Most Innovative Product of CTIA Wireless 2008: Samsung Instinct

Samsung and Sprint are moving touch in an exciting new direction with the Samsung Instinct, a device that offers vibrating tactile feedback, fast EV-DO Rev. A data, and GPS capability in a slick design. What makes the Instinct truly innovative is its customizable Favorites menu, which enables users to access everything, from specific contacts and Web sites to Sprint TV stations, with a single tap.

The Instinct, arriving in June, also impresses with the way it uses voice recognition. Not only can you launch applications and send text messages by pressing the Voice to Action button, you can also look up nearby businesses via Live Search from Sprint. From there you can get turn-by-turn driving directions from the TeleNav-powered Sprint Navigation service.

Other winning features include access to the touch-optimized Sprint Music Store (for 99-cent over-the-air downloads), Pocket Express widgets (for quick access to news, sports, and weather), and Visual Voicemail. The Instinct has potential to be one of the best phones of the year.

This phone “seems” to have a lot of potential. Of course so did the HTC-Touch that Sprint rolled out last year (talk about disappointing). Hopefully, the Instinct will also have decent address and date book functionality as well.

There has been a great deal of comparison (constructive and critical) between the upcoming “Instinct” and the “iPhone”. Well, Apple wasn’t the first to come out with a full screen touch interface (they just did it better than anyone else to date). In many ways Apple has done the cell phone community a enormous service by raising the standard for touch interfaces. Yes … yes … why not just get an iPhone. There are many reasons and for all it’s market penetration and popularity it is not a perfect device.

Personally, I have issues with AT&T and vowed when I left their customer base many years ago that it would take a significant product to make me go back. I am hopeful that this new Sprint phone may be the answer for all the Sprint customers who for various reasons, have now interest in AT&T as a provider.

*** BTW … I manage a combined Apple & Windows OS desktop environment so you can’t claim I simply dislike Apple. But I’m not a fanboy either! ***

Just another set of ramblings from the Mid-West.