Full Review - Battery Life and Conclusion
Battery
We applaud Samsung/Sprint for including an extra battery and charger so you can always have a battery charged and ready. Each one is rated for about 5.75 hours of talk time; we found we had to swap batteries once every 2 days with light to moderate use. Using features like Bluetooth, GPS, voice commands, Web browsing, and the video camera drains the battery more quickly. With heavy use including lots of music listening, Bluetooth, and emailing, we had no trouble running the battery down in about 8 hours.
Conclusion
This is not a true smartphone like the iPhone or AT&T Tilt, and it's really not ideal for business users because of the lack of instantaneous email sync (a la Blackberry) and somewhat iffy MS Exchange support. We're also not crazy about the live TV and much prefer the service on LG's Voyager. But if those things don't bother you, the Instinct's otherwise excellent feature set, solid performance, great accessory bundle, and sexy form factor make it a very satisfying phone.
Pros:
• Reliable touch interface with haptic feedback
• 3.5-mm headphone jack
• Visual voicemail
• Extras like camera, email, and GPS work well
• Comes with extra battery and 2GB microSD card
Cons:
• Streamed video looks poor
• Screen doesn't automatically re-orient
• No WiFi
• Screen is tough to see outdoors
• Limited MS Exchange support
• No video messaging
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by Jennifer on November 10, 2008:
“My husband and I each got an instinct and they are awful! They constantly freeze and say out of range and the video is awful. I should have gotten a blackberry, but I was told this was way better, they were wrong.” More...