If the “S” in “iPhone 3G S” stands for speed, we’re going to wager that the “Q” in “Instinct Q” stands for QWERTY. And if it doesn’t? We don’t really care, because BAM! QWERTY KEYBOARD!

After the release of the touch-only myTouch and Hero, we were starting to wonder when we’d see another Android handset with a QWERTY keyboard beyond the G1 – and here it is in all of its glory by way of Phandroid. The Sprint logos adorning the face should come as no surprise; it is an Instinct, after all.

We can’t wait to use that keyboard. Helio Ocean-esque keys complete with a full number row? Yes, please.

I certainly like the new look a lot more. We’ll have more info and/or pictures as soon as we get ‘em. Here’s the forum link.

Update: Instinct Mini?

I certainly like the new look a lot more. We’ll have more info and/or pictures as soon as we get ‘em. Here’s the forum link.

Update: Instinct Mini? Probably.

We already know that these two phones are Sprint-bound in January but BGR is reporting that Best Buy stores will see the Sprint Treo Pro 850 and a pink version of the Samsung Instinct in the near future. A pink version? That’s their answer to everything!

Looks like the unlocked price of the Treo is $699.99, though that’ll likely be subsidized when it shows up. The number’s cut off from the Instinct shot, but I betcha a buck it’ll cost the same as the regular Instinct. It’s just pink, after all.

Although both screens say that the phones entered Best Buy’s system on December 8th, that’s apparently normal and means that the devices are on their way. None of this is 100% set in stone — as it was sent in via an anonymous tip — but it’s much too boring to be fake.

ModMyGphone via AC

via Engadget

Over the weekend, Instinct owners discovered they had a new patch awaiting them courtesy of Sprint and Samsung. Anxiously awaiting the patch that will bring keyboard support to Java applications on the Instinct? This isn’t it. It does, however, give the browser a bit of much needed love.

According to the patch notes (available after the jump), this release (BH29 – catchy name, right?) just about finishes off the UI changes that they began rolling out over the last patch or two, while throwing in a few browser “optimizations” for good measure.

For patch notes and more details, head over to MobileCrunch >>

Starting tomorrow, Radio Shack will be selling the Samsung Instinct to new Sprint customers for $99. If you’re an existing Sprint customer looking to upgrade, it’ll cost you the normal price of $129. The sale is going on through Labor Day, so if you’re going to Radio Shack anyway, why not pick up a new Instinct?

What am I saying? Nobody goes to Radio Shack. What I meant to say was if you’re looking to buy a new Instinct, why not drop into Radio Shack for the first time in ten years? Ah, that’s more like it.

Starting tomorrow, Radio Shack will be selling the Samsung Instinct to new Sprint customers for $99. If you’re an existing Sprint customer looking to upgrade, it’ll cost you the normal price of $129. The sale is going on through Labor Day, so if you’re going to Radio Shack anyway, why not pick up a new Instinct?

What am I saying? Nobody goes to Radio Shack. What I meant to say was if you’re looking to buy a new Instinct, why not drop into Radio Shack for the first time in ten years? Ah, that’s more like it.

I think this video above is quite a good start, probably because it somehow reminded me of Prodigy’s Smack my bitch up-video. And it’s interactive, meaning you have to click on the annotations to get directed to another YouTube video until the story is brought to an end.

Earlier this morning, Sprint rolled out the first firmware/software update for the Samsung Instinct. What got fixed, you ask? No one’s exactly sure, just yet. As the update lacks patch notes, finding the fixes has become a bit of an Easter egg hunt for Instinct users. Noted so far are perceived performance enhancements, and a battery meter fix – Let us know if you find anything else.

To update your Instinct, just go to Main -> Settings -> General -> Update Phone.

The next update shouldn’t be more than two weeks off according to Will England, administrator of Sprint’s Buzz About Wireless. From a forum post by Will:

“There are two updates. One will fix the native software on the phone. That’s available today. The second update will be in about two weeks that will update the third party applications to use the new features and changes pushed out today. Both updates will be over the air. There should be no reason to go to the store at all.“

Will also mentions that patch notes for today’s update are in the works and should be available sometime tonight.

AnnieBinns and her haunting touch haiku:

Fingertips pushing
the hard smooth surface as they
explore the new world.

Annie wins the Samsung Instinct!

Special thanks to the team at Samsung for letting us run this great contest and thanks to all of you for putting up with experiments in new media so we could try a something new and different for this contest. Rest assured future contests won’t require Twittering. Thanks for playing and, as always, thanks for reading.

Congratulations to officiallyrad for his charming haiku:

Black like a Berry
although a little more sleek
must win you this week

To recap: We’ll be giving away a cool Samsung Instinct this week!

The final haiku should focus on touch and must be tweeted to UseYourInstinct. We will close entries for this week at noon on Tuesday, July 29.

If you entered the previous contest and didn’t win, feel free to re-enter. Here are the rules.

To recap: Every week we’ll be giving away a cool Samsung phone culminating in the Samsung Instinct!

We begin our contest this week gunning for the Samsung Ace. The haiku should focus on sight and must be tweeted to UseYourInstinct. We will close entries for this week at noon on Tuesday, July 22.

If you entered the previous contest and didn’t win, feel free to re-enter. Here are the rules.

We have a first winner! Congratulations Kevin C Marvin for his winning entry:

I can almost hear
the sound of packaging tape
as I win your phone

You win the Samsung the M520.

To recap: Every week we’ll be giving away a cool Samsung phone culminating in the Samsung Instinct!

We begin our contest this week gunning for the Samsung Ace. The haiku should focus on sight and must be tweeted to UseYourInstinct. We will close entries for this week at noon on Tuesday, July 22.

If you entered the previous contest and didn’t win, feel free to re-enter.

What is a haiku? Here’s an example. It’s a short poem of three lines consiting of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.
For example:

The M520
doesn’t ring. It reminds me
that I’m a big nerd.

Read on for the rules.

Contest Rules:
1) Write a haiku about the sense of touch, sight or hearing using the traditional 5 syllable/7 sylllable/5 syllable formatc
2) Keep the entries clean. Haikus that include foul language will be deleted from the contest and will not be eligible to win.
3) Twitter (Tweet) the Entry to UseYourInstinct. If you’re not part of Twitter, simply create a login. While you’re there add CrunchGear, John B, and Nicholas, and Doug.

You can Tweet the entry by typing this into Twitter:

@useyourinstinct Whitecaps on the bay: /A broken signboard banging/ In the April wind.

This uses an example haiku by Richard Wright. You should simply type @useyourinstinct [your haiku here].

Your tweet may not appear immediately. Our bot only updates once an hour.

3) Make it creative. The most humorous and clever haikus will be most likely to win a free Samsung Instinct, Ace or M520

Contest Length/Prize Information: The contest runs from July 8 until July 28. One entry each week from the sense of touch, sight and hearing wins
Number of Entries: Participants can enter as many times as they want, but can only win one prize. CrunchGear Staff will pick the winners each week.

In case you didn’t see, Sprint and Samsung are holding a $25,000 contest for Instinct app developers, essentially following Apple’s lead in creating a user-generated app store to help improve the popularity of their already popular device.

But just like real-world shopping malls, not all application outlets—whether online or on the phone itself—are created equal. “There’s still a gap in terms of capabilities,” says NPD analyst Ross Rubin. Some phones still offer a limited number of games and calendaring options. Few applications are adapted specifically for phones that feature touchscreen controls.

Then there’s the matter of the economic incentive to develop for the iPhone. Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers plans to invest more than $100 million in startups that build iPhone and iPod Touch applications and gear. “The iPhone is still going to be the best platform for a significant amount of time for developers to launch new applications,” says Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy.

Almost every manufacturer, from HTC to the folks working on Android phones, are following along. The only trick: convincing developers to move from iPhone programming to working on apps for other, untested platforms. Only time will tell.

Remember: Every week we’ll be giving away a cool Samsung phone culminating in the Samsung Instinct!

We begin our contest this week gunning for the M520. The haiku should focus on hearing and must be tweeted to UseYourInstinct. We will close entries for this week at noon on Tuesday, July 15.

What is a haiku? Here’s an example. It’s a short poem of three lines consiting of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.
For example:

The M520
doesn’t ring. It reminds me
that I’m a big nerd.

Read on for the rules.

Apparently plenty of Best Buy shoppers like Sprint’s Samsung Instinct. In a recent press release, Best Buy said that since its June 19th launch, the Instinct has become “the retailer’s best selling handset in the past two years.” 

Best Buy has also been pushing a service called “Walk Out Working,” which basically entails having your phone set up for you before you leave the store – e-mail, web access, GPS setup, etc. – the program’s apparently been quite well received. It’s available only for new Instinct purchases and will be going until the end of August.

Just got word from Samsung that we’re good to go on our “Use Your Instinct” Haiku contest. Every week we’ll be giving away a cool Samsung phone culminating in the Samsung Instinct!

We begin our contest this week gunning for the M520. The haiku should focus on hearing and must be tweeted to UseYourInstinct. We will close entries for this week at noon on Tuesday, July 15.

What is a haiku? Here’s an example. It’s a short poem of three lines consiting of 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables.
For example:

The M520
doesn’t ring. It reminds me
that I’m a big nerd.

Read on for the rules.

Contest Rules:
1) Write a haiku about the sense of touch, sight or hearing using the traditional 5 syllable/7 sylllable/5 syllable formatc
2) Keep the entries clean. Haikus that include foul language will be deleted from the contest and will not be eligible to win.
3) Twitter (Tweet) the Entry to UseYourInstinct. If you’re not part of Twitter, simply create a login. While you’re there add CrunchGear, John B, and Nicholas, and Doug.

You can Tweet the entry by typing this into Twitter:

@useyourinstinct Whitecaps on the bay: /A broken signboard banging/ In the April wind.

This uses an example haiku by Richard Wright. You should simply type @useyourinstinct [your haiku here].

Your tweet may not appear immediately. Our bot only updates once an hour.

3) Make it creative. The most humorous and clever haikus will be most likely to win a free Samsung Instinct, Ace or M520

Contest Length/Prize Information: The contest runs from July 8 until July 28. One entry each week from the sense of touch, sight and hearing wins
Number of Entries: Participants can enter as many times as they want, but can only win one prize. CrunchGear Staff will pick the winners each week.

We received the Instinct a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to write up my impressions on it after using it for just about a week straight. I’m happy to report that the Instinct on Sprint is a capable and powerful smartphone and, in a way, is a direct competitor to the iPhone generation 1 (iPhone 3G doesn’t fit into this equation, but I suspect I’d say the same thing when we see it). Sadly, there are many caveats to this opinion and it would behoove Sprint and Samsung to quickly update the phone as soon as possible if they wish to have the blockbuster success that this device, in the end, deserves.

First the good. The Instinct interface is far superior to the iPhone’s simply because of haptic feedback. Much of the good ideas the iPhone uses – slide to unlock being one of the most important – are partially visible here and special care has clearly been taken to ensure that an apples to apples comparison is difficult if not impossible. Nothing in this phone is a direct knock-off and it is all fresh and slightly disconcerting at the same time. Once you work out the kinks, however, it is very strong interface and eminently usable.

We begin by unlocking the phone by holding down a button on the top. This direct physical interaction with the phone also turns it on and off, so care must be taken not to hold the button too long or it will turn off. The sliding metaphor appears quite a bit, however, especially in answering and making calls. For example, when a call comes in you are offered a floating bar. To answer, you slide the bar up to a box marked answer. To ignore, you slide the bar down. Weird, right? Strangely, it works. Another odd UI choice: When you make a call you type in the number and then press the bar that the number shows up in. You wouldn’t know it to look at the screen, but that was their design choice. It works although it does take a moment to figure out what’s going on.

Most importantly, the Instinct has haptic feedback. When you press a button or slide through emails or menus the phone buzzes and creates an interesting form of feedback. Haptics are not a must-have but they’re nice.

Call quality is strong and the data capabilities mean you can live stream TV and on-demand video from almost anywhere. The web widgets like Weather, News, Sports, and Movies are quite useful. The music player is very capable even though it checks the included 2 gigabyte memory card every time it launches. The camera is good in standard light but is useless in low light, throwing a “fuzzy picture warning” on the screen and giving you a messy photo.

I’m most pleased with the email. It supports POP3 and IMAP along with all of the usual suspects – AIM, Yahoo, MSN – and uses a very intuitive mail reading system that lets you select multiple messages for deletion or filing.

Now for the bad news. There is no desktop sync and it only supports contact sync of up to 600 contacts. There is a “backup” system offered on Sprint.com that keeps your contacts safe but there is no real sync solution for Windows or OS X.

Next, the browser is abysmal. Coupled with a fairly bad keyboard, trying to type in a URL into the browser is hell while viewing a full webpage at the default resolution is a study in agony. The browser is not quite standards-compliant, as we see here. The system uses the accelerometer to let you scroll through longer documents. This position sensing system, activated by pressing the camera button, is fairly useless.

Finally, in the week I used this phone I’ve already scratched the screen quite noticeably. While I don’t coddle phones, I never put them in with my keys nor do I ever put them in with other phones. The result, after just a week of use, is a buffed and scratched screen that makes screen viewing difficult under some light.

Bottom line? This is a good, if flawed phone. Most importantly, the browser needs a complete overhaul and the next generation needs a glass screen. As it stands, however, this $130 iPhone competitor is quite compelling. If you are on Sprint, this is the closest you’ll get to a truly intuitive phone with enough horsepower to download TV, audio, and video on the go. It is not a dream come true – yet – but it is a start. It is up to Sprint and Samsung to upgrade this phone with regularity, adding features that business folks need – Outlook sync for one – and a better browser for everyone else.