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This is a review of the Samsung Intrepid from Sprint.  Overall, I liked the phone.  It has a good build, and the software is impressive.  There were a few quirks here and there though.  My final score to the phone was 4/5 stars

The full review is after the break.

Hardware

The Samsung Intrepid is a very sturdy phone.  It feels like a tight build, and it would be hard to break it.  It is also a reasonable size.  Very slim and not to wide.  Here are some photos of it alongside the iPhone 3G.

Click for the full sized image

Now let’s take a look around the phone.  Starting with the top:

On top we have the 3.5 mm headphone jack (covered).  That was a very welcome addition (as always).

On the left side we have our volume rocker and the microUSB port connector.

On the right we have the camera button and the power button.  The stylus is also hidden there too.

It’s a telescoping stylus, which is always a good thing.

There was nothing on the bottom of the phone.  On the back was the battery cover and camera.  The speaker was also back there, so it was kind of hard to hear when the phone was lying on it’s back.

Looking at the front side of the phone, you can see that we have a rather spacious QWERTY keyboard and D-Pad.  Also with the D-pad are our soft keys, call and end buttons, and the Start and OK buttons (the silver ones).  The Start and OK buttons had a brushed metal style to them, which makes the phone look presentable.  The phone is also a touch screen, so you can tap to do your stuff instead of using the buttons.  I would recommend using the stylus because the screen required a slightly firmer tap to register.

While using the phone’s keyboard, I noticed that the keys weren’t as tactile as I would have liked.  They aren’t as bad as other phones, but I wish they had made more of a click.  It was still usable, though, and I was able to type out emails and texts fast enough.

Another complaint I had was the placement of the soft keys.  I felt they were placed a little bit far out, and always thought the Start and OK keys were the soft keys.  I was pressing the wrong buttons quite a bit.  If I could redesign the phone, I would have swapped the soft keys’ places with the Start and OK buttons.

My final complaint is the location of the microSD slot.  It’s located in a spot where the battery would have to be removed to get at it, so I couldn’t swap cards on the spot, which was disappointing.

Overall, hardware was pretty good.  The problems I found weren’t bad enough to ruin my day, so I took away half a star for them.

Software

The Samsung Intrepid runs Windows Mobile 6.5 Pro, so it runs the touchscreen version.

The Samsung Intrepid was actually my first time ever using WinMo 6.5, so I may be reviewing that a little as well.

Since it came with Windows Mobile 6.5, it came with the usual like

• The hexagonal start menu (kind of disorientating)
• Threaded Texting
• Office and Outlook Mobile
• Same old Windows Media Player Mobile
• Internet Sharing (Sprint makes it so a plan is required.  I could have cracked it, but I was too lazy to)
• Adobe Reader LE
• Windows Marketplace

The usuals.  The phone also came with (what appeared to be) some added extras, such as a unit converter, stop watch, tip calculator, and world clock, as well as Sprint Bloatware.  Some were useful, others weren’t.  An extra I would have liked to see was a Java app.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t one, so I couldn’t play any of those Java games.

An interesting add on, though, was this app called Tell Me.  It works as a voice command and search.  It has a dedicated button on the keyboard, so you can press and say what you want.

The voice recognition wasn’t as accurate as I would have liked.  Many times when I said “Call Myself”, it would get something different, and I had to say it a few times before it finally got it right.  Needs work.

Web browsing on the phone was a decent experience.  The new Internet Explorer mobile was very well done.  Browsing was easy, and pages came out perfectly, with an occasional format error here and there.  It could also play flash videos (again, I don’t know if this is added by Samsung or built in), which made browsing mobile YouTube easy.

That’s playing right in the web browser!

Unfortunately, Flash mobile YouTube still uses the lousy quality.  I understand why, I just wish they could provide some kind of setting or something.  Oh well.

As usual, Windows Mobile had Exchange support, and all I did was plug in my credentials and I was set.  My contacts and calendar downloaded immediately.  Email setup was also easy too, though it was always late in updating my inbox.  Not good.

In terms of media, the phone came with Windows Media Player mobile.  The same one from WinMo 6.1.  Not a bad thing, but it just looks old.  Anyway, that combined with my microSD of music and earbuds (3.5mm headset jack people!), it made a decent mp3 player.

One complaint I had about this though, is that songs took a while to start.  I would press play, and there would be a 5-30 second delay before it started playing.  Same when it was changing to the next song on the list.  I found this very annoying, though it was bearable.

The phone comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera.  Unfortunately there was no flash, but it did have autofocus and a self portrait mirror.  The phone also came with the default Pictures and Videos app, which is pretty good.  It has all the basic features like crop and stuff like that.

Click for full size

Picture quality depended on the lighting.  In a dark setting, picture quality was mediocre.  You could see alot of static in the photo.  In a bright setting, picture quality is actually pretty good.  You could still see that static, but not as much.  Colors also came out vibrant, which was good.  Since the phone doesn’t have a flash, don’t expect to be taking too many pictures in the dark.

Video camera quality was acceptable.  It had light balance settings, and it was okay, but sound was mediocre, and there was quite a bit of static in my opinion.

The quality of the software was pretty good.  The problem with the media player isn’t enough to deduct points, however the camera quality and the voice command were.  I took off half a star for that.

Performance

In the small town I live in, I got lousy EV-DO (3G) reception.  Speeds were slow most of the time, and most of the time I had no EV-DO.  However, call quality was good.  Talking on the phone in alot of places, the sound came through mostly clear, with a little static here and there.  The people on the other side of the call said I sounded good as well.  The speakerphone is very loud.  It wasn’t the best audio quality, as there was much popping and static, so I found myself saying ‘huh?’ for most of the conversation.  The phone also has a SIM slot for global use.

GPS worked too.  I loaded Google Maps on the phone and turned on GPS, and within seconds I was fixed on 8 satellites.  It was very accurate.

The battery was okay.  With moderate to heavy usage, I got about a day and a half off of a single charge.  Not the most impressive, but it works if you don’t mind charging your phone every night.

Verdict

I liked the phone a lot.  It works well, and is great for web browsing, texting, and so on.  Windows Media needs some work to fix that delay, but it still made an okay mp3 player.  I would have also liked to see a more tactile keyboard.  Well, every phone has it’s ups and downs.  With all of this, my final score is 4/5 stars.

And the band played on.