Samsung Adds Rev. A Instinct, Mobile-TV Access

By Joseph Palenchar On Apr 7 2008 - 6:00am

Samsung's first CDMA 1x EV-DO Rev. A phone is also one of the company's first touchscreen phones with localized haptic feedback.

The iPhone-looking Samsung Instinct, to be available through Sprint, is a multimedia phone that lacks hard dialing keypad and lets users select which applications they want to appear on the main 3.1-inch 262,000-color screen for one-touch access. An included stylus or fingertip can be used to control applications.

The 850/1,900MHz phone, shown at CTIA 2008, uses a proprietary OS co-developed by Sprint and Samsung.

The device accesses all Sprint multimedia services, including on-demand and live Sprint TV programming, 150 Sprint Radio channels and over-the-air downloads of music. Other features include microSD slot for memory card up to 8GB, Sprint's GPS navigation service, Microsoft's Live Search for Sprint, 2-megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth 2.0 with audible caller ID, POP3 and corporate email access, threaded text messaging and the ability to use the phone as a modem.

The 4.4-ounce, 2.17-inch by 4.57-inch by 0.49-inch phone delivers up to 5.75 hours of talktime on its replaceable lithium-ion battery.

Also at the show, Samsung displayed some models announced a week earlier. One was the bar-style Access, equipped with Qualcomm's MediaFLO mobile-TV technology and operating on the AT&T Wireless network. It features a 2.3-inch landscape display and an internal antenna, as well as multimedia capabilities such as 1.3-megapixel camera, external stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, Video Share video calling, AT&T Music, stereo speakers and microSD slot. It's a quadband GSM/EDGE phone with dual-band 850/1,900MHz W-CDMA 3G technology.