There has been a lot of talk over the last week about Sprint’s new Samsung Instinct phone that is supposed to be a true iPhone competitor. Sprint is saying that there will finally be “an amazing touch-screen phone with a network to back it up.” They are obviously taking a stab at the iPhone’s rather slow Edge network Internet connection.
The Samsung Instinct will include a 2.0 megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth, web browser, GPS, Live TV capabilities, and you can use the phone as a modem. What’s even more interesting is that Sprint just licensed Visual Voicemail from Klausner, who is the apparent patent owner to the technology. The funny thing is that Klausner is currently suing Apple for $360 million because they didn’t license the Visual Voicemail technology for use on the iPhone. Oops! Klausner has already licensed the technology to AOL and Vonage so there’s definitely some credibility to the patent.
Having used the Visual Voicemail on my own iPhone I can say that it will eventually become an industry standard. It’s just about as easy as reading emails, and I’ve even found myself wishing that people would leave voicemail messages so that I could use it more. 
[via Engadget]
Too bad this phone won’t be available in Europe (at least I understood it only works on CDMA networks)
I’d like the iPhone but it doesn’t have GPS or HSDPA/UMTS, let alone Live TV. This looks like a better candidate!
Funny, here I was thinking Apple actually came up with something innovative on their own with the visual voice mail thing. Turns out it’s just another stolen idea that they hype as their own.
I didn’t see anything about this being available in Europe either. I’m sure if it becomes popular enough that it will make its way around the world.
I was kind of surprised as well, but I guess that’s the way big businesses work. Plus Apple didn’t even have to do a lot of the work with Visual Voicemail… I read it was mostly AT&T that had to put it together.
i just got it.. and is soooo cool.. i love it..
