Samsung Instinct Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls

Dialing a number on the Instinct's virtual keypad isn't particularly speedy, and the ring volume wasn't great either. In fact we weren't particularly impressed by any of the Instinct's calling options, they're not bad, just not particularly good either.

Dialing Speed (4.72)
Dialing a number on the Samsung Instinct wasn't particularly speedy at an average of 4.24 seconds. You can see below that this is below average and slower than any of our comparison phones but the LG Voyager. Dialing a number requires you to first hit the phone button, the tap the dialer screen and then enter your number. We found that the interface felt pretty speedy, but the end result isn't.

That said it's not terrible either, and if you're dialing a number a lot you can put it on the speed dial tab in the phone, which is the first you see, or even add it to your favorites on the home screen. Both would speed up the dialing process. The voice dialing system won't speed you up, we found it took around fifteen seconds to ask the phone to dial a number, including the time it took for the phone to confirm with us. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dialing Speed (sec)

Send and End Buttons (5.0)
Like the iPhone the send and end buttons on the Samsung Instinct are virtual. After you enter a number on the dialer you just need to tap on it to dial it. During a call there will be a slider found in the middle of the screen. Slide it to the right to end the call. We imagine this latter is to ensure that you don't accidentally hang up on a call if the phone is pressed to your face. When you receive a call the button to pick it up is found bright and green in the center of the screen. The phone button won't work as a send button for answering or dialing a number.

We found that all the controls worked well, although tapping your number to dial it is a little unintuitive at first. We like the security feature of the slider for ending your calls. That said you won't be able to do things like find your send or end button by feel as you can with phones that have real buttons. This means that instead of just hanging up a call by pulling it away from your face and hitting the end button by rote, you'll have to take the time to look at the screen, a definite disadvantage.

Call Management (5.0)
Your call history is found by going into the phone application and hitting the History tab. Here you will find a list of all your calls, both incoming and outgoing. There's no way to filter the list, instead you'll have to pay attention to the small icon to the left of each number to see if it was incoming or outgoing. Tapping on a number will call it while tapping on the small arrow to the right of the number will take you to a screen where you can save, call or message the number. You can also get a history of all calls to or from that number. What you can't get are timers for individual calls or total calls, nor can you get data counters. Of course the Instinct is only sold with Sprint's unlimited everything plan so this might not matter as much.

During a call you will find all the controls on the screen. The top of the screen has the phone number along with a timer for the duration of the call. Below this about half the screen is taken up by the contact image for the number, or a placeholder if there is none. Below that is the slider for ending a call, and below that, on the bottom third of the screen, are controls for Mute, speakerphone, adding a call, contacts and dialer. If you hit the home button during a call you'll be taken to a list of available applications which are: Contacts, Call History, Messaging, Notes, Calendar, Clock, Calculator and Phone Info. Missing are hold and record functions. Although the interface is different the features available during a call are pretty standard. We do wish that less of the screen real estate was given over the contact photo as this makes some of the controls on the bottom of the screen a little difficult to use.

Startup to Call (3.57)
It took the Samsung Instinct an average of 28.04 seconds to start up and make a phone call. You can see below that this is faster than average, but sits only middling amongst our comparison phones. That said even those that were better than the Instinct in this test are only so by a few seconds. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Startup to Call (sec)

Ring Volume (8.92)
Ring volume on the Samsung Instinct measured 89.2 decibels in our test. This involves turning the phone's volume to maximum and running through every ring tone on the device. We use a sound pressure meter from two inches away to test the volume in decibels. The Samsung Instinct's 892. decibel performance in this test isn't particularly impressive. You can see below that it's quieter than average, but it did beat out a couple of our comparison phones. Despite the results of our test we can say that the Instinct did seem pretty loud to us, but that's a subjective measure so take it with a grain of salt. The numbers indicate that in really loud settings you might have trouble hearing the phone ring.

Ring Volume in Decibels

Ringtones (0.0)
The Samsung Instinct comes with a rather wide assortment of built in ringtones, which is good as you won't be able to use your own music files as ringtones on the device. As such if the built in selection doesn't agree with you prepare to shell out some money to Sprint to buy some new ones.

Non Audio Alerts (6.0)
We were barely able to feel the Samsung Instinct's vibrate alert in our test, don't depend on it if you need to get a call. If you're looking at the Instinct when a call comes in you'll likely notice the entire screen lighting up.