The “other iPhone 3G” — Samsung’s Instinct

Given this year’s iPhone Phrenzy, it may come as a surprise that there are any other touchscreen 3G smartphones. There are, including the about-to-be-released Samsung Instinct, which will be available via Sprint. One interesting thing is that Sprint seems to have been deeply involved in the Instinct’s development process, according an early and generally favorable Instinct review, by Peter Svensson, technology writer for Associated Press. He notes the basic hardware is already available overseas and,like the iPhone is a rectangular slab with a large touch screen and few buttons. Sprint was involved on the software side and with an outside design firm to oversee the completed device. Instinct will run on Sprint’s EV-DO Rev A cell network. It’s standard memory (2Mbytes) is less than iPhone, but it can be expanded with memory card. The screen supports fewer pixels than iPhone and only sense one finger instead of several as iPhone does. (NW blogger Mitchell Ashley has a succinct breakdown and evaluation of the iPhone features.)