Be careful what you ask for
The Samsung Instinct, coming from Sprint on June 20, is modeled after the more obvious aspects of the iPhone’s design. Like the iPhone, the Instinct is black with a rounded metal trim and offers a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. Both include a Home button bottom-center, a row of icons, a grid of icons, a status bar, and a microphone centered at the top.
The likeness largly ends there.
It’s fascinating to see how Samsung studied the iPhone, yet missed so much of what makes it lovely. Let’s compare the two, noting some of those details the iPhone gets right that the Instinct doesn’t.
There are no logos on the the iPhone’s face. The Instinct includes Samsung’s wordmark above the screen and Sprint’s wordmark and logo below. Both wordmarks are larger than any other text on the device. Their inclusion affects aesthetics, obviously, but usability too: when you look at the status bar your eye will keep moving up to the Samsung wordmark. On the iPhone, the status bar is the top of the visual area, above which lies enough blackness to stop the eye; on the Instinct, the Samsung logo lies at the top of the visual area. You couldn’t pick a better spot if you wanted to emphasize the Samsung name, but this little inclusion makes it just a little more Samsung’s device, and a little less yours.
The iPhone’s Home button is the sole target below the screen. It’s a horizontally centered circular depression you can feel when you touch it. This is good, since the thumb you use to hit that button is large and relatively clumsy. The Instinct places a Back button to the Home button’s left, and a Phone button to its right. This compromises the usefulness of this area, since you can no longer just click below the screen to go Home—you have to aim, too. Aim a little left or right and you’ll be confused and probably annoyed. These two buttons compromise your ability to use the Home button with motor memory alone and force you to use it cognitively as well. That’s bound to slow you down, and bound to cause mistakes.
The iPhone’s Home button is black and contains a white rounded rectangle that echoes the shapes of the iPhone’s icons and the iPhone itself. The white rounded rectangle is small and abstract and doesn’t attract the eye, just a hint of white in an otherwise completely black area large enough to rest your thumb on while using the device. The Instinct’s Home button is a flat icon of a house whose odd proportions make it look a little like a thatched hut. Though there’s a bit of room to rest your thumb in the generous Spring wordmark area above these buttons, that area is compromised by being squeezed by screen and buttons. Move your thumb a little and you’ll trigger something you didn’t intend to.
The three buttons on the Samsung are unfortunate when taken as a set. Their white icons are bright and large enough to attract the eye. They are visually asymmetric.
The iPhone’s status bar elements are carefully grouped and nicely balanced: signal strength for carrier and wi-fi on the left, state icons like battery and Bluetooth on the right, and the time in the middle. The Instinct’s status bar elements look jumbled together, and there’s no element in the center. The iPhone is elegant in part because the Home button, status bar time display, and microphone draw a subtle and horizontally symmetric line. There is no such symmetry on the Instinct.
The iPhone renders text beautifully. The labels beneath the bottom four buttons for Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod are a brighter white than the labels beneath the icons in the grid above. The crispness with which these labels are rendered permits a smaller font size without sacrificing legibility. The Instinct’s text is by comparison harsh and difficult to read. The font is displayed with an exaggerated y-height, while the kerning is painfully tight. A glance at the time displays in the status bar is enough to see this difference. The iPhone’s display has visual integrity; the Instinct’s does not.
The iPhone’s icons use color boldly to convey purpose and function. Their rounded rectangles echo the device’s shape as a whole. Their images fill these rectangles, simplifying the negative space of the blackness behind them. The Instinct’s icons use color timidly and without apparent guiding purpose. Their irregular images create complicated negative spaces intensified by glowing borders and dropshadows. Where the iPhone’s icons appear serene, the Instinct’s icons appear disheveled.
The iPhone’s icons float in a grid of soothing blackness, obvious but implied. The Instinct’s icons lie fixed in a grid emphasized with border lines, gradients, and shadows. The result is considerable visual noise in precisely the area where the user would benefit from clarity.
There are more details than these that the iPhone gets right and the Instinct doesn’t, but that’s enough. Some details like text rendering would be hard for Samsung to fix but most would be easier, making it particularly puzzling how anyone would copy the iPhone so obviously while missing what makes it shine.
What makes the iPhone shine must not be so obvious after all. Or, if obvious, not so easy to copy. And that’s just the static visual elements of the device and the Home screen.
A colleague of mine had one of these, as she couldn’t get hold of an iPhone. She thought it would do everything the iPhone did. It lasted four days – it took her two hours to work out how to send a text message, and the four days were spent discovering things it couldn’t do. It went back.
Tough to get it right apparently.
Do you work for Apple??? No logos make the iphone better?? You have got to be kidding. I have both the instinct and first gen iphone sorry but the instinct is better. I will say the 3g iphone will be better than the instinct but not for none of the dumb reason here. Do your homework
starcity, no, I don’t work for Apple. And while no-logos is certainly better than logos – it would be hard to argue the opposite – I didn’t say that no-logos makes the iPhone better than the Instinct. I said that a lack of logos is one of the many iPhone details that the Instinct failed to include in its obvious copying of the iPhone’s design.
wow, not biased at all.
I think all of your points are based on solely of the observer’s judgement. I’m not sure that I got anything of use from reading all of your “reasons”?
For example, someone can easily point out:
1. The Instinct features a smooth, flat surface which features no anomalies to stray away from the appeal of a perfect flat surface, like that of a sphere. whereas the iPhone features a rigid round groove near the bottom of the phone, which takes away from the presentation of a simple and elegant look… much like traversing a smooth highway met with an unsightly pothole.
2. The Instinct is visually proportionate width and length-wise, much like a sexy slender woman – slim and tall. This makes it feel natural in your hand whereas the iPhone does not. The iPhone, on the other hand, looks short and obese, resembling a short and fat woman.
Honestly, doesn’t that sound silly? That is what I felt like I read through… Don’t get me wrong, it was entertaining to say the least, but not very informative or factual…
TurboOxide, thanks for writing. I don’t believe the points I made are biased at all. The points are admittedly subtle, and it’s likely due in part to that subtlety that the Instinct designers overlooked or ignored them, but the difference between the points I made in the post and your enjoyable counterpoints is that mine *aren’t* subjective – they’re real, and they directly impact usability. I like your point about feeling natural in the hand, and it’s possible that the Instinct feels even better in the hand than the iPhone, but the iPhone already feels pretty natural in the hand itself.
It’s interesting that you find the points neither informative or factual, interesting that something that feels so clear to me seems different to you. I will work to express myself more clearly.
No problem!
I think its all a matter of opinion. Imo, both what you’ve described and what I’ve described are very subjective. i.e. On the UI, you prefer square icons floating in a sea of blackness, I prefer a grid with no gaps because it looks more uniform and “solid” to me… what you find as “soothing blackness” may appear as “wasted space” to another person. You like the bold colors used in the icons, whereas someone else may prefer subtle, darker shades of color. None of those points directly impact usability as they are just merely aesthetic… if anything, bigger icons would increase usability, especially for someone with not-so-great eyesight.
Looks aren’t everything and I find both phones attractive in their own unique ways.
Again, a very entertaining read, but I *do* think you are reading a little bit TOO much into every color/texture/shape/font/etc used in the design of the phones (perhaps a bit of OCD…?). We can all find meanings which we WANT something to represent, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that such was the designer’s intent (if there was any intent at all).
All the best!
I agree there are a lot of reasons why the iPhone is better. I tried Verizon’s Glyde (very similar to the Instinct but with a slide out keyboard) and the touch technology was awful. Very bad response. The keyboard was way too small to be functional and since the touch didn’t work like it should I just went back and returned this phone. I have to stay with verizon but luckily i still have an iPod touch to entertain myself.
I must say I really resent the fact that in order for me to get the iPhone, I have to switch carriers, and spend an extra 500 – 600 dollars per year for my comparable, current service.
While I enjoy some of the features and possibilities with my smartphone (Palm Treo 755p), I’m not a tech guy by any stretch, so most of the “deficiencies” of the Instinct compared to the iPhone don’t amount to a hill of beans, to me.
I’m giving serious consideration to the Instinct based on what I do like about the phone and the big issue for me, the ongoing cost of ownership. I’ll probably never own the iPhone. Quite honestly, it just isn’t worth all that. But that’s just me.
I fully agree with John Blackburn and every opinion that was opposed to his. The reason is that every point he made is his article were basics of ergonomics, publicity and such. I am sure that at least 3 extremely qualified persons worked intensively for a couple of months on making the interface/ergonomics perfect. And for me, it is shown by the result. For every pixel and millimeter of hardware, there is a reason. John just professionnaly pointed them the way he interprets them. And I agree with him.
Great website, by the way! I’ll continue my reading.
this is the most biased articled ever. This guy obviosly loves the iphone. if you really care about some of this crap he talks about, you got problem. WOW they put samsung there company name on the phone, who cares. And i really care that about font color. I’m curious if this guy is just blind or something.
Jeff, it’s not that I love the iPhone, but rather that I appreciate the thought and attention to detail that went into its design. I care about how things are designed, from the purely aesthetic to the ergonomic. Just because the Samsung logo on the phone doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you—besides adding nothing to the function or aesthetic of the device, it distracts the eye from what does add function or aesthetic, and occupies space that would have otherwise contributed to the function or aesthetic. In other words, whatever doesn’t add, detracts. There’s an opportunity cost to design decisions, after all.
I enjoyed the article. I think there’s a lot more thought that goes into design and user interface than most people would think, and it’s one of those small things that make Apple products more enjoyable to use.
John, I think you made a lot of good points, which show that in terms of pure aesthetic design, the iPhone is superior with more attention to detail.
For those who don’t believe in this: yes, it may sound like a bunch of crap, but there’s actually a science behind it, and I think John made a good job at reflecting that. Where you place a button/key is important. How it looks is important. You can’t tell unless you actually use both products for extended periods of time.
Apple is well known for the design of their products, and they have teams of designers dedicated to user experience.
I personally just got the new iPhone yesterday. I had a blackberry curve which I loved for its functionality, but the experience with the iPhone is a different ball-game.
I never owned, or even played with an iPhone. However, as far as i remember, Apple products ( both software and hardware ) have always excelled in terms of user friendly design. This set them apart from other products. The points put out in this article do not sound subjective at all. They sound very convincing to me. However, the price is still too high
. Thank you for this article.
Apt observations, John. Thanks for grasping them and packaging them in this nice article.
\\I prefer a grid with no gaps because it looks more uniform and “solid” to me… what you find as “soothing blackness” may appear as “wasted space” to another person. \\
That goes completely against the movement towards whitespace on webpages and in print. Poorly designed print/web articles, no matter how important the content, are distracting to read once you have seen a proper page.
Hey guys, I am a MAC guy. I hate Microsoft and Windows. I am in love with the look and feel of the iPhone so there I have to agree with John. But… there are some things about the Instinct that are sincerely drawing me away from the purchase of the iPhone 3G and they are as follows. Voice command driven calls, text, and other functions (all a must on California freeways) Instinct has them and iPhone does not, turn by turn GPS functionality with audio (iPhone doesn’t have this), the ability to record video with the Instinct (again non-existent on iPhone), and a less expensive phone price and plan by Sprint ($130 vice $299 for the phone and ATT charges an extra $20 a MONTH for a texting plan!). No matter how much more “elegant” the iPhone looks and feels these are the real and practical items about a daily use phone that matter to an average consumer. There are some downsides i.e., the iPhone’s web browser is vastly superior (my MacBook will handle the brunt of my web surfing) and the Instinct does not seamlessly use my already HUGE iTunes library, but supposedly there is free software downloadable that will convert my favorite playlists to an Instinct usable form on the microSD card. So there it is, John. As much as I dearly wanted to have an iPhone I simply cannot justify the extra price of the phone and plan for less “practical” functionality. I think the point some of your critics were trying to make about your review was that your points were ALL about esthetics and none were about functionality. It was like comparing the interior of a Mercedes Benz with that of a Lexus without considering road tests, performance, horsepower, or MPG. And while I totally agree with what you said… to the average consumer they are simply NOT the most important selling features. I grit my teeth as I say it but, I will go with my gut “Instinct”.
Chris, you made some great points, especially about comparing the interiors of the luxury cars without considering non-aesthetic aspects. But my argument wasn’t about those things so much as it was about how the Instinct’s designers copied the iPhone superficially and aped the gross outlines of its design with no apparent sensitivity to or awareness of exactly what about the iPhone incites such devotion by its users.
It’s like someone decided to copy Angelina Jolie and–noting the two arms, two legs, head, etc.–ended up with Steve Buscemi.
Why don’t you ask Steve jobs where he got the idea for the iphone? You say samsung copied apple? Samsung had this technology out overseas 3 years before apple even thought about it.
And for the browser issue with the instinct…just download opera mini, it fixes everything.
Rob, I was talking about the user interface, which Samsung clearly copied. I make no claim that Samsung copied technology.