Samsung Instinct: The latest iPhone clone from Samsung

Apple has announced its latest iPhone model, Apple AAPL iPhone 3G. Now, it’s Samsung’s turn to strike. Earlier, LG tried to take over iPhone with its Voyager and Vu. Samsung released an array of models including F480, F700, SGH-i900 and so on. Unfortunately, none of the models could take over iPhone. Once again, the South Korean mobile giant has announced its latest iPhone look alike; Samsung Instinct. This time every body is saying that it is going to be a major competitor for iPhone though it’s software functions are not as good as that of iPhone. The phone was announced in April. In the recently held CTIA Wireless 2008, Samsung Instinct took the Emerging Technology Award. The phone set also became the Most Innovative and Best Cell Phone in CNET’s Cream of the Crop. It will go on sale on June 20^th.New York Times.com says:

In other words, a certain population still awaits something that offers the touch-screen joy of an iPhone without those limitations. Oh, there have been efforts, but just slapping a touch screen onto a phone does not make it an iPhone. It’s all about the software, kids.
Here comes one more. On June 20, Sprint will offer the new Samsung Instinct. It, too, is a blatant iPhone wannabe, but its software structure is simple and it has its own personality. It does not succeed in surpassing the iPhone, especially the new one — but it does succeed as a smartphone.
The Instinct is tentatively priced at $200 with a two-year contract and a $100 rebate. It’s a wee bit taller and thicker than the iPhone, but noticeably narrower (2.2 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches).

Dimension:
Length: 4.6"
Breadth: 2.2"
Width: 0.5"
Weight: 4.4 ounces.
The phone is taller, narrower and lighter than iPhone.

Features:

The Samsung Instinct comes with 3G EV-DO data services.
The Samsung Instinct comes with a 3.25 inch color touch screen with haptic feedback. While browsing the web, the screen makes feel cramped. It is protected by plastic coating.Tech.yahoo.com reports:

The Instinct's main touch interface has four tabs: Favorites, Main, Fun, and Web. Tapping the Main tab brings you to the phone's core applications (e-mail, navigation, settings, etc.), while Fun calls up multimedia (music, videos, camera), and Web includes ... well, the Web browser, plus widgets for news, weather, sports, and the like.

As you touch the various tabs, little icon-based boxes slide back and forth, gathering smoothly into a grid—it's one of the little touches that makes browsing the Instinct's menus an iPhone-esque experience.
The Samsung Instinct comes with a 2.0 megapixel camera.
The Samsung Instinct can record video clips, a feature not available on the iPhone.
The Samsung Instinct comes with a GPSand turn-by-turn directions which is powered by TeleNav.
The Samsung Instinct has FM radio. The Sprint Radio offers more than 150 channels.
The Samsung Instinct has microSD memory card slot (expandable upto 8GB).

The Samsung Instinct has voice dialing system. Quoting AP, CNET, and Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo says:

CNET
The Instinct's touch screen dominates its real estate. With support for 262,000 colors and a 432,240-pixel resolution, the display is positively gorgeous. Colors popped, graphics were vibrant, and text was crisp. Indeed, it's one of the better displays we've seen in a while...but [it] can look rather cramped...

AP
The result is a lucid, logical interface. It's not as pretty as the iPhone's, but it allows the user to quickly use e-mail, Web browsing, GPS navigation and text messaging; watch videos, live TV and photos; and listen to music and online radio.

Wall Street Journal
The touch system on the Instinct is more like that on an ancient ATM than a cutting-edge gadget, even though it has a gimmicky feedback mechanism that gives you a tiny vibration-jolt when you press an icon.

The Samsung Instinct has speech recognition system which enables the user to make phone calls, send text and picture, go to search, go to news, go to weather, go to movies, go to sports, and go to search.
The Samsung Instinct comes with 3.5mm headphone jack. Gizmodo says:
Snappy Interface: Other touchscreen phones we've seen have annoying split-second lags. The Instinct, for the most part, does not. Some of its visuals were obviously borrowed from Apple, such as pop-up option screens, lists of settings, etc., but at the same time it has features that are original, albeit inspired by Cupertino: When a call comes in, you tap the center then slide up to accept or slide down to ignore. Hanging up is a slide from left to right. (The phone interface has other cool features, too, like "personal" call history for each of your contacts—so don't go cheatin'—and the ballyhooed visual voicemail, which unfortunately wasn't available to test at this time.) The UI only got stuck a couple of times, and never permanently. As with any other "natural" interface, it takes a few minutes to figure out the physics of the system, but once you do, it's intuitive.

The Samsung Instinct comes with Bluetooth 2.0.
The Samsung Instinct has LiIon battery with up to 6 hours of talk time.
Sprint Music Store offers wireless downloads with $0.99/track.
The Samsung Instinct also has Microsoft Live search.

Weak points:

Sprint TV has been reformatted to fit the screen of Samsung Instinct, but the video quality is not so good. You can enjoy Spring TV with live on demand programming.
The web browser and UI need more development. Tech.yahoo.com

Web browsing on the Instinct isn't quite so impressive, however. The browser works well enough with mobile-optimized pages, but (as I've written before) slows to a crawl with full-HTML pages. You can scroll by tapping and dragging Web pages, but there's no "pinching" on the Instinct's non-multitouch display, so you must tap a virtual button to zoom in or out. In other words, while the Instinct's Web browser is certainly above par, it can't hold a candle to the iPhone's.

The graphics on Samsung Instinct touch screen are slightly dull.
The Samsung Instinct does not have Wi-Fi.

Price:
Initially, Samsung Instinct was priced $499.99. After iPhone 3G was priced at $299, Samsung brought the price down to $199 with a rebate of $100, which requires a two year contract. The phone set will be sold by renowned wireless telecommunication Network company, SprintS.

If you want to get more information you can visit these two websites:
http://www.nowisgood.com/

http://www.samsunginstinct.com/

Related articles:
The Street.com

Gizmodo(1)