Samsung Instinct Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality

The Samsung Instinct's audio quality ranged from eh to poor. The audio received was eh, and everything else was poor. Don't expect great audio quality from the Instinct.

General Audio
The quality of audio you get from your cell phone is amongst its most important features. As such we use professional software and hardware to test audio quality so you know what you're getting. To simulate the human ear we use a HATS (Head And Torso Simulator) and to analyze the software we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.25)
In this test we look at the quality of sound received by the Samsung Instinct, so this is how others will sound to you on calls. Below you can see the Instinct's performance in blue while the limits we test against are in red.

You can see that the Instinct had some problems with this test, falling outside of our limits in several places. In particular it rose above our limits at the mid to low range of frequencies, which could cause voices to sound exaggerated. It also fell of at higher frequencies faster than we would like, which could cause higher pitched voices to be clipped. You can see below that the Instinct's performance in this test was middling compared to other devices, overall it's slightly below average.

Cell Phone	Samsung Instinct	Samsung Glyde (on Verizon)	Nokia N81 (8GB) (on AT&T)
Score	7.25	6.56	8.73
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	LG Voyager (on Verizon)	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.84	6.24	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Sound Send Frequency Response (6.75)
Here we look at the quality of sound sent by the Samsung Instinct, so in this test we're looking at how you will sound to those on the other end of the call. Once again the Instinct's performance is indicated in blue below with the limits we test against in red.

You can see that the Instinct's performance had some significant issues. In fact it exceeded our limits across the middle range of frequencies and then fell off faster than we would like. What this means is that many voices will be exaggerated and some higher pitched voices will seem clipped. You can see below that these issues are reflected in the Instinct's score, which is the lowest amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Samsung Instinct	Samsung Glyde (on Verizon)	Nokia N81 (8GB) (on AT&T)
Score	6.75	8.23	7.65
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	LG Voyager (on Verizon)	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	8.51	7.82	7.58
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Handset Side Tone (5.60)
Side tone is the small amount of our own voice that is piped back into your ear so you can tell how loudly you are speaking. Normally we like to see side tone in the range of -18 decibels. The Samsung Instinct's side tone averaged -22.4 decibels, which is significantly lower than we'd like. In fact you can see below that it was the lowest amongst our comparison phones and only the iPhone had a side tone that varied more from our ideal. What this means in practice is that you will hear your voice as lower than it actually is, causing you to speak louder to compensate. If those on the other end of the call are complaining that you are speaking too loudly while on the Instinct this is probably the reason.

Side Tone in Decibels