Samsung Instinct Cell Phone Review - Software

The Instinct's interface is generally well thought out and we like the customization options provided by the Favorites tab on the home screen. We do have some concerns about the stability of the device, we encountered several crashes in our use. The browser is very good, not the best we've ever seen but a significant step up from the poor browsers you see on most cell phones.

OS (4.5)
The Samsung Instinct runs a proprietary operating system. The OS is fairly intuitive, touch-screen based it tends to sacrifice some functionality for the sake of simplicity, and that isn't a bad thing. We often found ourselves wondering how to do something and just tried what seemed most intuitive, and often it would work. This is design that is usually ascribed to a company like Apple, and we were glad to see it on the Instinct. Most of the Instinct's interface is built around tabs. At the bottom of most screens you will see tabs that allow you to access different functions. Tapping on a tab will change the interface to give you access to different features. The number of on-screen buttons is usually kept to a minimum and this helps contribute to the intuitiveness of the interface. We found ourselves comfortable with the interface rather quickly, and this is a major success on the part of Samsung and Sprint. Our scores for proprietary operating systems are capped at five points. We reserve higher scores for more powerful smart phone operating systems like Windows Mobile or Symbian.

Home Screen Score (7.0)
The Samsung Instinct's home screen is a tabbed interface, as seen in many places on the device. The four tabs on the home screen are Favorites, Main, Fun and Web. The first tab is a user customizable list of applications and functions. By default there are no applications listed, giving the user the freedom to decide exactly what they want.

The next three tabs give you access to various applications, grouped by function. Overall there are 23 different items on these tabs, organized in 3x3 grids with large buttons that make it easy to access them. At the top of the home screen is a typical information bar for a phone. Here you see signal strength, time and battery information. We found the Instinct's home screen to be both simple and powerful. Although it won't offer users the same information at a glance effect that you get with Windows Mobile's Today screen or S60's Active Standby display, it puts much more of the phone's capabilities within two taps of a finger than most other phones.

Extensibility (3.0)
This is where the big difference between the Samsung Instinct and more advanced smart phones occurs. The Instinct is limited to Java applications while more advanced platforms, which will include the iPhone when it receives an update later this month, allow users to download native third party applications. This gap has been closing slightly in recent years as some Java applications like Google Maps and Opera Mini have become much more powerful, but it is still a significant gap. There just isn't the range of choice and the interaction with the operating system that native applications provide. We also found that some of the more powerful Java applications like Opera Mini were slow to load and caused the Instinct to freeze up occasionally.

Customizability (3.0)
The Samsung Instinct provides users with a couple of nice customization options. First, and most obvious, is the Favorites tab on the home screen, where you can add a wide variety of shortcuts to applications and other functions for quick access. You can also switch between right and left handed operation, a nice feature that we're sure lefties will appreciate. Other than that  you're pretty much stuck with what you get. There are no options to change font size or type, rearrange applications or apply themes.

OS Responsiveness (3.0)
This on is a mixed bag. In about 70% of the cases we found the interface to be responsive with nice transitions that make things move smoothly. We also found, however, that the touch screen wasn't all it could be. We found ourselves tapping an icon on the screen two or three times much more often than is the case with the iPhone. We also had the device lock up on us several times, which seems to indicate that Samsung and Sprint may not have put enough horsepower under the hood. When it did lock up on us we had to shut the device down and then start it up again, an annoyance that's usually reserved for underpowered smart phones. It even froze up and shut down on us once when an alarm went off at the same time that we were using the local search feature. This looks like it could be a major problem for users.

Browser Features (7.0)
The Samsung Instinct's web browser is touted is a "real" browser, akin to Safari on the iPhone. The browser supports both full HTML pages and mobile oriented WAP pages. It also supports Javascript, Images, Cookies, Encryption and Frames. What it doesn't support are some more advanced web technologies like Flash and Java. It also doesn't support RSS feeds or password management. In terms of technologies supported the Instinct is as good as Safari on the iPhone, but then again so are most advanced browsers on cell phones. It is a step up from the limited browsers found on lower end cell phones.

Browsing Interface (8.0)
The Samsung Instinct's web browser is always loaded in landscape orientation. When first launched there is a bar along the left side of the screen that gives you access to four functions, while the entire rest of the screen is taken up by the web site. The four functions on the left side bar are zoom, overview, viewing mode and a last button to reveal additional functions. The zoom switches between 1x, 2x and 1/2x.

The overview mode is very similar to S60 Web's mini-map feature, which gives you an overview of the whole page with a box you can move around to zoom in on the part you want. This is a very powerful and convenient way to get around, and we're very happy to see it. The mode button switches between mobile and desktop mode. Mobile mode reformats the page so it fits on the display better while desktop mode renders the page just the way you would see it on your computer.

When you tap on the last button on the left side bar you reveal additional functions at the top and right of the screen. At the top is the address bar, with forward and back buttons and a stop/refresh button. On the right side are four buttons for search, home, favorites and history functions. This method of allowing you to view or hid these additional features was something we liked, it allowed us to get at things quickly but also have the ability to use most of the screen real estate for browsing.

The Samsung Instinct's bookmarks or favorites are a simple list of all your bookmarked pages. You also add a bookmark from this page using the plus sign at the top left, with the default being the page you are currently viewing. There is an edit button at the top right that allows you to reorder favorites, delete them or view and edit details. The details page is also where you can also choose which of your favorites is the home page. There is no support for organizing favorites into folders, an omission that we find annoying as it makes organizing large numbers of favorites difficult. This history is similarly just a simple list of the pages you've visited with a button at the top right that lets you delete some or all of the items. History is saved between sessions.

We found the browsing interface on the Instinct to be pretty good. We believe Safari on the iPhone is still more intuitive and S60 Web is more powerful but the Instinct's browser is as good as Opera Mini or the LG Voyager's browsers, both of which we like a lot. Most users will have no problem having a very comfortable web browsing experience on the Instinct.

Browser Access (6.67)
It took us six steps to go from the home screen on the Instinct until we had our website up in the browser. You can see below that this is slightly better than average and similar to many of our comparison phones. To accomplish this task on the Instinct we first had to tap on the Web tab on the home screen, then tap on the browser to launch it. We then had to hit the button to reveal additional controls and then tapped on the address bar to enter a new address. For the purposes of this test we count typing the address as a single step. We do a steps test here instead of a timed test because we don't want network issues interfering. You can shorten your steps to launch the browser by adding it to your Favorites on the home screen, and if you go to a particular page a lot you can even add a web bookmark to the Favorites list.

Steps to Browse to Wirelessinfo

Gaming (2.0)
As has been typical of Sprint phones there is not a single full version game on the Samsung Instinct. There are several demonstration games, but if you want to play them to full effect you'll have to dish out and pay for them. We find this extremely annoying, we think any cell phone should ship with at least one reasonably fun game. The Samsung Instinct supports Java based games, most of which are designed to use a D-Pad and soft keys. When you play such games on the Instinct you get virtual controls, which just aren't as good as the real thing. Hopefully games better designed for touch screen devices like the Instinct will be forthcoming, until then it's probably not much of a gaming platform.

Calculator (3.0)
Surprising calculator is given a prominent spot as the center application on the Main tab in the home screen. Either Samsung and Sprint believe that their customers are math wizzes, or someone just didn't think about it much. Either way the calculator on the Instinct is pretty basic. You get a typical layout for a pocket calculator with the numbers taking up most of the display and various basic functions arranged around them. The top of the screen shows you what you're calculating. There's also a down arrow at the top of the screen that allows you to switch to a tip calculator or unit converter.

Alarm (7.0)
Alarms on the Instinct are found under the Clock application in the Main tab. You can create multiple alarms and turn each one off or on individually. Recurrence is supported with the options of Once, Daily, Mon-Fri and Sat & Sun. We would have liked to see the more powerful recurrence tool from the calendar that lets you create your own recurrence patterns, but the presets should cover most people. You can set a ringtone individually for each alarm and also set the length of the Snooze to 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes. The alarm application is pretty good and should cover the needs of most users.

Document Software (1.0)
The Samsung Instinct is capable of viewing Word documents found in email attachments, as we discussed in the Messaging section. It is not capable of viewing or editing any other document types.

Other Software (2.0)
In addition to the software discussed above and elsewhere in this review there is one additional applications on the Samsung Instinct that we'd like to award points for. The first of these is the local search application, that allows you to search for local businesses much like Google Maps does. This program is integrated with the Navigator software and the GPS, so the device automatically knows where you are and can find a given business on a map and the give you directions to it. It also works with the voice command software, so you can just say something like "Italian restaurant" and it will perform a search on that item. We thought this feature was cool enough to award two points for it, normally we only award a single point for each item in the Other Software section.

There is a second program on the Instinct that we considered awarding a bonus point for, namely its voice command software. We covered the dialing capabilities in the Organizer section, but it also allows you to access certain applications like Weather and Sports. Unfortunately the list is limited and we didn't find the selection particularly compelling.