Sprint Steps It Up With $250 Instinct HD Smartphone

Remember the original Instinct? Sprint's go-to smartphone that wasmeant to rival Apple's original iPhone? Since the introduction of thatphone, the Instinct s30 has hit the scene, and now the best Instinctyet is just about ready to slip into hands. The Instinct HD is thelatest and greatest in the long-standing lineup, though we're stillwondering who on Earth would select this over a Palm Pre.

You see, the Samsung-sourced Instinct HD is priced at $249.99 with atwo-year agreement and a $100 mail-in rebate. That's $100 more than thePalm Pre, which is largely regarded as the best smartphone on Sprintand the only real phone to rival the iPhone and the handful of Androidphones on the market. Plus, the Instinct never really made a positivename for itself. It's known for over-promising and under-delivering, sowe can only wonder why Samsung and Sprint decided to charge such apremium for a phone that starts off disadvantaged to begin with.

At an rate, the smartphone does boast a full touch panel, a 5MP camera(with HD video recording), high-def video output, Opera Mobile webbrowser, EV-DO Rev. A (3G), Wi-Fi, an ambient light sensor,accelerometer and a proximity sensor. There's even haptic feedback forthose who like their touch screen to vibrate, and the virtual QWERTYkeyboard should keep your thumbs busy all the while. The phone will beavailable to customers starting tomorrow at Best Buy Mobile, while itwill not land in Sprint's own retail channels until October 11th.

Samsung Instinct HD offers all of the must-have features of its predecessors including:

• Live Search for Sprint, powered by Microsoft, which provides easy access to directory information on-the-go, GPS-enabled directions, interactive maps and one-touch click to call access.
• Visual Voicemail, allowing users to listen to messages in their order of preference and manage them with a simple tap of the screen.
• Sprint TV^®, with an extensive selection of channels and on-demand programming.
• Advanced stereo Bluetooth^® 2.0.
• Support for personal and corporate email (sync with Microsoft^® Outlook^®).
• SMS voice and text messaging with threaded text.
• Easy access to social networking sites, including Facebook^®, Flickr^® and Twitter.