The week has been an interesting one, with lots of hands-on reviews Vincent managed to spring a debate in the comments about whether or not the Samsung Omnia would indeed be an iPhone killer with his hands-on article, and he assures that it is not. Which brings me to the other big phone that people are wondering if it will hurt a bit of iPhone’s business, the HTC Touch Diamond, which Vodafone posted on their coming soon page.
Vincent also managed to get in an unboxing for the LG Decoy and revealed two new editors for here on Phone Magazine. Later on in the week Ashley pumped out a nice long review for the Decoy. We also managed to get a hold of the Sony Ericsson C905 Cybershot, which is fast since the pictures for the phone were only leaked the day before. It was revealed that the Cybershot was sporting an integrated 8.1 megapixel camera, which is the first phone to manage to slip this in.
Besides all of the exciting hands-on reviews, Samsung revealed their new eco-friendly line of phones that featured bio-plastic made from all natural material extracted from corn. It was also revealed the the Sprint Instinct was going for only $129, after a $100 mail-in rebate and signing a two-year contract of course.
We also got to see a nice long break down of the new MyShot for Alltel Wireless and the T-Mobile Sidekick LX managed to get their update out much earlier than rumors had previously predicted.
Just so you know, sony ericsson’s C905 Cybershot is ‘not’ the highest megapixel camera phone. Samsung already released a 10 megapixel camera phone a 1 or 2 years back
I was going to switch from Sprint to AT&T with iPhone 3G but then I took an hour and tried out Sprint Instinct at the store. It is an awesome phone and a serious competitor (except browser which will be resolved with Opera Mini soon).
Other than that, it is very customizable, single handed operation for most stuff, fast Touch-screen response, real GPS (unlike iPhone which just tacks on Google Maps) with turn-by-turn directions.
You can even download Google maps (both street view and satellite view) on Sprint Instinct (should be integrated with GPS in a little while as well). The voice command search is awesome (you say Chinese Food and it will find nearby using GPS and even give you a one-touch number to call or one-touch to turn-by-turn GPS directions), and 30+ TV channels and a lot of Radio channels are included. It also has a camcorder that iPhone doesn’t. It is perfect size (iphone is too wide).
And best of all, for $69.99 single line or $129.99 for 2 lines, you get everything that iPhone 3G will provide plus UNLIMITED Text messaging (iPhone will cost $20 extra per month!) and UNLIMITED TV and RADIO time (no TV or Radio on iPhone)!
The TeleNav GPS on Instinct is like high-end GPS unit for a car and it has voice command with real names of streets. It also checks for real-time traffic alerts and re-routes you!
You can even set Instinct up to announce (text to voice) the names of phone callers on incoming calls or text messages!
And it cost me $129.99 at BestBuy (no mail-in rebates needed) with renewal of 2-year contract (I was 23 months into the contract). This is the best deal for my money and I got 2 of them for me and my wife and she loves it!