Customer Reviews

Samsung Instinct s30 Phone, Charcoal (Sprint)

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

 

 

I just got this phone from Radioshack (50 dollars this week....add in an employee discount and it's 20 bucks, YEAH!!). Amazing, amazing phone. Samsung have always made great products but this one shines above the rest. It's really easy to use, especially with the touch features. It's not too sensitive and you don't have to jam your finger into the screen, it's just right. The volume is a big thing for me because I am getting hearing problems at my ripe age of 23 (drummer) so that feature comes in handy when it's in my pocket while I'm driving or for an alarm clock for work.

Either way you spin this, this phone has it all. It also has the Opera feature to browse full web pages with java as well as the mobile pages that were available with the first Instinct.

Now as compared to the original Instinct, this one has a lighter feel to it and sleaker design so that it fits comfortably in your hand without your hand getting tired from holding it. Of course, Bluetooth headsets always work fine, too.

Last but not least, the camera. Gorgeous pictures have been taken with this phone. Crystal clear quality, I'd say of high definition quality.

This is the phone for you if you want the latest and greatest without paying 500 dollars.

Where do I begin with this phone? I have had it for about 5-6 months now and I think it is okay, but if given the choice again I would get something else.
Likes:
-Call quality is fine
-I love the large screen for internet
-I like the one touch email
-I like being able to delete messages without listening to them
-Navigation tool was awesome...when it worked (see below)

Dislikes:
-The fact that there are no buttons. I often accidently hit mute with my cheeck while talking. Also, using the keyboard for texting or internet can be very frustrating. My texts are riddled with question marks where spaces should be.
-You cannot get apps for this phone
-There are a lot of emails that my phone cant read and just show up blank when I try to open them
-I like the tv feature, but to watch a full episode, you can only do so in several minute intervals before having to go back to the show page and clicking on the next 5 minutes of the show. Also, the picture is usually choppy.
-I have found that doing simple things such as changing contact info is more complicated than it used to be. Even just calling a person that is not on my speed dial takes an extra step or two.
-Worst for me is that my navigation system (which I loved) is not working. It worked for a few months and then (during a trip of course) it started acting up. When I hit the navigation button the phone freezes for about 30 seconds and then goes to my contact list. Sprint could not fix the problem after several attempts and I am currently in the process of trying to get it taken care of by Samsung.

My husband has the same phone and he has had some issues with the buttons as well and his internet is slow.

This phone rules. Sprint actually did something right with their plan so that you get a ton of services without paying extra.
GPS, email, messaging, internet, live search, TV on demand, Live TV, etc.

This phone simply rules. And thanks to samsung you don't have to buy that crummy iphone to get a nice setup like this.

Live search might be the coolest thing yet. Hold down a button and say the name, it finds the address, phone number, and GPS maps directions to it. Right on your phone. Amazing.

The signal is super strong. I actually get a GPS signal inside work, which with it's thick ceilings renders most phones incapable of even getting a roam signal.

I generally hate talking on a phone, but I love this phone.

Buy it, you couldn't possibly be disappointed.

THIS IS NOT A SMARTPHONE! However, it offers more than other feature phones. It's in the gray area so to speak. If you have the original, your next phone should be a smartphone.

Pros - excellent features that are easy to use. Great touchscreen response. Very fast performance going from screen to screen. Able to download programs like stocks, file manager, ms pacman, voice recorder, checkbook register, finance calculator etc from [...]. Live search and gps are awesome. At the end of day, it has above average call clarity and volume. This is simply an easy, fun phone to use with a nice size screen.

Cons - TV pixelation is horrible or so I thought. Other Sprint phones have these same issues, but it looks worst on the S30 b/c the screen is larger. The slim battery does not last a day (for me anyway). When making calls, the backlight does not shut off! It can make your face hot after five minutes, not to mention drain more battery life. Screen resolution needs to be upgraded to take better advantage of the screen size.

Purchased the extended battery with new battery cover. Can talk about 7 hours easily. Also, have Samsung stylus that attaches to the phone near the headphone jack. Works great. It can also handle a 32gb microsd card (double the 16gb that is listed).

This is the best feature phone Sprint offers.

Ever own a touch screen phone, or ever wanted one? Well I own the Samsung Instinct S30 and personally, I love it. It's a great all around phone for your normal person, everyday use, and even some extra add on's also. I like my phone a lot because it is simple to use, you can do a lot of things on it and also because it's a very durable phone that still looks good and is a great size. I love how my phones touch screen keyboard sync's with the movement of the phone. I also like my phone because of its simplicity; it's just so easy to maneuver around on. Lastly I love my phone because its not too big, and doesn't have a awkward shape, it also takes abuse very well, from being dropped, thrown, or stepped on, it still works great! I love my Instinct S30 phone because it's all around a great phone, its easy to use, and it's a well-shaped, durable phone.

I got this phone the day it came out and have been in love ever since!! I had the original instinct and upgraded to this one, the two are very much the same, the new one is just totally sleeker, slimmer, and waaaayy faster!! I'd recommend this to anyone!!

I agree, this phone rocks! I have owned cell phones since they first showed up on the consumer market and I can say with all honesty that this is one of the best if not the best I have ever owned. I will say right off that it's web interface is terrible but still usable, and it's camera, still and video has no user control or editing abilities but still manages to take good pictures and movies.
Everything else this phone is designed to do it does very well and has many unique and useful applications. As for the "speed" of this phone, even indoors with a week signal it connects calls, accesses and loads my email or completes a GPS location in just a few seconds. considering the fact that I had to install a repeater to enable me to use the cell phone that this Samsung replaced I am very impressed with this phone. As I am writing this I accessed the Internet with my signal going back and forth from one to no bars and my home page still loaded in about 4 seconds. Thats pretty impressive when neither of my last two phones could load this same page in less than 15 seconds with my repeater turned on and showing no less than 3/4 full strength.
I won't go into every thing this phone does or all the really cool and useful apps it has as the amazon page description covers all that. I will only say two things, first if you buy this phone I guarantee you will not be disappointed, And second someone who would give this phone a one star rating obviously has ulterior motives. 15+ years designing and manufacturing handsets, don't make me laugh. So even with a bad Web interface and no camera controls this phone still rates five stars. Oh and by the way I work with the owner of one of the first ISP companies in existence, and i can tell you he is a i phone freak and after playing with my s30 for about 20 minutes he was truly jealous.

Once a year I call Sprint and threaten to change service providers if they don't meet some set of outrageous demands of mine. Desperate to cling to their position as the number three mobile phone service provider, they generally concede some combination of a discounted bill and free gear. This little game of cat-and-mouse has been going on for about six years and I'm generally pretty happy with Sprint's willingness to cooperate.

This year, my major gripe was (and still is), that I want a freakin' iPhone just like everybody else - why... because it's awesome and everyone knows that. After demanding to be switched immediately to cancellations and a few minutes of impassioned whining, Sprint gave me a discount on my monthly plan and offered me two Samsung s30 "smart" phones, which they touted as a direct substitute for the iPhone, capable of performing every task that the Apple product does and more! I graciously accepted and congratulated myself for once again putting the screws to my service provider; well, this time the joke was on me. Congratulations Sprint... you win this time.

For starters, comparing an iPhone to this piece of trash is equivalent to comparing an ice cold beer to old boot filled with warm toilet water. Just turning the phone on is a virtual clinic in poor product design, as you have to hold down the power button to unlock the screen. Besides being inconvenient, this is just plain stupid since if you hold it down to long it turns the phone off.

As a music player, the s30 is unusable. All files must be dragged into a folder on the micro-SD card, and at least half of them will not be recognized by the phone's music player. There is no interface that you can use on the computer that allows you to organize or make playlists, and the phone's music player interface is horrendous.

As a browser, it is slow and unreliable, and any attempt to select an object on the screen using the touch screen inevitably ends with you repeatedly smashing your finger into the screen in frustration until it randomly decides to actually function. A portion of the screen is occupied by controls that could have easily been incorporated into the phone's buttons to preserve precious screen space.

The NFL live function is great, as long as you remember to touch the screen every 7 seconds, because if you allow it to go into energy save mode the audio feed stops. Sprint radio has an unreliable feed and no fast forward / rewind function, so when it crashes, which it inevitably will do every several minutes, you have to start listening to the program over again from the beginning. Aside from that, the audio on Sprint radio is inexplicably too low, even if the audio setting is just fine for the phone and music player. Sprint TV is just a straight waste of everyone's time.

Neither the music, radio or TV function transmit to a Bluetooth headset; so if you want to use them while walking around you'll need to carry around headphones or rely on the phone's speaker.

The games are idiotic and you have to buy them after about 1 minute of free trial play. There are no apps. The e-mail works okay, that is, until it stops working... which it does every 3-4 weeks at which time I have to delete the account and reload it. Finally, the phone's operating system completely freezes about once per day so that the only option is to remove and replace the battery.

The GPS is actually pretty good.

In summary, this phone is good for phone calls, texts and GPS. It is only marginally more useful than antique flip phone that it replaced. Whenever I see a friend enjoying the features, apps, and graceful user-interface of their iPhone, I am instantly filled with a surge of jealousy so intense and tangible that it seems to fill the air around me and I can't breathe.

I've had this phone for over a year and absolutely hate it. The web browser constantly locks up and resets the phone, built in email function is sporadic at best, the music function states that it needs an update, been when you download and install the update the phone resets and and states it needs an update (over, and over...), and the camera clarity is marginal. At best you end up with an expensive cell phone that is only good for voice calls and with Sprints spotty coverage, dropped calls and zero bars in a metro on a clear day are the norm. Their customer service will tell you it's not the phone, it's Sprint's network causing the problems, and of course Sprint will tell you it's the phone's fault. Save your money and get a Smart Phone. It does make a for a shiny paper weight though...

LOL, this phone is worth less than its plastic screen-protector (priced at $0.02)...

Here is why I didn't like it:

1. The music player would take 5 minutes to bring up 900 songs.. The iPhone music player that I now have will come up almost instantly, every time... With even more songs loaded onto it. WIth the instinct, sometimes it would have you waiting 5 minutes just to come up with an "Uncaught Exception" and then boots you back into the favorites list (as a programmer, I know this means its an internal error that the developers didn't forsee which is shameful for a so called finished product). After awhile of this frustration I went back to carrying around my old ipod, which kinda defeated one of the reasons I bought this phone.

2. The navigation was very unreliable... Wierd thing was, it worked for the first few months I had the phone, and then went downhill from that point on.... It got to the point where 1 out of 3 times, it wouldn't even be able to home in on my position at all. Sent away for a refurbushed model after the techs couldn't get it working and had the SAME EXACT PROBLEM. Many times, when it did start working, it would freeze in the middle of a trip leaving me lost and scrambling for my paper road maps.

3. The browsing experience is horrible and can't display most of the pages out there... Even with the opera browser (which while still better than the stock instinct browser, is nowhere near the quality of the iPhone safari browser).

4. The email reader doesn't display html like most other smartphone email clients.

5. Virtually no apps are available for this phone. There is a site out there that has maybe a hand full of useless apps.

If you are stuck with sprint, I would go with the palm pre instead of this phone... There is a reason the instinct is only $0.01!