iPHONE if you are not happy!!!
Go to the BAW forums on your phone. Try watching Live TV on the thing.
There is a huge difference between stating the obvious and whining. Just because your little experience with the Instink has been positive, I can guarantee you that is not true for the a good portion of Instink users.
They eventually banned me at BAW for "flaming" when all I did was constantly point out all the flaws with the phone.
It's obvious that you have not used your phone completely. If you're sitting there and saying that the browser works flawlessly, you must be only viewing a text only website or nothing at all. The fact that this phone is new and has been promised updates, and sprint left us in the dark about fixing them will not keep me from using this phone. I'm a heavy pocket PC winmo user and I've also used this phone inside and out with failing results that we had to bite our way through sprint reps to give us a decent blackberry phone that just so happens to be Java compliant and fully featured...and working...
2- Browser or Crashwser ? , we are waiting for months and we all know that gonna be full of bugs.
3 -Email: its ok , sometimes receive some unknowns errors.
4- Sprint tv - extremely poor quality
5- Radio - extremely poor quality
6- Music Player - So many problems with the art work, and sound is low.
7- Sprint Music Manager - Doesnt Work on any of my computers.
8- Visual Voice mail - ramdom lag
9- Contacts - Sync without Pictures
10 - Calendar - Doesnt sync
11- Phone support , mail support , http://buzzaboutwireless.com and http://developer.sprint.com - lain to us and tried like ignorant.
12- No MIDP 2.0 java support -
13- Best buy says: " Use the included USB cable or Bluetooth wireless technology to connect to a PC and use the phone as a modem for Internet and e-mail access" , Sprint Says: Instinct doesnt support phone as modem. u will be charge if u do it. they gonna charge something thats the phone is not capable?.........I can demand to bestbuy by deceptive ads???????
all phone have problems but sprint lies to us with supposed updates that never come.
The Samsung Instinct is not the problem , the problems is the lack of support, we dont trust sprint no more. what about samsung company? they do nothing they dont care about his reputation?
I feel like deceived victim, Now i dont need a Update to fix the Instinct bugs. all i need its lawsuit so that I feel violated by two years of contract with sprint.
Obviously, this phone will receive comparisons to the iPhone, since it is Sprint's attempt to come up with a phone comparable to that very device.
Web browser: absolutely useless. It crashes, freezes, etc. Now, Sprint has been promising an upgrade and I really hope one comes out to fix the problems, but for now, absolutely no comparison to iPhone's Safari.
Screen resolution: as for pixels, it sounds as though you would have about the same quality, but the Instinct does not possess the 16 million color capability (forgive me if I'm not accurate on that spec) of iPhone, so viewing any high resolution photos on the Intinct is just a disappointment by comparison. Also, the Instinct has a plastic front, which does not provide the clarity of the aviation glass the iPhone uses.
No accelerometer: that's the neat auto-flip thing the iPhone does when you rotate it from vertical to horizontal and vice versa. Instinct does not have this. There are some options, depending on which program you are using, to flip the screen, but for now they are usually fixed.
operating system: Instinct can be very laggy and even freezes up sometimes just going back and forth through menus too quickly. I have never seen any of my friend's iPhones do this.
Now then, the areas which are better than iPhone, but in no way "kill"
phone: the Instinct is a pretty decent phone and has a little more cell phone qualities than iPhone. the reception is really weird, because it jumps from one to full reception depending on what you are doing, but so far I haven't dropped calls.
GPS: one true GPS chip combined with slick tomtom and shazam! you got a really nice GPS unit which has already saved me a couple times when mapquest didn't give correct directions
Sprint customer service honestly is the WORST. Gawd, I hope someone high-up from Sprint reads this. Sprint, you have got a lot of growing up to do if you think you're going to get away with treating customers the way you do and can remain viable.
Anyways...if you are able, wait another couple months before trying the Instinct. There are weirdos like that brian pellegrini poster who get all razzed when people state honest opinions of this phone.
Perhaps it is from the fact that we are not providing justification for his desire to keep his Instinct and/or he truly isn't thrilled, but is trying to convince himself of such, so he doesn't have to admit Sprint basically screwed him like they every other Instinct owner??
Their commercials show Instinct as the next great multimedia device, but the truth is it can't hardly get on true mobile websites without crashing/freezing.
BUT BUT
A large number of Sprint Instinct users including myself (the user forums are full of upset Instinct users) have had a terrible experience with this phone after the initial few weeks of use.
HERE'S WHY
Sprint Instinct phones have a major memory leak or not enough memory problem causing almost all apps to crash/lockup at some time or the other and the likelihood of Sprint being able to fix this rests with whoever provided the phone's Java Virtual Machine.
It is not known what causes this memory leak problem on some Instinct phones but not on others as you can see some happy users whose phones haven't had the memory leak problem trigger yet.
WHAT HAPPENS
If you are one of the unlucky hundreds (maybe thousands or hundreds of thousands) of Sprint Instinct users whose phones occasionally lock up or stop responding for a few seconds to few minutes, you have probably triggered the memory leak conditions on your phone.
SYMPTOMS OF MEMORY LEAK RELATED ISSUES
- Your Instinct browser crashes on a number of websites and takes you to the phone home screen/speed dial menu.
- Your GPS Navigation app locks up for a while while you are driving and sometimes crashes to go to the home screen/speed dial
- Your text messaging application crashes sometimes while you are typing
- Your TV app crashes after watching TV for a few minutes and takes you to the speed dial screen.
- Other apps crash and take you to the speed dial/home screen
- Your phone sometimes just stops responding for a few minutes. This can be resolved by just leaving the phone unused for a few minutes or by taking the battery out.
SOLUTION
Difficult for Sprint to solve it because the memory leak problem lies in phone's Java Virtual Machine or brew firmware. This can be minimized by optimizing the apps very well but probably not cured until the JVM or firmware is fixed. Or maybe the phone just doesn't have enough memory or poor quality memory.
Basically Sprint didn't get what it was promised by the phone manufacturer and software (Brew or JVM vendor) supplier.
OTHER PROBLEMS WITH THE INSTINCT PHONE
- Frequent email connectivity errors (dependent on third party email software vendor reliability issues)
- Occasional memory card not found errors (solved by taking the MicroSD card out and plugging back in)
- Visual Voicemail not reliable (probably dependent on app vendor servers)
- Very Limited space for calendar appointments, text notes.
RECOMMENDATION
AVOID the Sprint Instinct phone if you don't want to risk being one of the ones with phone memory leak problems. Get a Sprint HTC Touch diamond or Sprint Blackberry curve instead and you will be a much happy user.
PHONE STRENGTHS
Ease of use and intuitive interface when not plagued by app crash and locking issues. If all apps actually worked on "all" Instinct phones reliably, it would have been a much better phone but still not as good as iPhone 3G or HTC Touch HD or Samsung Omnia.
WHY ARE THE PROBLEMS NOT BIG NEWS YET
Because Sprint developer and user forums have had many messages from Sprint employees that they are working on fixing these issues and people have been patient only to realize that after almost 3-months of phone release, Sprint hasn't been able to really fix these core memory leak issues (causing app crash and phone locking up). Now people are beginning to speak up and contact the press because their patience is starting to run out!
But the mp3 player was awesome, the touchscreen was very responsibe, there was very little to no lag time, the gps was great, the search feature was awesome, it worked well as a phone. It feels great in the hand, the internet is not as good as the iphone, but it's good for a phone. Until the most recent update, it would lock up on certain sites. Having the extra battery is great also!
If the calendar would have worked, I would be keeping my Instinct, because it is a great touchscreen phone.
1. Browser crashes on most sites (desktop and mobile versions)
2. Browser will not log in to many sites like ebay.
4. Visual Voice mail does not work at times. The phone does not have any indicator for Voice Mail other then the Visual VM. So if Visual VM is not working you will not ever get your message unless you call your VM. Problem is you don't know when to call since there is no indicator. In short many people miss voice mail messages.
5. During texting keybord likes to freeze.
6. In Sprint store tried comparing my Instinct TV to BB Curve TV. BB is sharp and clear, Instinct is full 30 sec behind (live feed) then BB, choppy and fuzzy. Same result when tested against the Motorola Razer. This is side by side comparison.
7. Calendar besides no sink it is very limited in space of something like 30 entries period. Be it next day or 2 years from now. Also one has to find old entries to delete before new ones can be added.
8. Text Notes (no voice notes) limited to 9 total.
(by the way item 7 and 8 limits are not depended on the memory card, everything is stored in phones memory ONLY).
9. Calculator - 2 digit precision - trying to get a percentage of something like 2/1000 get answer ZERO
10. Music, at least that reads from the memory card. Every time it starts has to scan through the card with a gig of songs will take up to a minute to get your list (and you can't bypass it). None of the albums are organized properly, Album art has to be inserted into a song for every song, since it does not work for the full album. Plays nice though - sound is god as well.
11.Java compliance that is listed on the phone - NOT. Keyboard does not work with any Java app. So there is basically no apps to use with phone, and Sprint is waiting for their app contest to finish. That is their only plan (it seems) to bring new apps to the phone. Promises for fixes are next month with migration to the next month every month. Latest news is maybe this year.
12. News, Weather, Email - almost never update by themselves. When going to these screens the last update time could be yesterday or 5 hours ago... One has to hit the refresh button 90% of the time to get data thats current. Yes 10% of the time data is update. When data is very old the phone at times starts the update when you open up News, but then you end up waiting for it as well.
13. Bluetooth - Sound is not loud enough, yet it is fine on other phones.
14. When using phone with Bluetooth you CAN NOT lock the display, thus if its in your pocket (its a touch screen remember) it will put you on mute, or try calling another contact ... so you have to take it out and hold it. Whats the point of having BT then ?
----------
Good
---------
1.Hardware is great, potential is great, software and support are the worst !
2.Screen responds fast.
3.Wwhen using phone as a modem ($15 extra on the everything plan) the internet speed is blazingly fast (not so on the native Instinct browser).
4.Ability to store and play back DivX MP4 movies is great. And the sharpens of these movies is good as well.
5.Having a regular audio jack is nice.
6. Memory card and extra battery also are great.
---------------
Most frustrating thing about the phone
--------------
Absolutely no support from Sprint. On their buzz forum they are constantly moving peoples posts to the Rant section or deleting them. Sprint never commits to fixing a problem, nor let users know what issues they are working on. Out of 5 "upgrades" that got announced 1 was a downgrade from an upgrade (when the upgrade started locking the phone). 1 Actually made it and works: Receiving phone calls while sing data services on the phone (It was a hidden parameter, that people knew about anyways so not much of a fix). The rest never made it and are still getting delayed and moved out.
Yet on daily basis Sprint is bombarding customers with their web,tv adds on th Instinct, as well as direct mail that keeps comparing the phone to iPhone. Nothing is done to step up to the plate and promise customers fixes and give them a time line.
SPRINT YOU REALLY FAILED ON THIS ONE!
I have had 4 and all have done the same thing resets browser not working email not working the microbrew word typed during texting resets the phone. phone calls go to voice mail but voicemail doesn't work so message played to the caller is circuits are buys crap and i can go to craigslist one day all day but then the next it freezes my phone just like this site and i could go on but im getting a headache .
sprint your getting loyal customers pissed.
My second big complaint is that the transfer of contact data stopped flat at 600 entries when I had over 900 on my generations' old Palm phonebook.
Third, the contacts app is barely a fraction as useful as the Palm OS equivalent. I used to be able to search for a name, any name, and it would find a whole selection of choices quickly. The Instinct insists that I scroll through like a virtual Rolodex as if textual search technology had not yet been invented.
Lastly, the scratches on the screen are constantly mocking me, "You should have bought an iPhone"
But, I didn't return it because I love these things: the haptic touch feedback; the way it supports my Gmail account; I actually do like Sprint and my Simply Everything plan; and replaceable battery vs
iPhone.
- by kkshadow September 19, 2008 9:26 PM PDT
- I've had the Instinct since the first week it was introduced. Overall, good and fun, and to me not nearly so bad as some others feel. We all do and expect different things.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 5 pages (117 Comments)1) as a phone - well it is a phone - A- Service in and out of roaming is excellent (no roaming charges with the required plan type) and great for me since my workplace is in a valley with little Sprint coverage. Sound great, never dropped a call, never had a bad signal (San Francisco area). Only thing that keeps the rating VG not Excellent is the bluetooth voice command activation does not work unless you leave the phone on the main screen when it sleeps. If you leave it on music player, the bluetooth will not wake it up to make a call.
2) Live Search - A+ Most Excellent - greatest thing on the planet, totally cool to boot. A surprise.
3) mp3 player - C+ you're heard it before, Sprint sync software is better thrown away. Use any other software to sync or just copy files - BUT if you have songs with different artists, they will load as separate albums even if the album name and album artist are the same. Really no excuse. Some people seem to have issues with reading the card taking forever, I and others don't. Reason unknown.
4) Sideloaded videos & player - A- Not best because don't even think of using Sprint software. But if you can deal with Handbrake and get the settings down, quality and playback are excellent. Sound volume is low off headphones, but on headphones is very good.
5) Calendar - C Let's get one thing straight, I was told at the start this is not a pda. That being said, sure wish the calendar would sync with something. Webbing it to Google calendar is barely OK, but if you just use the phone you are OK - BUT there's a known bug that calendar alarms only go off if set to the time of the appointment. If you want to be reminded one hour before, too bad until a fix, no date. Just no excuse for this kind of sloppy programming.
6) Web browser - D. Yes, it's really bad, barely functional, released too early, one of biggest mistakes that could kill the phone. Some sites work, some don't and there's no excuse for how long it takes to render pages or how often it crashes and looses bookmarks.
7) Other apps - F because of the lack of java standard keyboard. One of the main reasons I bought the phone over the iPhone - aside from AT&T Sux and as a phone it sux - was that the Instinct is open source. Except some genius decided to make the soft keyboard a proprietary widget. It's other thing that can kill this phone before it gets off the ground.
8) Sprint customer service - D - better than Verizon but that's not saying much.
I am being optimistic. Strictly as a phone it's fine and I use the mp3 player and video player a lot, and as I mentioned Live Search is pure magic. The phone is cool and fun and was priced right. But there's so much unrealized potential it makes me wonder "what were they thinking?"