Samsung Intrepid i350 Review

Introduction:

Samsung’s follow-up to the global i325 Ace for Sprint is now available: meet the Samsung Intrepid i350.  The Intrepid is an upgrade in every way, with the two most notable changes being the inclusion of a touchscreen and the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.  The QWERTY keyboard has been greatly improved and is much more usable.  It still features EVDO Rev. A but now offers Wi-Fi as well, and of course the GSM radio is still in place for the jet-setters.  Included in the box you’ll find:

•    Li-Ion battery
•    AC adapter
•    USB cable
•    Stylus
•    3.5mm headset
•    SIM card

Design:

Whereas the Ace shared many styling elements of the first two BlackJacks, the Intrepid makes like the Jack and is stylistically a departure from the original.  This is a welcome departure, and even though the Intrepid is larger overall than the Ace, it is much lighter and has a better in-hand feel.




You can compare the Samsung Intrepid i350with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The Samsung Intrepid  i350 is a very light phone, but does not feel cheap.  It is wider which gives more room for the keyboard.  Speaking of which, it has been completely overhauled which is great news because we weren’t too fond of the tiny, sloped keys found on the Ace.  The keys are now squared off which gives more surface area for your fingers.  We’re still not crazy about how they shaped the keys though; they slope down and to the outside of the phone which makes for an awkward feel.  It is a far cry from the wonderful BlackBerry Tour keyboard, but we were still able to type with relative ease and accuracy.



Above the keyboard is a mostly standard navigational cluster.  In the middle is an oversized 5-way directional pad, which is flanked by a Start and OK button on either side.  On the far edges are the right and left soft keys which sit above the Send and End keys.  All of the keys, including the QWERTY, offer very positive tactile feedback.



The left side of the phone has a volume rocker and microUSB charging/data port.  Along the right is the power/sleep key, camera button and at the bottom the stylus is tucked away running parallel to the bottom of the phone.  On the top is a covered 3.5mm headset jack, and the back simply houses the 3.2 megapixel camera and the Intrepid’s single speaker.  Both the SIM card and microSD card sit above the battery, but like the Instinct HD they require the battery to be removed for access.




The Intrepid improves on the Ace with the inclusion of a 2.5” QVGA resistive touchscreen.  It is slightly larger than the Ace’s 3.2” display, but does not appear as crisp.  As far as resistive screens go it is decently responsive, but with more and more capacitive displays making their way into the market resistive screens are beginning to feel sluggish.



The Intrepid is up there with the Motorola Q9c/m in terms of feel for that form-factor.  It is light and sleek but still has a quality build to it.  This style doesn’t usually feature a touchscreen, and we found ourselves often using the d-pad instead.

User Interface, Phonebook and Organizer:

The Samsung Intrepid i350 is among the crop of Windows Mobile 6.5 launch devices.  The latest version of Windows Mobile offers a much needed visual overhaul that starts with the homescreen.  It is now a very functional list of items like messaging, calendar, multimedia and Internet Explorer, along with others.  It is more than just a simple list, however, and when a particular item is highlighted you can oftentimes scroll right and left to view information.  For instance, when Photos are selected you can scroll through your album and the Internet Exporer tab will let you cycle through favorites.




Another noticeable change is the Start Menu which has received the now familiar honeycomb makeover.  The menu can be rearranged as the user wishes, but instead of a simple drag-and-drop like found on webOS icons can only be moved to the top or locked.  Context menus now more finger-friendly thanks to larger graphics, but many settings menus still have small check boxes and tiny tabs.  Programs have new icons, but for the most part they remain largely unchanged.  WinMo 6.5 offers some nice improvements, but it’s far from the overhaul that the system needs.



The phonebook is one of the few applications to get reworked, and like the menus is now more finger-friendly.  The contacts now have more spacing between them and have a small picture to the left for a more modern look.  Their functionality remains the same however, and there is a slot for just about any bit of information you could want for a contact.  The calendar, tasks and notes program are all the same as Windows Mobile past.  All of these programs are perfectly functional, but even with the slight rework of the contacts app they just don’t have the design polish of modern smartphones.



Software:

Windows Phones now ship with Microsoft MyPhone, a program we first saw earlier this year, and is available for download on older WinMo devices.  This excellent backup service stores your contacts, calendar, tasks, texts as well as photos, video, music and on the internal storage, with the option to back those on the storage card up as well.  You can customize which items are backed up, and since the service only gives you 200MBs of space backing up larger files like music is impractical.  Contacts and text messages can be viewed online and other cool features include mapping the last known location of a lost phone and uploading pictures to social networking sites.



Another cool features exclusive to the Samsung Intrepid i350 is Tellme, which we’ve seen on RIM devices before.  This speech-to-action service allows the user to do many things, such as initiate and then dictate a text message, perform a web search or dial a contact.  If it could incorporate navigation it would be perfect, but it still might be the best speech recognition program we’ve used.



Other pre-installed items include Microsoft’s new weather and money widgets and Sprint’s NFL, NASCAR, Music Store, IM and Navigation apps.  There is a business card reader, a remote desktop program and of course Office Mobile to keep productivity up to snuff.



Marketplace is now live, which finally gives Windows users a unified place to find apps.  The problem is that there are still thousands of apps out there which are not available for via Marketplace, as opposed to the App Store, App Catalog or Android Market which offer one portal for all (official) applications.  It’s a move in the right direction if nothing else.



Messaging, Connectivity and Data:

There really isn’t much new here, save for a few visual tweaks.  As you would expect pretty much all forms of communication are supported, including SMS, MMS, POP and IMAP as well as Microsoft Exchange.  Text messages are threaded just as they were before, and MMS has been incorporated into it like we first saw on the Treo Pro.



The Samsung Intrepid i350 is a world phone, featuring a dual-band CDMA radio as well as a quad-band GSM radio.  For data it uses Sprint’s EVDO Rev. A network and is complimented by Wi-Fi.  It ships with the latest version of Internet Explorer, which is worlds better than previous iterations.  It is much more Opera Mobile-like, with hidden controls, limited Flash support and vastly improved rendering.  It is now a viable player in the mobile browser world, but Mobile Safari and the webOS browser are still in a different class.  Skyfire is available in the Marketplace which is a slightly better browser, mostly because of its full Flash support.

Performance:

Callers were very pleased with how we sounded on the Samsung Intrepid i350, rating us an 8.5/10.  On our end the sound quality was good, but the volume was low even in a quiet room.  The battery is rated at 6 hours of talk time, which is excellent for a CDMA smartphone.  Standby time is good as well, it sat for several days and the battery gauge did not budge.

Conclusion:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the Samsung Intrepid i350, but it is a very cookie-cutter phone that doesn’t do anything to wow us.  For a business device this isn’t such a bad thing however, and Windows Mobile 6.5 is a definitely an upgrade over 6.1, albeit a small one.  For business users in need of a no-nonsense Windows Mobile device the Intrepid hits the mark, but an average consumer looking for more than a dumbphone should look towards Android or webOS.