The Samsung Intrepid of the company is the successor to the moderate-Ace, and unfortunately only mediocre. It is a reasonable impersonation of a BlackBerry for entrepreneurial-minded Microsoft fans. It is also an OK place for Globetrotter by including CDMA and GSM radios. But despite the updated Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system, Intrepid, it brings almost nothing new to Sprint’s lineup and pales in comparison to other smartphones available from the carrier.
Design and voice quality
The Intrepid is not much of a catcher. It measures 2.4 by 4.9 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.3 ounces. It is rounded black plastic with a dark chrome band around the front. The 2.6-inch plastic resistive touch screen offers only 320-by-240 pixel resolution. It is small and stubborn enough that you need the pin in the lower right corner for pretty much anything not on the home screen or main menu (more on that later) hidden. Six function keys console a large, rectangular five-way directional pad, all were easy to press in regular use. The four-row QWERTY keyboard felt a little cheap, but it was good for modest typing tasks. The keys do not wobble noticeably, and I made some mistakes.
As a dual-band EV-DO Rev A (800/ 1900 MHz), Quad-Band GSM (850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 MHz) and UMTS (2100 MHz) device, the Intrepid a true world-phone as well as their namesake implies. It also includes Wi-Fi. The voice quality was determined in both directions, with a triple, crisp sound in the listeners and good wind rejection. Reception was average. Annoyingly, the OS could not keep up with numbers that all sounds a second or two later and piled cut from each other. The booming speakerphone was plenty loud for outdoor use. Calls sound through a Plantronics Voyager Bluetooth headset in order. Battery life was excellent at 6 hours and 34 minutes of talk time.
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Windows Mobile, Business Support and Apps
Without the right mood a la HTC TouchFLO or Samsung TouchWiz, Windows Mobile looks archaic. Version 6.5 brought a much needed update to the home screen looks like, and actually works well, with its large buttons and clear fonts. But the rest of the operating system is ugly and outdated-up to the old-school touch screen calibration on the first start-up. At least Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is somewhat improved from earlier versions and even make horrible static Flash content in a pinch. But it’s Desktop or very slow and freezes when loading scripts and still feel the touch-screen controls as an afterthought.
As a true Microsoft-powered smartphone, which creates Intrepid views, and edit Microsoft Word and Excel documents and view PowerPoint files. It connects to Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server accounts for Direct Push e-mail. The Intrepid is not a bad smart phone for third-party applications, thanks to its 528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7600 processor, 266 MB of internal memory and 193MB RAM total, for a generous 153MB user programs. A microSD card is located under the battery cover is located and to the side. You have to replace the battery cards to draw a royal pain. An ill-fitting battery cover composed the misery, he always took five or six occupants properly tried.
Multimedia fans will receive the usual compliment of Sprint Power Vision services, including dozens of Sprint TV (live and simulcast), Sprint NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile. The GPS radio hooks into the TeleNav-powered navigation Sprint for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn directions. The Intrepid on my site spoke quickly and clearly blocked, although the low-res screen and Windows Mobile UI fixed upper and lower bars made for a tiny window card. Sprint included quick links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and social networking duties. Instant messaging was a disappointment: the tabbed interface works with AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo accounts, but charges for each message as a 20-cent text messages.
The Intrepid includes TellMe, Microsoft’s voice control. Press and hold the TellMe near the lower right corner of the QWERTY keyboard, and the phone can such a friend, complete with the transfer of the entire message order and call a colleague to bring a Web page, or run Bing searched. It worked pretty well in my tests, and fired once (at least after a long 45-second long first initialization). But it has only half the work sometimes. Say “Barnes & Noble” educated Bing examined the next two stores, but it was just up the street and city. But the “1-click directions” pipe does not address the Sprint Navigator. Instead, the address was Bing who began to ask different routes decidedly not just a single click and not as useful.
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Multimedia and conclusions
A standard-size 3.5mm headphone jack adorns the upper left edge. It is hidden under a large, stiff, floppy port cover, which is likely to break away in the first year of ownership. Music sounded fine through Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headphones. The integrated Windows Media Player application was clunky and frustrating for both music and video playback. Videos play smoothly, though, and MP3 and WMA music tracks displayed album art if available. The app took about three minutes to a cue in full, 320-by-240-film.
The 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera lacks an LED flash. Test photos looked vibrant but excessively hot, with a strong cast pink inside and out. There was not much noise, but. Auto-focus slow shutter speeds of approximately three seconds for a couple of shots that felt unbearable. Recorded video lacked contrast and good lighting, but otherwise looked OK at a reasonable 478-by-359 resolution and 13 frames per second. (Oddly, the camera app reported a 320-by-240 resolution at recording.)
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Competition in the Sprint Smartphone lineup is tough. Spring has four powerful smartphones, all about the same price as the Intrepid. First is the BlackBerry Bold 9630, Samsung intended target of the Intrepid. The tour offers better BlackBerry push e-mail a more useful OS design and a higher resolution screen, even if it does not respond to touch. The Android-HTC Hero has a larger and more responsive capacitive touch screen and a much better Web browser, although it lacks a hardware QWERTY keyboard. The Palm Pre offers a similarly brilliant touch screen and browser, but Palm App Catalog is still a waste. Finally, the HTC Touch Windows Mobile Pro2 the Intrepid compatibility but reserves the right to receive UI, at least on the uppermost layers. And its 480-by-800 pixel screen and spacious QWERTY keyboard blow away the Intrepid.
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