Review: Samsung Instinct S30 for Sprint

Meet the Samsung Instinct S30. Does it look familiar? It should. The Samsung Instinct S30 is infused with the same DNA that made the Samsung Instinct such a block-busting hit last year. Sprint saw sales records fall to the Instinct’s iPhone-fighting appeal, the Instinct burned up Best Buy’s smartphone sales records and Instinct was voted “Best In Show” at CTIA Las Vegas 2008. Now, the newer, leaner Instinct S30 has arrived on Sprint’s network to carry the Instinct-torch.

The Samsung Instinct S30 sports essentially the same feature-set as the Samsung Instinct, but wraps all that smartphone goodness in a sleeker, slimmer and overall better-looking package. What you get is the new Instinct S30 that feels better in the hand and turns more heads. But, is it worth the upgrade from the original Instinct? Is it worth the purchase in the first place?

Keep reading for Samsung Instinct S30 specs and photo gallery (at the bottom).

Samsung Instinct

By Samsung (Available from Sprint for $130 on new 2-year contract)

Specifications

800/1900 MHz CDMA
EVDO Revision 0 (Rev. 0)
3.2-inch resistive touchscreen display
2-megapixel camera
GPS (Sprint Navigation)
Bluetooth
microSD card slot
Opera Mini web browser pre-loaded
Text and picture messaging (threaded)
Speakerphone and voice commands
Weight – 3.88 ounces
Dimension (HxWxD) – 4.57″ x 2.17″ x .48″

Design

Style
First and foremost, the Samsung Instinct S30 is a looker. The S30 is the little brother to the original Samsung Instinct, only, it’s the Instinct’s better-looking little brother. Created from the same DNA that birthed the Samsung Instinct, the Instinct S30 boasts a familiar design. The Instinct S30 is an all-touchscreen slate, with the 3.2-inch display dominating the front face of the device – it sports a narrower display-bezel that makes the touchscreen look even bigger than the original Instinct, while at the same time making the entire handset sexier.

The only physical buttons on the Instinct S30 are found lining the outside edge of the device. There’s the volume-control rocker, the Power button, the camera shutter-button, a voice command button and three ports for data/charging, microSD card and headphones. The front-face sports just three touch-sensitive “buttons” for “Back,” “Home” and “Call/End.” The end-result is a clean, uncluttered look that screams smartphone – minimalist-design prevails again!

Build/Material Quality
Build quality is on par with the original Instinct, if not a bit better. The device feels solid in the hand, but, more importantly, it feels more natural in the hand. The curvier lines and slightly slimmed-down body lends to the Instinct S30’s improved in-hand feel. Materials, on the other hand, disappoint slightly. There’s a lot of plastic in the Instinct S30. The display is plastic, the bezel is plastic, the battery cover is plastic. Although, for $130 on-contract, it’s hard to ask for more than high-quality plastics – which the S30 has plenty of.

On to the touchscreen. The Instinct S30 much sport a revised resistive touchscreen panel. The original Instinct suffered from resistive-touchscreen-syndrome – an ailment that affects most of today’s touchscreen handsets, resulting in a squishy, spongy touchscreen that’s never as accurate as you’d like it to be. Capacitance is the new touchscreen technology to keep your eye on, but that doesn’t mean resistive touchscreens should be completely disregarded. The Instinct S30’s updated touchscreen does away with most of the “squish” and is actually quite accurate. Each touchscreen input on the S30 is accompanied by vibration feedback, letting you know you’re input has been registered.

Gone are the days where touchscreen inputs felt like you were going to press your finger straight through the fragile display, usually resulting in a a touch-input just a couple millimeters away from where you thought your finger was pointed. The more accurate touchscreen also helps take the on-screen QWERTY keyboard from “frustratingly annoying” to “accurately enjoyable.”

Battery
Battery life is amazing. That’ pretty much sums it up. It’s useless to quote battery life figures, because it’s going to differe from person to person. Coming from a daily-driver iPhone, it’s an incredible feeling not having to worry about charging your phone for days on end. Or, if you forget the phone in your car over the weekend, you’ll be sure to find it with a “green” battery meter on Monday – and it’ll have all your missed calls and text messages queued up for you.

Through moderate use (email, web browsing, camera and music), it took a few days to completely drain the battery. Still, keep in mind that we weren’t playing with too many videos or watching TV shows or anything like that – battery life will likely suffer a bit under the load of streaming video.

UI

Usability
The Sprint Instinct S30 isn’t a smartphone. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how the user interface measures up against smartphones.

The Instinct S30 comes “as is.” You can’t really install apps (aside from a game download), you can’t change how it looks (aside from wallpapers) and you’ll have to make do with whatever software Sprint saw fit to put on the Instinct S30. But, those drawbacks notwithstanding, the Instinct S30’s UI is incredibly intuitive and quick to respond. Actually, the fact that the Instinct S30 isn’t a smartphone works to its advantage. Applications like the Opera Mini browser, weather and email open instantly. There’s no “hang-time” between hitting the icon with your finger and the application loading.

In fact, the S30’s UI is so simple to navigate, that if you’re not completely familiar with the UI within the first few minutes of opening the box… well, we won’t go there. Every touch-input is confirmed through vibration feedback as well as an audible “click” (both of which can be disabled or turned down).

The on-screen keyboard is much more accurate, now that the resistive touchscreen has improved. Touch-inputs are verified by vibration feedback, but not intrusively. The previous Sprint Instinct would stumble over itself trying to keep up with vibration feedback for even the quickest keyboard inputs, a big problem once you become deft enough to type quickly on the virtual keyboard. The new keyboard will skip some vibrations if you type too fast for the Instinct S30 to keep up – a small improvement that makes a big difference.

Web Browser
Opera Mini comes pre-loaded, and it’ one of the S30’s headlining features. Opera Mini serves up full-HTML webpages just as they would look on a desktop, and it might even render the page almost as quickly as your desktop. Opera has been long considered the leader in mobile web browsers, and Opera Mini proves that any handset can be a fully-connected web browsing device.

Email
The email client, on the other hand, just won’t suffice for power users. HTML email isn’t an option, same goes for managing email contacts. Email inboxes are also limited to 100 of your most recent emails. Still, adding a Gmail account was about as hard as booting up the device, and the email client offers a file browser that makes it easy to attach media (pictures, videos, audio, etc.) to your email.

All in all, the S30’s email client is perfect for the needs-to-be-in-touch consumer with basic email needs. If you run your business from your smartphone, or need to view HTML emails, expect to be disappointed.

Media
The S30 comes with fantastic media support. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get used to using separate applications to access your music, videos and pictures. We’d like to see all media integrated into a single media player/viewer, but again, this is not a smartphone.

You can download songs through the Sprint Music store, games and the like are available through another Sprint store. You can keep up with NASCAR through the NASCAR application. You can even listen to radio. Sprint is big on pushing their own-branded services, and the S30’s limited UI makes sure you play in Big Yellow’s sandbox. We’re not too keen on that.

Camera
The camera is basic. The first time we fired it up, we got a “Fuzzy picture warning,” which we thought was kind of cool. But, after a few minutes playing with the camera, we realized there weren’t many imaging features to play with. Check that, there were no imaging features to play with – reminds us of the iPhone’s camera.

Picture quality is par for a 2.0-megapixel camera. Viewing and sending pictures and video is as simple and intuitive as the rest of the S30’s UI.

Overall

Pros

A resistive touchscreen that we actually like using! (Less “squish,” more accurate)
Sleek style
Easy-to-use UI
Much improved in-hand feel
Long battery life

Cons