I have often heard it said that plagiarism is the greatest compliment you can bestow upon anyone, well if that's the case, then Samsung have just paid Apple the highest possible praise with their announcement of the new Samsung Instinct. Though far from basic, one could be excused for thinking that the new touch-screen smartphone, scheduled for release July 11, is more than a pretty good knock-off of the first generation iPhone.

However, unlike most knock-off designs, the Instinct is apparently going to be priced the same as Apple's new 8GB 3G iPhone, both in terms of the handset and the minimum two-year service contract: $199 hardware cost and the cheapest Sprint-Nextel service cost of $69.99 a month, though this has yet to be confirmed by Samsung.

Don't get me wrong, there are some advantages to the Samsung's 3G wannabe device: it is slightly smaller, it operates on the universal JavaScript language which may be beneficial in terms of adding third party apps, and it also comes with a removable battery. it also allows users to send picture messages and it can also stream live TV, but other than that there is not much to SMS home about.

I think identical pricing could be a mistake, one would think, as a late comer to the iPhone party, it would be wiser to price slightly cheaper, especially as it is obviously an Apple wannabe and it only comes with 2GB camera memory. For us design and photography buffs the Samsung device strikes out as it has poorer screen resolution quality as it uses 2/3 of the number of pixels when compared to the iPhone. It also has a narrower color spectrum, so the images are not going to be as crisp, or as rich. It does however, allow video recording, whereas Apple's iPhone only takes stills.

With RIM also planning to launch a new BlackBerry smartphone using the Verizon network, it maybe too late for Samsung and Sprint to make major inroads into Apple and BlackBerry country. Still, if you want to look somewhat cool with a touch-screen smartphone and you want to keep your Sprint Nextel network agreement then this could be just the ticket.