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Sprint’s cell is a stylish imitation of iPhone

Sprint’s cell is a stylish imitation of iPhone

NEW YORK - This is a review of the 3G iPhone. No, not the one Apple released last week. The other one. You know - the one from Sprint and Samsung?

Amid the buzz surrounding Apple Inc.’s new iPhone model, which came out June 9, it has been easy to miss the news that Sprint Nextel Corp. was planning to bring out a new phone, which went on sale Friday, that is the closest thing so far to an iPhone made by someone else.

The Samsung Instinct is, like the real iPhone, a slab with a large touch screen and few buttons. There are other touch-screen alternatives, but the Instinct’s the only one that does what the iPhone does: Wrap a wealth of features into a package that’s easy to use.

This is a remarkable achievement, mostly on Sprint’s part. The hardware, made by Samsung Electronics Co., is available overseas. Sprint commissioned its own software to run on it, working very closely with an outside design house on its development.

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.

The Instinct’s price will handily beat the $199 tag for the new 8-gigabyte 3G iPhone model. Each requires a two-year contract. The cheapest service plans will cost the same, at $69.99 per month.

Both phones will use fast data networks - the Instinct is one of the very few phones to use EV-DO Revision A, the fastest flavor of Sprint’s network.

Both have 2-megapixel cameras. The Instinct comes with less memory, at 2 gigabytes, but it’s expandable with cheap MicroSD chips. The Instinct has several advantages over the new iPhone:

• It’s smaller, fitting more comfortably in a pocket.

• It records video and does picture messaging. The iPhone only does stills.

• It has “haptic feedback,” fancy words meaning it can be set to vibrate when it registers a touch.

• It can get live, streaming TV service.
The Instinct has some notable drawbacks as well:

• The screen has two-thirds as many pixels as the iPhone, which means it displays less information. Worse, it’s limited in the number of colors it can display, which spoils the look of some photos and movies.

• The Instinct can only sense the touch of one finger at a time, which makes it more cumbersome to use. The iPhone will let you zoom into a Web page or picture by spreading your fingers on the screen.

• Sprint’s network is not in very good shape, and I have noticed some problems with call quality.

Still, for those of you who are Sprint customers and want to stay there, the Instinct will do you very well indeed.

[Thanks: http://www.azcentral.com]