Call quality on the Intrepid over Sprint's 3G network was fantastic. It did a great job of filtering out wind noise (a plus in San Francisco), and none of my calls dropped--not even in the tunnels on Caltrain (the Intrepid is, in fact, the first phone I've tried that did not drop my calls in those tunnels). Voices sounded clear and not at all tinny on both sides, and the phone was comfortable to hold for long periods of time. According to Samsung, the Intrepid has a talk-time of approximately 6 hours, which is decent for a smartphone.

One thing that worked really well was . To activate it, all you have to do is press a button (with a picture of a talking person on it) and tell the phone what you want. For example, if you want to know where the nearest Starbucks is, you can just tell the phone "coffee," and it will pull up a listing (via Microsoft Bing) of coffee places near you (the app uses GPS to determine where "near you" is). You can also use the app for basic phone commands, such as "Call Ron" or "Text Mom." In my tests TellMe was fairly good at recognizing words, even when I spoke with my mouth full, or when other people were talking around me. It recognized words such as "enlightenment," "entrepreneur," and even "Sarah Jacobsson" (though it spelled my name wrong). The only drawback was that if it didn't recognize a command, it went straight to the Bing search engine. For example, when I asked for e-mail, it didn't give me my e-mail account, but rather a search result for Yahoo Mail.

The Samsung Intrepid is an improvement over the Ace--if not such a great phone otherwise. Like the Ace, it supports CDMA and GSM networks, which is perfect for the international traveler. It syncs up quickly with Microsoft Outlook, and setting up e-mail accounts is easy. While the touchscreen and keyboard combination is not fantastic, the keyboard itself is responsive and easy to use, even for people with large hands. While you can find phones that make similar touchscreen/keyboard combos work (see the , also on Sprint), the split-up commands on the Intrepid had me feeling a bit schizophrenic.