Samsung Instinct Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Notes are OK, contacts could be better, the calendar is poor and tasks are non-existent. Any questions?

Synchronization (0.0)
You cannot synchronize your personal information directly between your computer and the Samsung Instinct.

Alerts (3.0)
You can create alerts on the Samsung Instinct for calendar appointments. Alerts can be set up to go off on time, 10 minutes before (by default), 30 minutes before or one hour before. When an alert sounds the screen will light up and the sound you set for the alert will begin going off. The interface on the screen is similar to the one you get for incoming calls, the information about the alert is listed in the center of the screen and you can slide it up or down to one of two options: Dismiss or View. There is no support for snoozing the alert. Alerts will sound for three minutes, if you miss them they will appear on a While You Were Out screen that you see when you pick up the phone. We were not particularly impressed by the Instinct's alerts due to the limited options for when an alert will sound and the lack of snooze functionality.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
The Samsung Instinct comes with software that will allow you to synchronize the contacts on your device with Outlook on your computer. Instead of using a data cable to accomplish this it is actually web-based, meaning you will synchronize your Outlook contacts with Sprint's server and then the Instinct will synchronize with that same server. If you have access to an Exchange server the Instinct will also synchronize your contacts with that service, as long as you have Outlook Web Access enabled on the server.

Adding Contacts (4.55)
Adding a new contact to the Samsung Instinct took us an average of 21.98 seconds. You can see below that this is not a particularly good time, below average overall and slower than every one of our comparison phones, albeit the iPhone was almost as slow. The problem we ran into with the Instinct is one that we also had with the iPhone, namely that the flexibility of a touch screen interface often means that you don't know exactly where to go to get a given function.

In the case of the Instinct we had to press the phone button first, then press the contacts tab at the bottom of the screen, then hit the add button at the top of the screen, then tap on a field, then rotate the phone to enter the name, etc, etc. With a regular phone your controls are much more closely grouped around a D-Pad and soft keys, and this just means there's less hunting and pecking involved. We also found the keyboard on the Instinct a little difficult to use, but we'll get more into that in the hardware section. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to add Contact (sec)

Looking/Sorting/Search (1.5)
Contacts on the Samsung Instinct are automatically sorted by first name, and this is your only option. There is no search functionality, however there is a feature that allows you to quickly scroll through the alphabet so you can jump more easily to the place you want if you have a lot of contacts. To use this feature in the contacts interface just place your finger on the small half-circle you see at the top left, then start moving your finger down to scroll through letters. This is similar to the scrolling alphabet feature you see on the iPhone or the HTC Touch, although it's implemented slightly differently. We actually like the way it works, however, as it doesn't leave the alphabet taking up space on your display. That aside, though, we really wish that there was support for things like categories/groups, filtering and searching. The lack of these features is what results in the poor score you see here.

Fields (1.6)
When you create a new contact on the Samsung Instinct you have a very basic selection of fields to choose from. You can enter name, seven phone numbers, three email addresses, one address, ringer, note, web address and contact photo. Although this is a decent selection of fields for a standard phone it pales in comparison to the dozens of fields available on smart phones like the Nokia N81.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (3.2)
The Samsung Instinct has a speed dial system similar to the iPhone. In the phone application you have a tab of favorites that to which you can add numbers from your contacts. Although useful we didn't find the Instinct's speed dial system as useful as being able to just press and hold a button a real keypad or keyboard, which is a one touch affair. On the Instinct, by contrast, you have to hit the phone button first, and then find your contact in a list, it's just not as fast.

One of the big features of the Instinct that is touted by Sprint is its voice command capabilities. We'll get into how you can use voice command to control other applications in the Software section, but for now we did check to see how voice command performed dialing contacts. The results were good, but not perfect. We were eventually able to get the Instinct to recognize all five of our diverse contact names, however in all cases we had to use the full name, and in one case the system asked us to choose between two possible contacts. As such we're going to deduct a single point from the score we would normally give. The Instinct does not support voice tags, which allow you to record voice commands on the device.

Adding Calendar Items (2.62)
Adding a calendar appointment to the Samsung Instinct is akin to slowly plucking every hair on your body with a pair of tweezers. The frustration is greater than the pain. It took us an incredible 38.24 seconds to add a simple lunch appointment for the following day to the Instinct. You can see below that not only is this over 24 seconds longer than average, it's also 16 seconds longer than the next worst of our comparison phones.

The biggest problem with adding an appointment is setting the time. The Instinct uses a dial system very similar to what the iPhone uses. The problem is that while the iPhone's dial is responsive and relatively quick, the Instincts is incredibly difficult to use. We routinely found ourselves flying past the time we wanted for hours or minutes, requiring us to take a lot of time slowing down and making fine adjustments. We seriously hope that they find a way to improve this in an update soon. If not just get rid of the thing and give us a keypad so we can just enter the damn numbers. Heaven help anyone trying to use the Instinct as a serious calendaring device.

By the way, the Instinct set a record for poor performance in this test, our previous champion was the LG Prada at 32.5 seconds, which, fittingly perhaps, was also a touch screen phone. For more information on how we conducted this excruciating test see this article.

Time to add Appointment (sec)

Calendar Views (2.33)
Unlike most phones the Samsung Instinct only offers users two calendar views. The default is the monthly view, this is what you see when you open the calendar application. It's pretty straightforward, at the top you see the current month with buttons to move forward and back. In the middle is the month, with days that have appointments underlined in blue. At the bottom is a button that will take you to today's date.

The only other view is they day view. Simply tap on any day and you are taken to this view for that date. Here you can get a list of appointment on that day in agenda format, which means there are no hours listed along the left. All you see for each appointment is the start time and title. Frankly we would have liked to see more information provided in both views. In the monthly view it would have been nice to get some kind of popup about a selected day's appointments and in the day view it would be nice to see icons for things like alerts and recurrence. As it is the views on the Instinct are extremely basic and there's no support for advanced features like filtering or searching.

Fields (6.0)
When you create a new appointment on the Samsung Instinct your selection of fields are pretty limited. You can add a title, start/end time (excruciatingly), alert and recurrence. You can also set a ringer and a call reminder, which will prompt you to call one of your contacts. We do want to mention that the recurrence options on the Instinct are very good. You have a choice of repeating an appointment every day, week, month or year, but you can also set the recurrence to happen on any day(s) of the week you want. So if you have a meeting that happens every Monday and Thursday you can set that up. This is nice as there are many smart phones that don't support this type of advanced recurrence. Missing are more advanced fields like categories, location, all-day events and notes.

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The Samsung Instinct does not support tasks or to-dos, as such it will receive zeros in these sections.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
No tasks program.

Fields (0.0)
No Tasks program.

Adding Notes (3.25)
It took us an average of 15.4 seconds to add a new note to the Samsung Instinct. This time is right about average overall, but you can see below that it's at the slower range of our comparison phones. That said it's nowhere near as bad as what we saw from the calendar, so there is that at least. We found that creating a new note was fairly straightforward, just tap on the Main tab from the home screen, tap on the Notes application and then tap the nice big Tap to add button. We wish that other PIM applications had this shortcut as well instead of the tiny + button at the top of the screen. What took the most time was actually typing out our note, as with other areas we're finding that the keyboard on the Instinct isn't the speediest in the world. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Time to add Note (sec)

Note Interface (2.0)
The note interface on the Samsung Instinct is very straightforward. When you open the application you get a list of your notes with a shortcut to create a new note at the bottom of the list. There's also a second shortcut to create a new note at the top left of the screen and a delete button at the top right. When you select a note you've created you see the text entered with two buttons at the top, one to edit the note and another to delete. Editing the note involves entering the keyboard view, which requires you to rotate the handset to landscape orientation. There's no fancy stuff here, you can't sort, filter, search or categorize your notes.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The Instinct offers no formatting options for notes like the ability to bold, italicize or add media.

Voice Memo (0.0)
There is no voice memo application on the Samsung Instinct.