Customer Reviews

Samsung Instinct SPH-M800 Phone, Black (Sprint)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I have used many mobile "smartphones" / "featurephones" in the last year trying to settle on something that meets my needs. The list includes iPhone (1st gen), HTC Mogul, Q9C, Palm Treo 755p, Treo 800w and the Instinct.

My needs and expectations might be different from the reader's, so let me lay them out in advance:
* A decent web browsing experience for regular "desktop" sites.
* Sufficient music capabilities to replace my iPod for most purposes.
* Basic email and calendaring capabilities (Outlook "PUSH" is not one of them).
* An easy-to-use and "fun" interface.
* A reliable phone, with good battery life.
* Navigation, if I can get it.
* MMS capabilities, if I can get it.

Here is where the previous devices have fallen short:

iPhone - Bad AT&T service in my area made it challenging to use as a phone. At the time, EDGE data was too slow to enjoy surfing the web. Pages look great once loaded, but who has 3-4 minutes per page to surf. If I am using WiFi, I might as well have my laptop. No MMS offered. Why?

I know the 3G version improves on this, but AT&T 3G coverage is still not up to par with the EVDO offered by Verizon/Sprint. This is simply the case of a good phone on a bad network.

Mogul - Poor reliability with many bugs that have not been fixed with several firmware update releases. This makes it unsatisfactory to use even for basic voice calls. Who can cope with a phone that reboots during a call? Not a good iPod replacement because you have to use the USB jack or an adapter to hook up a good pair of headphones and bluetooth stereo quality was not good enough to replace wired headphones in my experience. No MMS (can't send pictures of kids to my parents while out-and-about without using email).

Q9C - Almost good enough. Just too darn slow. Too little memory. It does run Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone with some UI enhancements, and includes a 2.5mm headphone jack for audio. A good choice for anyone willing to live with performance drawbacks. Good voice quality and reasonably reliable for a Microsoft-powered device. My back-up device. No MMS (on Sprint).

Treo 755p - Simply not able to get a decent web browser on the device. It does almost everything else OK, even if the interface is a bit too simplistic. The included Blazer browser has difficulty digesting most modern web sites, runs out of memory and is too slow. Although there are J2ME runtime engines that can be used to run Opera Mini, it frequently crashes the phone.

Treo 800w - Does everything, just not that well. Makes a pig of itself with battery use (see my review elsewhere on Amazon). The phone really falls down as an iPod replacement because it does not have an audio jack, only a microUSB connector. Hard to find good headphones for this jack. Stereo bluetooth on the device with my Moto S9 headphones introduces alot of noise. Still no MMS (on Sprint).

Now we come to the Instinct:

WEB BROWSER:

The browser has been greatly improved by the latest MR-3 firmware update, and Samsung/Sprint does seem inclined to continue to roll out improvements. I think the record sales of the device serves as an incentive to continue offering updates to the software. An MR-4 firmware is slated that is supposed to add keyboard support to J2ME applications that should allow the device to run Opera Mini and many other programs. The browser is not perfect, but it is fast enough to surf the web and get a reasonable approximation of most pages I visit. With the latest update you can take advantage of the entire screen for the browser, hiding all controls. Panning is simple with fingertip swipes. Zoom is still a bit clunky but reasonably fast.

A few "web applications" are present under the web tab that offer an attractive interface to some features you would normally use the browser for such as: weather, news, movie times and sports scores. Much better than using any browser to access this data. I would like to see more of these offered, in fact (how about a YouTube front-end?).

You will also find a version of Microsoft's Live Search to use speech to find local business found with the assistance of the built-in GPS. A very nice touch. Once found, you can call them up or get turn-by-turn directions to get there.

MUSIC

Ahh... finally, a phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack. This allows you to plug in standard iPod-like headphones and enjoy music. Bluetooth playback on the S9 headphones is also very good. The music application is nice, and you can use up to an 8GB SD card to store songs. You can buy music over-the-air from the Sprint Music Store which is integrated into the music application. Still not an iPod touch, but plenty good enough for my uses.

EMAIL AND CALENDAR

The email is simple and easy to use. It offers enough features for a mobile device, although a few options such as a custom signature would be nice. It does not render HTML email, but does help you along by including any web links that might be embedded in an HTML message. For my use, this is a faster alternative than asking the phone to download and render a full HTML version with images for my email on the go.

I would appreciate the capability to view some simple file formats, particularly PDF. I understand this is slated for the MR-4 release and the fact they recognize this need placates me for the time being.

Calendering, on the other hand, is the Achilles Heel for replacing a typical smartphone with this device. There is no provision to sync your calendar with the web or desktop. Accordingly, while there is a calendar app built in, I don't even use it. For the present, I muddle through accessing the mobile version of Google Calendar. Sprint needs to do something to fix this. Maybe a front-end to Google Calendar. If not, it is my hope that a more complete Java stack will open the door for third-party solutions. (See more about Java on the Instinct below).

INTERFACE

The interface is attractive and easy to use. Much better than poking around menus with the tiny stylus on a Windows Mobile device. I know about keyboard shortcuts, but I am more of a point-and-click kind of guy. Just personal preference.

The touch screen is very responsive for a non-capacitive sensor, much better than say the Treo. Not as good as the iPhone, but nothing has a better touch interface than the iPhone.

The Instinct does have "haptic" (vibration) feedback that makes it feel almost as if you are touching physical buttons and makes the phone very satisfying to use.

PHONE, NAV AND MMS

The phone sounds great. Call options are right where they should be, with easy ability to add a conference call or mute the microphone, for example. An in-call menu allows you to access common functions such as the address book or notes while in a call. Photos linked to contacts show up during income/outgoing calls.

The phone also has very good "speech to action" capabilities. You can use this to quickly dial a number or call one from you address book. No voice training is necessary and it is very accurate and usable.

Navigation is simply second-to-none. Tell it where you want to go by talking (through the Live Search discussed above) or type an address, intersection or business name and you are off with turn-by-turn directions and an animated moving map. You can also search for close by businesses and the like (such as the closest gas station or fast-food joint while on the road). Easily meets my navigation needs. Apple should take note and try to put something similar on the iPhone. Google Maps is good, but not like this.

MMS is the cherry on top. You can easily send and receive pictures and short video clips. I use this all the time to send quick snapshots to my wife's phone (a Centro) or my parents. The Treo 755p is the only phone listed above that has this capability. Why such a common innovation is left out of Sprint's smartphone lineup is simply beyond me. There are hacks to do it on Windows Mobile, but it is not the same as having it built into the phone's UI.

MISC

In terms of other attributes, I find the phone has enough battery power for my needs. It is attractive and easy to slip in/out of your pocket. Bluetooth pairing is simple (Widows Mobile -- take note). The speaker is loud enough for ringers. Physical controls are easy to understand. Sprint includes a generous accessory package with the phone: Music syncing application (Windows only), USB cable, wall charger, 2 batteries, a spare battery charger, a handsfree stereo headset, and a 2GB SD card.

The camera is perfectly fine for a phone. Nice pictures and a simple interface. If I want something better I'll use my Nikon dSLR. It records video and the quality is actually surprisingly good for what it is. I always wished Apple would put this on the iPhone, but they just don't want their customers to have it for some reason.

_______________________________________________________________
CAVEATS
*******
Now the downsides, many of which I hope to see remedied:

JAVA

This phone is advertised as being based on an "open" platform in that J2ME applications can be run on the phone, opening the door to many third-party applications. The problem is that Sprint inexplicably does not offer the standard text input libraries developers expect to have present on a J2ME device. This means you can load Opera Mini, but you can't use the on-screen keyboard to enter a URL. Sprint knows this was a gaff, and they assure that a fix is in the works for this year.

CALENDAR

As mentioned above, I consider the calendar next to useless without some syncing ability. It's an internet-connected mobile phone -- why does the user operate the calendar on an "island?" If Sprint doesn't fix this, a J2ME app likely will take its place. If not, I'll write one.

BROWSER STILL NEEDS WORK

As much improved as the Instinct's Teleca OBIGO-based browser is with the recent update, it still falls short in many areas. It seems to have a problem rendering either PNG or GIF images with alpha transparency, leading to some ugly looking logos and the like on pages.

An option to save images from the browser to the SD card would be nice. More granular zoom control would be nice (currently just 1/2X, 1X and 2X). Ability to change the font size would be nice (some fonts are too small).

Rather than hope that Sprint/Samsung will perfect this browser, I would prefer work be done to make this a first-class J2ME platform so we can run Opera Mini. Samsung should make phones, and leave browser design to a browser software company.

STILL A BIT SLOW

The specifications on RAM and processor type are hard to find, so I am not sure what kind of speed improvements to expect.

I can say that some of the most frustrating slow aspects of the device ARE the result of poor software design. For example, the media player is compelled to rescan your SD card for music each time it is opened. Why not just detect when a folder modification date has changed and update then?

In a similar vein, the photo viewing application is slick enough, but it slows considerably with any reasonable number of photos loaded onto the card. The reason? It does not appear that the software caches photo thumbnails for later use. It appears to generate thumbnails on the fly each time you open the photo application. This demands considerable processor power and slows the whole works down to a grinding halt. Solution? Simply create a folder with a thumbnail cache on the memory card. Generate a hash for each photo for tracking and only create a new thumbnail when a photo is added. This is Software Design 101 people.

Finally, although the internet is fairly fast on the device, it does not appear to be reaching the potential of Rev A.. I have tested the device side-by-side with my Treo 800W (another Rev A device) at www.dslreports.com/mspeed. The result: Instinct - 369kbit/sec; Palm - 865kbit/sec. Big difference. Why?

THE SPRINT TV APP IS BROKEN, FIX IT...NOW

Sprint TV is a nice service included in their newer plans. You can watch CNN live, full episodes of ABC TV series, and many, many other quality programming options with your plan.

The device has an included TV application to take advantage of this programming. With speedy Rev A and a nice large screen, the Instinct should be ideal for this purpose. It's not. The video is either a mosaic of color blocks, or a low-quality slideshow. Audio is OK, but video just cannot keep up.

This is not a function of the Sprint TV service. Other devices listed above render much better picture quality.

Whatever the reason, the Sprint TV application is a very poor showcase of what should be one of the phone's best applications. Sprint, you need to fix this feature. It's an embarrassment. If you want to compete in the iPhone space, you need to learn a few lessons from Apple: do not advertise a feature on the device if it doesn't work. It just pisses people off. Fix it now.

CONCLUSION

Despite several limitations, I really like the Instinct as a whole. It shows great potential and it does not look like Sprint has abandoned hopes of making it better -- YET. This is what makes the difference between a three-star and four-star review. A few key fixes and it will do everything I want it to do.

It is really important that Sprint delivers on making this phone live up to its marketing expectations. If the Instinct never really works the way it was touted, I won't be buying the Instinct II or whatever replacement you roll out for it. Don't convince me that Apple or the OHA are the only entities that can deliver the promise of a quality, converged device by failing to clean the Instinct up.

Even without the hoped-for upgrades, this is the phone to get if you want a smooth user interface and don't want to deal with AT&T or T-Mobile GSM networks with spotty 3G coverage.

Samsung instinct, September 27, 2008
By Wild Bill "Bill" (CA) - See all my reviews

Pros:
#1. GPS is a cool feature especially if you drive a lot and need directions.

#2. Easy to use with the touch screen
#3. Good looking phone. I really liked the large screen size.

I really wanted to give it a fair shake, that's why I had it for 3 weeks. It was not compatible for my use and here are the problems I had with it.



Cons:
#1. The Samsung Instinct-I owned the phone for 3 weeks. During that time I was calling sprint's technical support almost everyday.
The main problem was voicemail. It had a bug that when my customers, (that's right I use this phone for business.)Called and it would go to voicemail it gave the message "All circuits are busy" Intermittently. The tech support told me that they had a nationwide outage of voicemail but my son has the same service but different phone and his never did this. I kept calling for tech support and week three the last operator told me to replace the phone. Which I did with a Palm Centro.

#2.When you push a button like the web or e-mail many times it would not respond. I would wait a bit then it would work to me. It seems as if it was running slow.

#3.The Battery: There is a reason why they give you 2 batteries. It uses a fully charged battery just using the phone function, voicemail and e-mail in about 2 hours. If you buy this phone get a car charger.

#4. Email: The emails I receive many times have attachments such as word or PDF files. This phone won't open them up!

#5. The web: I could not log on to my bank account because of compatibility so it really was worthless-That's why I bought it, one of the main reasons to check my accounts and to go on my website and check orders. Didn't work. You could only surf. It is soooooo slow!!!
3G or not it is very slow. Dial up is faster. But you can watch videos so I guess it is faster than dial up. Loading pages took a long time.
There were more problems that I had but these are enough major reasons for certain people to not buy it.

I ended up with a Palm Centro. Excellent phone. No trouble with voicemail. Opens and stores PDF files word and excel docs. The web browsing is at least 3 times as fast and it isn't even 3G. I think I will do a review of the Centro when I have had it longer than 3 weeks, Great Phone if you are in business and need it to actually work! Don't buy the Instinct

This is a great phone, but there are a few things that could really turn this phone into an amazing phone.

1. Better music player: The phone comes with a 2gb card which is great for storing music. However I have put on 2gb's worth of music and the phone takes forever to load, probably about 6-8 minutes. I thought this was only going to be the first time it read the music, but that is definitely not the case. Everytime I open the music player it has to go throught this whole process again. I tried taking of a lot of the music and put on about 30 songs to see if it would be faster. Well it was faster, but still not nearly fast enough. It takes about 1-2 minutes to play those songs. I am hoping for a program update to resolve this issue. Until then I am stuck.

2. Viewing of Word, Excel, Powerpoint: This phone is very capable of viewing e-mail and it does a great job of it, even managing 2 e-mail accounts(yahoo mail, and my work e-mail through microsoft exchange server). The only problem is that I have a lot of e-mails that contain attachments of word, excel, and occassionaly powerpoint. There are several other phones, in this class of phones,that have capabilities of doing this and this one should be included. Another thing that I will hope a program update will fix. Until then...

Other than the 2 points above I would say this phone is great! It is by far the best phone I have ever had and everything else that it does is awesome. My favorite feature is the GPS with search. I can pull up the program and say "pizza" and boom within seconds I have 20 pizza places that are close to me to choose from. Even better I can click on the one I want and see the phone number (one click to call), address (one click to start my GPS driving me there), and reviews which I can view and create.

Sprint has a new trick up it's sleeve. Just when their phones were looking dull, they came up with Instinct. The Instinct has many features, doesn't ever hang because it never promises to do something it can't.

Package Contents - 2 batteries, a portable battery charger that can be connected with usb or power, headset, cd rom with manual, stylus, a leather case, adapter for 2gig micro sd card, travel charger and usb cable.

Features -
a) Camera - 2megapixel camera with some great footage, works with a flash, side button for camera, it also has a video camcorder for recording videos, a function absent from the iphone
b) Battery life - The battery is efficeient. Sprint gives two batteries with the phone. The battery not-in-use can be charged using an external charger which comes with the battery, either by using usb or wall
c) RAM - The phone has good ram and is fast to use
d) Sprint TV - The minimum plan to get this phone starts at 69.99 PM - You get unlimited internet access and also free tv on your phone, there isn't much to complain about
e) No more stylus : although the phone comes with a stylus, it is never used, there isn't a place on the phone to place the stylus
f) Video Calling
g) Gives you the name of the state you're getting a call from
h) Comes with radio unlike the curve
i) Block to Block GPS - Unlimited use, no extra cost
j) Decent build quality

For new customers the price is two hundred and twenty five.
The outright price of the phone is 449 but what are you going to do without a contract.

This may not be the iphone killer. I don't think there will ever be an iphone killer and the reason for that is that there was no ipod killer.

PS - I don't have the iphone, I don't want to use a phone everyone has.

Cons - Not the best reception for audio/video call, the phone comes with 2gb of memory, this makes you think that maybe the functionality of media on the phone is not that good but I'll see that and let you know if need be.

2 batteries is good. 4 stars. upgrade now.

After using this phone for months I notice many basic features missing that are included with most low-end phones, which I would consider standard features.

Some features I miss since "upgrading" to this phone:

*Assigning ring tones to specific contacts. I'd even settle for a specific ring tone for contacts only.
*Ability to block calls from certain numbers. This can come in handy for telemarketing calls. Going back to assigning ring tones if I had the ability to set "no ring tone" for these type of calls I'd be happy.
*No search function in the address book so you have to scroll through all contacts, which can be a pain if you have many contacts. *Tip: You can use the voice prompts to save time--which do work well in most situations.
*No notification of missed calls (no blinking lights or beeps).
*Calendar is almost useless. For example if you want to set a monthly appt or reminder it doesn't work.
*Notification. Any other phone I had I could set how often I wanted my phone to remind me of missed texts, etc. For example beep every 2 minutes. There are no reminder notification settings.
*No option for voice notes. All notes need to be typed in.

Of course there are added features to the Instinct I didn't have with any other phone:

*I love the visual voicemail. I can see a list of who left a voicemail right on the phone.
*Live Search is awesome and works great.
*Touch screen. I'll admit it took some getting use to, but I would never go back to a phone without a touch screen again.

Call quality is good. It's not any better or worse than previous phones I've used. The speaker phone could use some improvements as previous phones I've owned had much clearer call quality using the speaker phone.

Internet works very well. Much faster than other phones I've owned and the larger screen is awesome. The touch screen can be a bit finicky though when using the internet. For example clicking on a link can take a few tries, but if you zoom in it works much better.

Sprint Navigation, tv, family locator, etc. all work well with the phone. I haven't had any problems. Although I do prefer my dedicated GPS for driving directions, but the Sprint Navigation has come in handy at times.

Virtual keyboard takes some getting use to and at times can be frustrating in the beginning.

Screen is almost useless in bright sunlight, but many phones have the same problem.

Camera is just a basic 2mp camera with no zoom, flash, or ability to edit photos in any way. It does take decent pictures in good (bright) lighting, as does the video function. Speaking of video when you send video to non Instinct users they most likely will not be able to view the video on their phone and will have to send it to their email. I never encountered this problem with other phones.

Battery life is not the greatest, but since it comes with 2 batteries and a case to charge the battery it makes up for the poor battery performance.

Roaming works well for both calls and text (including sending pictures and video). Also had no problems receiving emails or accessing the internet. I haven't tried Sprint navigation, family locator, etc while roaming so I can't say how these services would perform.

Contact history is nice as with many other phones it keeps all history (calls/texts) threaded together. I'm glad to see that feature didn't disappear with some other basic features.

Overall I'd say this is an average phone with the bonus of having a touch screen and some "cool" features not included in other phones, but at the cost of missing some "basic" features. I would give this phone a 4 or higher if it wasn't missing "basic" features I had in cheaper model phones. If you're looking for a phone to organize your life look elsewhere as this is not equivalent to a smart phone. The phone is well made and I have not experienced any problems with freezing or any other "quirks".

Just like other phones, mine becomes possessed. I'm now waiting for my 2nd replacement phone. Music player doesn't work, volume control doesn't work, text messaging interrupts phone calls, and the alarm sometimes stays on so much so that I have to take the battery off to stop hearing the sound! Oh yeah, and it freezes all the time. Piece of garbage phone. I should have spent the extra $$ and got the iphone.

The interface is clumsy, the timer application is broke, the "lock" feature is garbage (I keep pocket dialing people, as well as dismissing text messages when I pickup the phone - and yes, I have the lock feature turned on), the keyboard interface is so bad that this phone comes with a stylus, though there is no where on the phone to put it. The web browser is horrible, the media player is awful, the camera is worse than my last Samsung (as my last Samsung came with a flash), the sound quality is BAD! I can't listen to music on an airplane because the music volume doesn't go high enough to drown out the sound of the engines of the plane.
The only good thing about this phone is that I got it cheap, so I won't feel as bad when I toss it away.

This phone is great when it comes to service(excluding the freezing and stickey keys) I loved this phone used it all the time. The screen sucks, I droped it more then once but one tap from a can bam cracked, now Im lookin at 60 bucks for a replacement screen.

This is my first iPhone-like phone, so people who have experience with other phones like this or Blackberries might have more informed opinions.


Good:
Very feature rich
Easy to use
Small when compared to the iPhone and the other knockoffs
I can get my email on this phone


Bad:
When adding events to your calendar you are limited to a small number of characters. Say you want to describe the event and its location, you will not have the space for an adequate description and address. Hopefully someone at Samsung will have a heart and fix this (I'd really like to have a few custom text fields for each calendar event)

The updated web browser software (1.2) is broken when it comes to responding to screen clicks. The phone's touch screen is great, but on the browser it will often fail to respond to them. Sometimes you'll see the UI of the clicked button react to your click, but it won't navigate anywhere. I don't remember this bug with the prior version of the webbrowser.

No reminder rings

Big when compared to cellphones in general.

No motion sensing.

Sometimes the fun UI can get in the way of the experience. For example, the UI for setting the time of events works with two dials: one for the hour and another for the minutes. The dials have momentum and you have to fool with the controls for a while to get the time that you want.

I got the instinct a couple of weeks ago after the Sprint software/firmware upgrade. I am very satisfied with this cell phone. Voice calls are clear and no dropped calls at all...its Sprint, what do you expect? My best feature is the TEXT MESSAGING where you have access to a full QWERTY keyboard, a portrait keyboard and a useful grafitti feature that quickly recognizes your handwriting by automatically converting your scriblles into regular computer font text. Texting maintains a threaded discussion feature so for each contact, you can see all conversations you ever had.
I love the facebook link. 95% better than in a blackberry. The site looks like it does on a computer. If you love high quality music, Pandora.com is not free for Sprint users. Select your desired artist and the radio plays your artist and all other artists that play similar music. The TV works and compared it with a regular cable tv. The live mobile TV indeed is live! Mobile TV is still in its infancy, I didn't expect HD quality streaming.
My only gripe is that the cell phone isn't loud enough when hooked up to the auxiliary of a car stereo. The volume is too low despite increasing both my car's stereo and the cell stereo to max. Another issue for me is when scrolling down the list of contact to text message, if you accidentally touched the wrong contact nothing happens until you send your text to the desired recipient, then you notice that all those accidental touches actually did add them to the names of recipients of your text messages! Now I always review the recipient names to fix this problem.
My best feature is that I am able to access not only my work email but also my office calendar with full ability to add, delete or modify appointments. I also access my hotmail and yahoo.