The Apple iPhone may have raised the ante for smartphone design last year, but the competition is not just sitting around. Although it has a similar slablike form and touch-screen function, the new Samsung Instinct has a few special features of its own, as well as a monogamous marriage with Sprint as its wireless carrier.
If you don’t actually have any calls to make, the phone offers plenty of multimedia options to pass the time, like e-mail, Sprint TV for live and on-demand video, the Sprint Music Store for wireless song downloads and Sprint Radio with 150 streaming channels. The Instinct has a GPS function that gives you directions on screen or by voice, as well as a built-in camcorder and 2-megapixel camera with a 2x zoom.
Pricing is not yet final, but the phone will be available in June; details are available at .
As for high-speed surfing, the Instinct can use Sprint’s EV-DO mobile broadband network for zippier download speeds than the iPhone can muster on AT&T’s Edge network.
J.D. Biersdorfer, The New York Times
