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So much cool tech.  So many choices.  But we still have a long way to go.

I’ve written here before about my Palm T|X, which makes a nice handheld media player thanks to Kinoma and wifi.  With the Download Helper plug-in for Firefox, I can download Flash video and watch it on the T|X.  Pocket DVD Studio lets me put other videos on the T|X.  But what about the latest TV shows?

I can download most of the TV episodes I’d want to watch (or save) from iTunes.  I can watch them on my desktop, laptop or on an iPhone/iPod touch.  Nice, but I don’t actually want to own most of these shows — I just want to watch those I might have missed.  And disk space on my old desktop is at a premium, so I have to archive HD videos immediately.  Why can’t I steam them and “pay” by watching ads, like on Hulu or the network’s own sites?

On my Samsung Instinct, over the Sprint mobile phone network, I can watch streaming video.  Most “channels” offer short clips.  A few offer full episodes.  I can watch Heroes on NBC Mobile (though sadly, this season hasn’t hooked me).  I can pay extra for channels with premium content.

We’re still not where I, as a consumer, want mobile media to be.  I want to …

1. Watch what I want to watch, where I want to watch it.
2. I want it to be free — ad supported is okay.  I only want to pay if I want to keep a copy.
3. I want to be able to watch programs on a variety of devices — stream to my phone or over wifi to a computer or PDA/media player.
4. I want to be able to watch on a mobile device, then plug that device into a TV to watch on a big screen.

That’s my wish list for 2010.  Let’s see how close we get to making it happen.

Sprint released a firmware update for the Instinct two weeks ago.  I’ve held off adding any new posts here while I lived with this update to see if it really addressed a lot of the weaknesses of the Instinct.  My verdict is: It Does.  If you haven’t downloaded the update, get it ASAP.

Here are some of the improvements I’ve seen:

1. Instinct’s data-intensive apps are a lot more stable.
2. The browser is MUCH improved.  I’d even go so far as to say it’s a pretty good browser now.
3. The video player is MUCH improved.  After the last update I found the player crashed frequently.  The image is now very clear, and it rarely crashes (though, sadly, I can’t say it never crashes).

Overall Stability

The update fixed nearly 250 open bugs — welcome to the world of the early adopter!  Overall, I found my Instinct much more stable after the update.  This update made the phone what it should have been on day 1.

Web Browser

The update gave the phone a totally new browser, built from a new codebase.  I was amazed and impressed with the new browser.  First, it’s much, much faster than the previous browser.  This is because it doesn’t attempt to render the full page, but rather, only the portion of the page displayed on the screen.  If you scroll to an unrendered area, you’ll briefly (for a fraction of a second) see a checkerboard pattern, then the page will render.

The new browser displays pages much closer to the way they look in a desktop browser.  It still doesn’t display Flash content, but I’m not aware of any mobile browser that does.

The browser still has only three size options for viewing a page — 1/2, 1x and 2x size.  For certain sites (Google Mobile Reader, for example), I find neither of these options particularly useful.  However, the update now gives you a ‘full screen view’ option.  Since the very beginning, you’ve been able to hide the browser controls on the right side of the screen to make better use of the screen real estate.  Now, by clicking the “Voice Command” button (on the right side of the phone), you can hide all of the on-screen controls.  Now the page will fill the screen, and be a bit easier to navigate and read.

Video Player

I immediately noticed that the image for streaming videos was clearer.  The videos also seemed to load a bit faster and more reliably, with fewer freezes and crashes.  I really think this is one of the Intinct’s big advantges over the iPhone.  Sprint’s mobile video service is pretty good, with a wide range of channel choices.  The Instinct was made to be a platform for these videos, so for the sake of the company’s future they need to get both the service and the phone working to people’s expectations.  I think the update goes a long way toward that.

More to Come

I’m still waiting for an update that will allow the use of 3rd party applications on the Intinct.  Right now, if you load a 3rd party JAVA application, you can’t use it because the application won’t recognize the Intinct’s on-screen keyboard.  For example, I can use Google Maps by navigating to the area I want to see, but I can’t enter the name of a place I’m trying to find.  Sprint is working on a fix, and it is slated for release by the end of the year.

The official Sprint posts on www.instinctinsight.com also say more application updates are on the way, now that the firmware update provides a foundation for them.  Among the coming updates is another video player update intended to fix “channel unavailable” errors and several other problems.

Get the Updates

You can force your Instinct to get all software updates by going to Main->Settings->General->Update Software