Samsung M800 Instinct Cell Phone
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- Screen Size (Diagonal): 3.1 inch
- Connectivity: Bluetooth
- Performance: Dual Band
- Design: Mobile
- Style: Touch Screen
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For a phone that so obviously tries to imitate the iPhone, it is disapointing
Pros
Large screen, sturdy construction
Cons
Screen color is very pale, interface overall is unintuitive and annoying in many ways.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
The only thing this phone has going for it are the looks. Anyone who wants to use a phone will be better of with something else.
I had rather high hopes when I first got this phone. With a large screen like that, it seemed that browsing the web and taking/viewing photos would be something the phone would excel at. Also, one would expect that after so many years of development in the cellphone industry it should be impossible to not make calling and talking easy and convenient. Well, it was a complete fail on all counts!
First of all, I own an iPod Touch, so I half expected that the user interface, or at least the touch screen part of it, would be similar. Fat chance! Maybe those who never handled an iPhone or iPod Touch will not be as disappointed as I was with the Instinct, but they just don't know what they are missing. Going from mobile Safari to this phone's pathetic excuse for a web browser is a very degrading experience. It is slow, ugly and once the website you want is loaded, it is rather difficult to navigate to different sections of the page. There are way too many options that serve little purpose. For example, there is a standard mode and mobile mode for page rendering. You start with one, load the page, it looks bad so you try the other mode in hopes that it will look better, which it does not, so you press a few more buttons hoping to make it work for you, eventually admitting that you better just wait until you get to a real computer. You can install Opera Mini on it, which works better, but does not really give you any chance to utilize the touch screen function too much.
My other major complaint is the quality of the screen. Color reproduction looks worse than on my 4 years old flip phone. When I try to set custom wallpapers from my photos, the image is filled with ugly square artifacts and does not look nearly as vivid as it did on my laptop or even my old phone. This is true for any image except the ones included with the phone.
Touch screen compared to my iPod is very primitive and annoying. You actually have to press as opposed to touch. It gets tiresome for things like typing text messages. This means that you can still use it while wearing gloves, unlike the iPod, so whether to consider this a pro or a con is up to you.
Interface of the phone is weird and inconsistent. During a call some of the buttons are sliders (such as "end call") while others are plain buttons (such as "mute" and "disconnect headset"). It's very easy to accidentally press one of those plain buttons and I ended up unintentionally putting people on mute way too often. The amount of confusion and irritation this created was such that I simply couldn't take it any more.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I returned the phone to the dealer. At first it was replaced by the same model (they thought that perhaps my copy was defective with too sensitive of a touch screen). It turned out the Instinct is defective by design. Thankfully, the store was very cooperative and after some negotiations I was able to return the phone in exchange for a totally different model (they did not even mind that it was a cheaper one after I described to them all the pain the Instinct was inflicting on me).
In a nutshell, don't be fooled by the Instinct's iPhone-like external design. Yes, it's a simple-looking touchscreen brick with minimal external buttons, much like the iPhone. No, it does not work even 10% as well and unless you intend to use it for short conversations only, you might get very frustrated. If you are considering it, make sure you can return it if you don't like it after using it for several days.
First of all, I own an iPod Touch, so I half expected that the user interface, or at least the touch screen part of it, would be similar. Fat chance! Maybe those who never handled an iPhone or iPod Touch will not be as disappointed as I was with the Instinct, but they just don't know what they are missing. Going from mobile Safari to this phone's pathetic excuse for a web browser is a very degrading experience. It is slow, ugly and once the website you want is loaded, it is rather difficult to navigate to different sections of the page. There are way too many options that serve little purpose. For example, there is a standard mode and mobile mode for page rendering. You start with one, load the page, it looks bad so you try the other mode in hopes that it will look better, which it does not, so you press a few more buttons hoping to make it work for you, eventually admitting that you better just wait until you get to a real computer. You can install Opera Mini on it, which works better, but does not really give you any chance to utilize the touch screen function too much.
My other major complaint is the quality of the screen. Color reproduction looks worse than on my 4 years old flip phone. When I try to set custom wallpapers from my photos, the image is filled with ugly square artifacts and does not look nearly as vivid as it did on my laptop or even my old phone. This is true for any image except the ones included with the phone.
Touch screen compared to my iPod is very primitive and annoying. You actually have to press as opposed to touch. It gets tiresome for things like typing text messages. This means that you can still use it while wearing gloves, unlike the iPod, so whether to consider this a pro or a con is up to you.
Interface of the phone is weird and inconsistent. During a call some of the buttons are sliders (such as "end call") while others are plain buttons (such as "mute" and "disconnect headset"). It's very easy to accidentally press one of those plain buttons and I ended up unintentionally putting people on mute way too often. The amount of confusion and irritation this created was such that I simply couldn't take it any more.
It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I returned the phone to the dealer. At first it was replaced by the same model (they thought that perhaps my copy was defective with too sensitive of a touch screen). It turned out the Instinct is defective by design. Thankfully, the store was very cooperative and after some negotiations I was able to return the phone in exchange for a totally different model (they did not even mind that it was a cheaper one after I described to them all the pain the Instinct was inflicting on me).
In a nutshell, don't be fooled by the Instinct's iPhone-like external design. Yes, it's a simple-looking touchscreen brick with minimal external buttons, much like the iPhone. No, it does not work even 10% as well and unless you intend to use it for short conversations only, you might get very frustrated. If you are considering it, make sure you can return it if you don't like it after using it for several days.
