Las Vegas — Samsung’s first consumer-oriented 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 850/1900MHz phone 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 a microSD slot for a memory card up to 8GB, Sprint’s GPS navigation service, Microsoft’s Live Search for Sprint, a 2-megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth 2.0 with audible caller ID, POP3 and corporate email access, threaded text messaging and 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.
Samsung is also showing some models announced last week. Two phones, the CDMA 1x EV-DO MyShot and Spex , are its first phones operating in the new 1700/2100MHz AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum. They are available through Leap Wireless.
Another phone is 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 like a 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 850/1900MHz W-CDMA 3G technology.