Samsung Instinct HD SPH-M850 – Almost a smartphone
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
The Sleeker Design with a brighter display. It is an upgrade to previous models. Curves and smooth angles are giving an Trim Candy Bar Shape which is appealing. It includes the WiFi Feature.
Thumbs Down:
Size is larger than original Instinct and Instinct S30. No feature to change the small text size. Scanning through long lists and using scroll bars was sluggish. The inconvenient feature is that the memory card slot is located behind the battery cover.
Inside the Trunk:
Technology: CDMA
Band: Digita Dual-Band: EVDO rev.A 800/1900MHz
Phone design: Trim Candybar
Caller ID: Yes
Other features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Opera Browser, Outlook Sync, TV Output, 5MP camera, touchpad
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Samsung Instincts has dual display – Internal and Extetrnal. Internal Display has a screen size of 4.63″X2.28″X5.0″ with 16MB Color and the External Display is HVGA having resolution 320X480. It is a Touch Screen. Its talk time is about 5.7 hours. It has a camera of 5.0MP with a touchpad for input. It has 128-note polyphonic ringtones, embedded Java Games and exciting wallpapers. It also has a facility of Offline Mode with Voice Memo/Mail.
It has external memory up to 16GB.
Inside Dope:
The Samsung Instinct HD is a smart phone which is comfortable to hold and feels solid in the hand. Its 3.2 inch screen has a resolution up to 480X320. Colors are vibrant and bright.
Its touch interface is responsive and quick to work. The handset has the capability to switch between a right and left handed orientation and you can also adjust the touch sensitivity. The intensity can also be changed and deactivated also. There is a proximity sensor which automatically locks the handset from accidental touches when you are on a call.
InstinctHD has the same menu interface which we saw on previous instinct phone. It has an option to display the menu items in List and Tiles format. The tiles view display the thumbnails of the photo and you don’t need to open the photo gallery for this. The Menu choices can be arranged by using the “Faves” option. It also offers the facility to rearrange the menu choices or delete them.
The “Web” Menu gives you a variety of browser choices, MS Live Search and gadgets. “My Stuff” Menu offers the items for Facebook, Orkut and Twitter.
There are three buttons beneath the LCD – calling key, home button and back key. Home Button takes you back to Main Screen, Calling Key gives you another menu with the phone book, speed dial list, menu of recent calls, visual voice mail features and phone dialer. Big alpha numeric touch controls and keys for speakerphone and contacts access are on right side at display.
The Instinct HD has a full size QWERTY keyboard with big buttons which are really spacious. Also, there is an option to change the keyboard style to display the special characters.
The power button is on the top of Instinct HD. There is also a 3.5mm jack for headphones. The MicroSD Port for chargers/USB Cable, Camera Shutter and TV Out Jack are on left side. There is a single speaker behind the handset below the self portrait mirror, flash and camera lens.
The phone book can have only 600 entries which is smaller than previous versions. Each entry in phone book can have 5 phone numbers, 1 email address, a photo, notes, URL, postral address and an instant message handle. The contacts can be organized in groups and paired with photos and one of 26 polyphonic ringtones of 128-notes. Other features include a notepad, speakerphone, world clock, stopwatch, time, alarm clock, calculator, calendar, vibrate mode and multimedia and text messaging.
Samsung InstinctHD speaker independent voice commands and instant messaging, USB mass storage, Sprint visual voice mail, PC syncing, Sprint Navigation with Microsoft Live Search and Bluetooth with stereo profile. You can snooze the alarm or mute an incoming phone call by placing the handset face down.
It also offers the email options like sync with POP3 accounts of Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, AOL and also with work corporate email accounts which uses Outlook Web Access. However, it did not have the full Exchange Server supports; however, it is good for basic communication.
Opera 9.7 web browser lets to browse through Web Pages, it comes with the Speed Dial feature which enables to open the pages instantly by single click. You can use both Bookmarks and Speed Dial. Opera allows tab browsing to open multiple pages at once. However, it takes time to switch between tabs on the display. The Opera doesn’t have support for Opera Turbo or Flash Lite.
Samsung offers a 5MP Camera to record videos up to 1280X720 resolution. We can also records the video in QVGA (320X240) and VGA (640X480). When recording You can change the exposure, use the flash as light, adjust the saturation, white balance, sharpness, contrast and color tone. It also has a feature of self timer.
Samsung Instinct HD allows transferring the video to an HD Capable monitor; however, it requires a separate HD TV Cable. The still camera shoots the photo in for resolution from 2592X1944 down to 640X480 with self timer, six color tones, 3 quality settings, spot metering, 7 scene modes, 5 adjustable white balance, 4x zoom, autofocus, face detection and a macro mode. Also, we can change the Sharpness, contrast, brightness, saturation and ISO speed. The flash is really bright and we can set it for automatic or for always on.
Instinct HD is a 3G phone which enables the connectivity to Sprint TV and includes on demand and live programming from a various channels.
Nitty Gritty:
The Samsung Instinct HD SPH-M850 is a smart phone. It has various upgrades to previous versions. It worth the cost, however, it is expensive than HTC Hero.
