Enough of the iPhone, I really wanted to write about my experience with the SAMSUNG Instinct. And I would want to stick to that. Unlike Walt Mossberg of WSJ.com, who mentioned iPhone many times in Instinct review, I am not going to mention iPhone.

IMHO Instinct is a nice device which can be used as a partial PDA.

Following are the best features

• GPS.
• SMS.
• Three main icons on Main Screen.
• Address book and Speed Dial.
• Voicemail.

Following are the worst features

• Browser.
• Lack of email attachment viewing software.
• SPRINT TV.
• Voice activated dialing.
• Lack of third party applications.
• Screen size.
• Phone as a modem capability.
• Camera

Let's start with the best features. GPS is the first one on my list. I did a very extensive testing of the GPS covering 1000 miles. The thing is as good as any TOM TOM or GARMIN. It has that intelligent traffic reroute option. I tested against some known routes in Pennsylvania, MD, NY , and it did the very best job of rerouting based on traffic incidents. No GPS is as good as a human equipped with a google maps. But this was closest to the way we manually plan routes by looking at the map. Kudos to the GPS.

Next in the list is SMS. The software used in the phone is intuitive. The history saves the message thread. It is easy to send message by tapping the name on the address book then click on the message icon. The user interface was so clean that I was able to easily access and comprehend all of the past message threads.

The three main icons on the bottom of the phone provided the user easy navigation between the many features. I was able to get back to home with a single touch on the home button. Occasionally, I did not like the way the phone closed the applications when I pressed the back button. While in the middle of a Navigation session, I wanted to check something on the internet. I pressed the back button then I was prompted to close the Navi application. I had similar experience with the browser. The browser lost its previous pages and forced me to the home page.

Address book and Speed Dial are my next favorite features. I loved the clean scrolling address book. Accessing the names and numbers was easy. I was able to store 5 numbers for some of the names. Accessing the type of the phone ( home , mobile , office ) for the address book entries was easy, you just have to press the little box next to the name. The speed dial feature was another cleverly thought design. I added most dialed names into this category. Accessing them was a breeze. I was able to make phone calls with two touches from phone option.

Voicemail is the last good feature. Needless to say that this is a copied feature and will be a standard in the upcoming smartphones.

Now the bad part.

The Browser is the thing that I hated the most on this phone. The browser sucks and sucks big time. It is sloooooow. I am not sure the issue is related to the network though. Navigation inside the page is not smooth at all. The browser is the sole reason I am planning to return my phone. The browser is sluggish, crashes, unresponsive and takes forever to load. It is a joke that Sprint is marketing this as a killer to that other benchmark device. I was not able to open a successful webpage for www.nytimes.com, www.buy.com, www.papajohns.com, www.cvs.com, www.jandr.com .... the list goes on. After seeing the safari browser on the Apple beauty Instinct looks like a 486 processor running on a 32 mb RAM with Windows95 :-). Why on earth SAMSUNG,Sprint and Teleca ( http://www.teleca.com/) came up with this OBIGO browser which is neither feature rich as IE nor efficient as the Safari. Currently no PDA manufacture has that desktop browsing like feel that iPhone provides. But I expected SAMSUNG and Teleca to do a better job at providing a faster browser experience. Why on earth creating a smart browser is a rocket science?

IMHO, the OBIGO browser ruins this otherwise fine smart phone. I hope SPRINT will upgrade the software on Instinct sooner than later. I called the tech support to fix the issue. I was told to perform some dumb drill procedures like shutting down the phone, removing the battery, upgrade the DATA profile .... etc. I knew none of this could fix the issue. I was having so many high hopes on this fake iPhone killer, but this browser ruined my all my hopes. I really really hope SPRINT do something about it. Mr.Hesse are you listening ? The browser sucks, fix it please , its not rocket science.

The next one in the list is LACK of Email Attachment Viewing software. Why do people do stupid things? Instinct does gives you the ability to get your email but stop you from viewing the attachments? Hmm whoever designed that email client application must be sleeping in Kansas or in South Korea. Why give the user the option to download emails if the attachment file is not viewed ? Why oh why ? to save it to the SD card ? Thank you very much.

SPRINT TV is the next bad feature. Sprint did some ground work earlier in creating this service. But the Instinct lacks the video clarity while playing the TV shows. I am not a big fan of watching distorted videos. But I am fine with this feature. I used this feature to calm my two year old. She liked Dora the explorer videos on a long weekend trip.

Voice Activated Dialing is another non efficient feature. Most of the time the Instinct didn't understand my ENGLISH. I am not sure it is confused with my Indian accent, or totally clueless of what I was saying. I was saying call sreedhar , the system prompted me to call Anand ? Hmm. Its not even closer phonetically. Its time for these manufactures to pay a closer look at the Indian names. After all Indians (Indian Americans included) are the second largest ethnic group in the world. I am not saying that the device should include Indian names, but a general simple smart translation of the ENGLISH word technique would fix this issue. Its not only for Indian names, but any non ENGLISH names ( Chinese, Japanese ,.. ) If it's a big deal to update the software, then I prefer the old way of recording your own voice thing. That worked at least.

Lack of third party applications, I wish someone writes good third party applications for this phone. The current games are lame. I loved the pool game in my Sanyo KATANA. This phone needs some serious third party apps to compete with other smart phones and build an eco system.

Screen size could be couple of millimeters larger. Also why do they need to waste a valuable real estate on the bottom with SAMSUNG name on it? It would have made a good marketing feature if they increased the screen size a bit or at least cleverly used the available one. The browser application suffered from the screen size.

PAM , Phone as a modem capability, I mentioned that the browser is the sole reason for me to not like this phone. I would have kept it, if the phone has a modem capability. I could have used it for connecting my laptop to the internet. But it does not have that feature. Too bad. This is another feature where the Instinct could have been trumped the rival.

Camera , I am not a big fan of these cameras. But I expected SAMSUNG to do a better job with the shooting modes and quality of the picture. The camera belongs to the "also ran" category. I could care less for this feature, but many prospective buyers would want this feature. SAMSUNG does make some digital cameras, why can't they put a 3 or 4 meaga pixel one with nice optics.? The picture quality was not great. Clearly SAMSUNG rushed this to the market without enough testing.

Conclusion.

My initial thought after the browser experience was "This phone sucks, why did Sprint called this as an iPhone killer"? But after two weeks of owning it, I liked few features. The GPS is the most practical one. I believe many users will like the GPS in this phone. Another good feature I missed to tell you is the Microsoft Live Search. This is a nice and accurate feature. I was able to get post office, pharmacy, restaurant .... information along with the active phone number. The search results were grouped together i.e. if you were searching for post office, the search came back with one post office entry with no of post offices inside a parenthesis. And there are some minor irritants I didn't like. One of them is the world time setting program. Instinct omitted many world cities. I am not happy about this feature.

Overall it is a good phone, not a killer one. SAMSUNG and SPRINT could have competed with the iPhone if they had a decent browser. The current one sucks really.

If you are big on office work, go for the Berry, Microsoft Mobile or even iPhone ( Yes with the built in support for VPN and MS Office viewing capability). If you prefer to own a nice GPS unit and a phone with touch screen interface then the SAMSUNG Instinct is for you.

Post Script, How about borrowing (begging) that SAFARI from APPLE ? They can sell it. There is no exclusivity deal on the BROWSER J

Before I jump to conclusion on the demand subject, let me do some math for you. For the last 12 years there is a huge influx of immgrants to USA. INS numbers show that about 1 million of the H1 Visas ( combined with L1's) are issued during this period. This is a fact. Now lets add an assumption to this fact, about 50% of these H1 guys are from AP or Hyderabad, which would bring the number of immigrants from AP to 5 Lakhs. This is the first group that created demand. The second group is Hitech workers ( IT, BPO, Call center, Medical transcription ..... so on). This group is another 5 Lakh strong. Combine the employement numbers of ICICI, Reliance, Satyam, Wipro, TCS, IBM, Infosys, Infotech , Accenture, CMS, ...... Mom and Pop IT :-)...... you will get an idea that about 5 Lakh people are now gainfully employed in the great Hyderabad City.

Now thats about 1 million potential buyers of FLATs and PLOTS.

The root cause for the deamand is this combined group of NRI's and Hitech workers. The local businessmen ( Marwari;s , Politicians, Actors......, ) joined this crowd and were responsible for the price increase.

Now that we know the root cause for the real estate demand, lets examine if its sustainable. My belief is that it will adjust ( I will not use the word collapse) and loose about 20%- 40% of its value. The reasons are clear

• Hyderabad is not a city where you get quality of life. The traffic is a killer.The smoke can cause some dangerous diseases.
• None of the real estate guys give you a scientific picture of Ground water in the City. They just say they got plenty of water in Hyderabad. If you don't believe me wake up at 4:00 A.M and watch all the water tankers running around the city.
• Salaries for the Hitech employees cannot keep up with the cost of living in the City. And its only matter of time the Hitech companies start layoffs.
• Many Hitech workers are shelling their life earnings into buying real estate. They cannot repay loans if they are hit with a recession in Hitech industry. The banks will loose heavy money if there is an economic slowdown.
• Many real estate guys sell one property and buy another one. They never keep the CASH on hand. They keep on buying with the profit they make from selling. This is a cycle. At the end of it some of these folks end up having acres of land. They feel good about the percieved value of it ( not the word perceived ). To me thats paper money. Its almost like stocks. The fundamental difference is , stock value can become zero, but real estate will hold some value. So if you are one of the guys who invested in real estate , think carefully on how you get the CASH back when you need it. You are going to sell some property incase you need hard cash for your daughter's M.B.B.S or your son's BTech. If you are in a bad market and paid a high price for your property , then its very difficult for you to get your perceived money back.
• Many of the real estate businessmen and buyers are not looking at long term picture. Its always short term thinking and short term goals. This issue is common in many areas in the new India. No one talks about how far Hyderabad or Bangalore can grow? What are the advantages that Hyderabad has over say Ongole ? Why can't a software company operate in Ongole rather than Hyderabad ? No one worries about such long term plans for the booming industries. My bet is that small towns and district centers will grow lot faster that Hyderabad in the coming decade.

Having said that , the real estate market will not collapse in Hyderaabad, it will have a soft landing. And people who joined the real estate business prior to 2005 will make money. The last guys who paid exurbent prices will get hit with the price adjustment.

I will write a detail take on the following subjects

• Real Estate In Hyderabad
• Roads In Hyderabad
• Highways In The State
• Cellphone Usage
• Traffic Sense
• Broadband Connection
• Tirupathi Trip

I hope you enjoy the posts and get some meaningful insight into the topics

I was going through the news of the Minneapolis Bridge braking. Its heartening to see people struck with such tragedies. Each time I travel to NJ/NY from D.C on I-95 I feel like the Susquehanna river will collapse ( http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=39.578769,-76.107874&spn=0.059472,0.135441&t=h&z=14 ). I even go to the extreme of carrying some PFD floats ( personal flotation devices ). I guess we can no longer assume the roads to be safer. Or is it time for a re-evaluation of the bridges in U.S ?

On the other unrelated topic, I am thrilled to see the indian team win the second game. I can't wait to see Sachin make 40 centuries. I strongly believe that he is burdened by the record bug. someone , may be Kapil needs to talk to him and challenge him to score 50 centuries :-).

• Watching on internet becomes cheap.
• All the ranji matches and ODI's are shown.
  
  More on the reason for failures next week.

• Infrastructure in India.


• More private employment.

I have heard arguments about politics being the root cause, or corruption, or education, ,,,, something something for the state of affairs in India. I will agree on all of them, but to fix them takes time. For example it might take centuries to eradicate corruption or it will never be eradicated. We still see corruption in America ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff_Indian_lobbying_scandal

Now, back to my argument.
The first thing I would like to see in India is improved infrastructure. Having access to roads will help a small farmer to sell his veggies in a city and make more money compared to what he makes in the town. So he is benefited, and so does the country ????? Well I am sure he will be benefited, but I have my reservations about the country. Also infrastructure will help companies (both public and private) make more money, create more employment. But who will layout the roads, airports, railways ???? Its the good old government. Which is corrupt and lethargic? In summary, infrastructure helps the country's economic growth, but the government's slow approach will put the brakes on.

My second comment is about more and more private sector participation in the country's economy. The private companies will want to make money, for themselves then for the employees. They will push the government to improvise the infrastructure. Because it is in their interest that they need to force the government. Of course it takes all kinds of talents plus corruption to get approvals from the governmental. But at least they are getting some roads on the country map. I am happy about that. But these communist guys or even the socialist guys think that these companies are greedy and will kill the Indian small retail business.

Lets go back to my first point of infrastructure .China creates infrastructure then invites companies to do business. On the other hand our government never creates infrastructure for the companies to do business. So the only way that works in India is the reversal, i.e more and more private companies participate in country's economy and force the government to create infrastructure. So creating infrastructure is not going to work. We are left with my second point, which is more and more private employment. Not only the private employment creates infrastructure, it also creates jobs. So the second point is a winner. We need more private companies. For the fact that they create employment , and create( rather force the government) infrastructure too.

Assuming we have more private companies which forces the country to have better infrastructure. How does this all end up in helping the country's economy? Here is my finding. Earlier I said the farmer makes more money because of improved infrastructure (road) , I am happy for him, but the farmer doesn't pay tax to the country. For this reason I am leaving him alone, I have highest respect for farmers. Because they produce it from the Mother Nature. If I can put radar on business people, the so called retail business people, I can get some facts that will open your eyes. These business people make more money by improving their business, courtesy of the infrastructure (roads) but when it comes to paying tax, I am sure you all know what happens :-)

This is where I want the Wal-Mart's of the world to come join the party in India.

For the following reasons.

Walmart creates jobs, thus creates a economic level playing field in middle class.

Walmart forces the government to make better roads, railways..... etc.

Walmart makes money for itself , but it pays TAX, which is missing from the 40 million guys who run their thing in the dark.

Walmart creates jobs for the not elitist public. Not every 20 year old in India is IT specilist.


In summary, Walmart pays tax , and so do their employees . This will help the country more than those 40 million guys doing donumberi accounting.
For this single reason, I have highest respect for the private companies ( public limited) that pay tax and also collect tax from their employees at source ( salary).

I would like to pay half the price of the current offering on Willow ( $ 199.00). The pricing to my knowledge is too high. Lately there are so many streaming websites mushroomed on the net, offering the same world cup for a third of the Willow's charge. I can understand that Willow has to pay their dues to the likes of Direct TV or Dish. But if the price is not cheaper I cannot buy from Willow.
I did my math and calculated that for the entire year coverage it costs me around $ 400 with Willow (this is not including WCup). The same coverage I can get from anyone of these streaming sites for about $ 150. Who with the right mind pays an extra $ 250.00 for Willow unless the person is interested in interactive scorecard. Which I think is superb, and the way of the future. Imagine yourself digging into cricinfo archives and click on the scorecard to see the action !!!!!!!!!!. I am a big fan of Willow, but the price has to come down. They can have more customers by cutting the price. Besides they can challenge the secondary industry of illegal streamers and be competitive. To me the problem lies with DISH / Direct TV. These two giants want people to buy DISH so that they can sell more programs to the household. So they are charging high fees for Willow. Poor willow has to pass the buck to the customer. Or is it the greedy cricket board that is asking too much for the broadcast rights?

Finally, here is the summary.

· I love Willow streaming and interactive score card and love to patronage them.

· I don't like Willow's pricing.

· There is a big illegal industry of cricket streaming that's making millions ( I have to verify this )

· Dish and Direct TV are charging way too much money for cricket broadcast.

· Indian board is not seriously looking into helping the prices comedown for internet broadcast. They should sell the rights directly to Willow TV.

· Technology is such a thing, it can easily be copied. Its only matter of time these streaming sites will give a quality video even with interactive scorecard.

· If the prices won't fall then all of the stakeholders (The Willows, The DISH, Direct TVs and The BCCI or ICC) will loose, if not bleed the money as the illegal streams take over.