Samsung’s Intercept is designed to rival iPhone 3GS at the $99 price point. Hit read more for to see us unbox the new, budget Android smartphone, and we’ll follow up with our first impressions shortly.
Christopher Price
Christopher Price is the Founding Editor of PhoneNews.com. Today, he leads the team building Console, Inc. - a new kind of Android™ device. He still likes to pontificate... a lot. You can visit his personal blog at ChristopherPrice.net.
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For the same price the Moment is a way better option with faster internet and higher res screen
The Moment is on clearance, hence why the price points are similar. Samsung has already said it will not be updated past Android 2.1. The Moment 2 will likely be the first phone to ship with Mobile DTV.
As we’ll go into more tomorrow, the Intercept is much more likely to get Android 2.2, and possibly beyond, making it more attractive for people that want future official Android updates.
1) What makes you think there will ever be a Moment 2? At the moment (pun intended), all indications are that Sprint intends to bifurcate its Android market into:
– high-end phones (Evo, Epic) with revA and 4G which require the $10/month surcharge
– brain-damaged phones (Intercept, i1) that are obsolete in some crucial aspect such as data speed, screen resolution, or operating system.
There is simply no other explanation for Sprint to treat the Hero and Moment as (effectively) discontinued without any comparable replacement.
It appears, then, that Sprint will never release another phone with specs similar to the Hero or Moment–until such phones are decidedly obsolete.
2) What makes you think that Sprint will ever offer Mobile DTV? Early this year, there was a rumor of a very limited trial in Washington DC, but we’ve heard nothing else since. In particular, we’ve heard no groundswell from either users, trade magazines, or anyone else demanding broadcast TV on phones.
3) What makes you think that Sprint will ever actually upgrade the Intercept to Android 2.2? Sprint has already said that the (alleged) reason the Hero and Moment will never get 2.2 is because they can’t support Flash. Well, the Intercept can’t support Flash either. (Adobe has made clear that Flash requires a Cortex processor.) We have every reason to believe that Sprint will drag out 2.2 on the Intercept for 6 months, then finally kill it without release.
Unless you have specific evidence for your claims, you are bubbling with optimism but not realism.
Let us recall that Sprint utterly killed, without remorse, the LG LS680, apparently because it did not fit Sprint’s Android bifurcation strategy explained above:
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/12/28/lg-ls680-with-android-pops-up-on-sprints-system/
Google itself does not plan on any Android update beyond 2.2 except for high-end devices. In that sense, Google itself has embraced this same bifurcaton strategy:
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/leaked-android-30-details-hint-at-tablet-potential.ars
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Details are starting to leak about Android 3.0, codenamed Gingerbread.
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According to Mobile Review blogger Eldar Murtazin, who generally has a good track record on mobile rumors, the new version will require a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM.
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According to the newly leaked information about Gingerbread, Google plans to keep Android 2.2 around for the foreseeable future and will maintain it in parallel with 3.0. The purpose of maintaining both is to ensure that 2.2 is still available for lower-end devices that don’t match the high minimum specifications for 3.0.
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Larry, a lot of holes have been poked in that Ars article.
I suspect Google is planning a set of high-end features, but Android is still something Google would like to see even on basic feature phones.
I seriously doubt that Gingerbread will represent a fork in Android branches for high-end and low-end devices. There’s enough Android dilution already, Google is unlikely to force that to rise.
As to Mobile DTV, I don’t think you understand how that works.
ATSC-M, or Mobile DTV, is run by local television stations. Samsung has already announced “a future Moment for Sprint” at CES with ATSC-M. We covered it back in January as part of our CES coverage.
Sprint does not operate Mobile DTV stations. It would be a local option to augment Sprint TV with local television stations, and would be available for free… that’s the beauty of ATSC-M. It is (essentially) free HDTV for any mobile device.
Getting back to the Intercept:
Reports are rampant all over the web about the Intercept’s Home button not responding. We still don’t know whether this is a hardware or firmware problem. One person reported that he was able to exchange a bad-Home Intercept for a good-Home Intercept, so not all units have this bug. I myself observed this bug on a store unit, but then found that if I double-tap (rather than single-tap as the manual says), the Home button then worked almost reasonably.
So let us know whether you encounter this same Home button bug.
I just got a new Moment phone instead of the Intercept based on the suggestion of the sales associate who stated the Moment was a much better phone due to the Intercept being ” buggy” and not having a flash for the camera. I still am wondering if he was correct or he got a bigger commission of the phone. I have the option of exchanging if with in the first 30 days. Any suggestions or comments?
IMHO, it’s a tradeoff:
The Moment has better specs: yes, a camera flash, but more importantly a higher-resolution screen (320×480 instead of the Intercept’s 240×400) and true 3G uploading (EVDO rev A instead of the Intercept’s EVDO rev 0, which is 3G download but only 2G upload). 3G upload capability is necessary to put videos on Facebook or to upstream live video to Qik. The Moment can do these anywhere with Sprint 3G service, whereas the Intercept can do these only through a WiFi hotspot.
However, the Moment–at least with stock firmware–has been haunted by data lockup and battery life issues. Moment owners who have loaded private firmware (or at least rooted their device and then loaded root-only programs) seem much happier than those who have not. We would like to believe that the Intercept will be free of these problems, although we won’t be sure until it’s been out in the market longer. The only common Intercept bug report so far is of Home key unresponsiveness, and this may have affected only the first shipment–my family just bought 3 Intercept units, and none have the Home key problem.
So perhaps the simple rule of thumb is: If you are willing to root the Moment and run a private firmware load, you will probably be more happy with that model. If you are unwilling to take such risks, you may be better off with the Intercept.