The Instinct is Samsung’s attempt to usurp the dominance of Apple’s iPhone. At least, that’s what most folks are believing. On the surface, it looks like if you wish you could get an iPhone but prefer to stick with Sprint (why that would be is anyone’s guess) you can set yourself up with an Instinct and get many of the same features of the iPhone–along with a few more that the Almighty Fruit Phone doesn’t have. Of course, no phone is perfect, so make sure to stay tuned for the caveat.
Samsung has set up the official site for the SI over at SamsungInstinct.com. It’s complete with a flashy Flash interface and all the deets.
To begin with, it’s a bit obvious that their design was inspired by everyone’s favorite divine telecommunications device (aka the Jesus Phone, aka the iPhone). But how fair can any criticism along those lines be? After all, any device with a touchscreen that foregoes more than one old-fashioned button on its face is going to end up resembling the Almighty iPhone. Of course, it is possible to to get a little more creative with the more minor design details.
The other ways the Samsung Instinct is similar to the iPhone are as follows:
1) Wireless Internet
2) Audio player
3) Bluetooth
4) Camera
5) Visual Voicemail
The ways the Instinct is different than the Apple iPhone are:
1) Landscape QWERTY Touchpad (not sure what this is and no pics were on the SI site).
2) Removable battery
3) Camcorder
4) Expandable memory
5) GPS Navigation and Search
6) Access to Sprint’s TV service
The really surprising thing is that video playing (outside of Sprint TV programming and videos shot with the camera) doesn’t appear to be supported. At least, the feature list on the website make no mention of supporting any video formats at all. The removable battery is likely to be something Apple never provides, to the frustration of many iPhone and iPod users. So, logically, it will be a plus (despite the fact that a battery you can replace yourself should probably be standard operating procedure for any kind of handheld devices).
The camcorder is a great addition. Based on when the iPhone came out, it seemed odd to many observers for Apple to have not included some kind of camcorder feature. Finally, the expandable memory will be viewed as a great thing by users. It comes with a 2 gig microSD card, but it’ll support up to 8GB. Storage-wise it may not blow the iPhone away, but at least it’s comparable. The GPS is nice, but that brings us to that caveat mentioned earlier.
The specs for the Samsung Instinct may seem impressive at first, but Steve Jobs always seems to have something up his sleeve. The rumors (as a primitive tribe of undiscovered pigmy’s already know) are that Sir Steve of Jobs will be announcing a 2g (second generation) iPhone in June that will likely trump anything the Instinct will offer when it bows… in June.
Sometimes you can’t help but wonder why companies bother to compete.
