Its very good, I'd say an 8.5 out of ten. If the screen was a little bigger and the video and picture quality were better I'd give it a ten.
The basic phone functionality is great. Making/answering calls by sliding things around takes a day to get used to but then seems pretty intuitive.
Visual voicemail is a godsend. Being able to selectively listen to calls is great. Having a delete button (rather than remembering that 7 is delete) is also nice. This is one item I'm never going to be able to go back on. It's that good. The guy who thought this up should get a Noble prize.
Battery life is very good. i use it for a mixture of activities - calls, mp3s, internet, texting, games etc and have never gone done below 60% on any given day. It comes with a second battery which is cool. I don't have a car charger but don't see the need for one.
The internet is good with the exceptions noted above (screen size and video quality).
The haptic (tactile) feedback is nice and makes entering text really easy.
Texting is nice, it keeps your conversation in threads, so it reads like a conversation. Another really nice touch is it proides you with contact history, so you can see all the communications you've had with someone.
Setting up e-mail access takes about one minute. It has canned setups for all the popular ones -aol, gmail, outlook, etc.
Being able to customize the favs (and many other screens) is really nice. You can basically setup items so that you can get the info with two-three touches rather than having to go to the internet. Sports scores, movies weather, etc. Can all be set up this way. I know it might seem silly but getting the yankees score, or the movie times in seconds rather than minutes on my phone is great.
The navigation works well. It's fast, gives good routes, live traffic conditions and has a ton of POIS.
The instinct has also replaced my ipod. I moved my mp3's and videos to the included 2GB card and had no problems. The software it comes with is good and really easy to use to transfer this type of stuff.
It has a bunch of TV content which is great if you commute or spend time waiting during your day (ie the dmv or doctors office). The video is pixelated though. For some things though the sound is enough.
So I'd say go and get it. I had a Sprint 6700 smartphone before. The instinct is so much smaller, I would have gotten it for that alone! But now I really do have one device which replaces my old phone and ipod. And it does things so much easier than the old phone.
If the picture and videos taken were of better quality it could replace your digital camera as well since you can fit up to an 8gb card in it. Oh well maybe the next version will be better in the video\picture dept.
Also check out
www.cnet.com for a ton of user reviews. Take them with a grain of salt however. Some of the reviewers on there are either super techies or Apple fanatics. So treat it like the Olympics, throw out the high and low reviews and average the middle ones.
Have fun!