Hands on: Samsung Instinct

Having had a full year to catch up, handset manufacturers now are kicking it into high gear with the iPhone clones. What we have here is the Samsung Instinct, just one of many Samsung phones that sport a full-body touchscreen, a familiar-looking UI and a wealth of multimedia features. Apparently, Samsung and Sprint designed the UI for this device from the ground-up, using Java and Brew and it shows: During our hands-on, the interface felt buggy was often unresponsive and even froze up a few times. Still, this phone isn't due out until June, so Sprint has a few months to work the kinks out. In addition to the usual iPhone features that you've come to expect (threaded SMS, music/video playback, photo viewer, even visual voicemail), the Instinct sports EV-DO Rev. A support, GPS, a web browser with tilt navigation and localized haptics. While the tilt navigation is cool, if a bit gimmicky (it uses the device's camera, not an accelerometer), the web browser itself isn't quite up to snuff. The localized haptics, on the other hand, make the onscreen keypad much easier to use than the iPhone's. At the right price, this device could be a real contender in the consumer market--look for it to land for under $300 this summer.

For more on the Instinct:
- see this photo slideshow