On Thursday, information regarding the recently-released Samsung Instinct smartphone was made public. Although the device was made available to Sprint customers on June 19 and to everyone else the following day, reports of shortages in certain stores are already being announced.

About one week ago, Sprint Nextel Corp. officials set the new touch-screen smartphone’s price at $129.99 when purchased with a two-year contract. The device, commercialized exclusively through Sprint, was expected to be one of the iPhone’s most powerful competitors. The sale numbers it has recorded this past week come to confirm this.

The device has a 3-inch display, QWERTY keypad and multimedia capabilities. It also features a 2-megapixel camera for both stills and videos and comes with a 2GB MicroSD memory card, which can be upgraded to 8GB. Although the phone is equipped with Bluetooth wireless standard support for connecting to peripheral devices, it does not support Wi-Fi for Web connections.

This is not everything the Instinct can do: it features GPS-enabled video and audio driving directions. Its system, powered by TeleNav, brings more than 10 million local listings. As far as entertainment goes, Instinct users can gain access to Sprint’s video network, which includes sports, news and various TV shows.

As independent telecom analyst Jeff Kagan sees things, from time to time a device comes along and "captures the imagination." As last year everything was about Apple’s iPhone, he said that 2008’s handset attraction may very well be Samsung’s Instinct.