Now that the haze of exhaustion has worn off, I’m reviewing my notes from CTIA. Our cheat sheet was spot on — with the exception of an Android phone, that is. The same prototypes were available that folks saw in February at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, but there was no actual handset there with which to muck around.

Another disappointment was Sprint’s delay of the launch of Xohm until later this summer. Yet even despite the sense that LTE has gained the upper hand with existing carriers, plenty of vendors were showing WiMAX products. But really, the real news at CTIA this year was around the services that can be delivered over a mobile phone, not the phones or the networks on which those services will be accessed.

I left the mobile TV news to NewTeeVee. On the handset side, touch phones reigned, but there was little else to get excited about. Speech recognition, however, has really gained credibility as a navigation tool with a product launch by Yahoo of its speech-powered oneSearch product and several announcements from Nuance Communications, ranging from voicemail to text to a navigation partnership with TeleNav.

Which brings me to the space that I believe will have the most impact on my life in the near term — Internet-connected navigation services. Om has covered the Dash Express, which is designed for the car, but CTIA made me rethink my plans for a Dash and refocus on my phone.

In June, the Samsung Instinct will combine voice, turn-by-turn directions and an unlimited data plan to produce the BLT of personal nav devices. Allowing voice input and output without forcing me to pay an extra $10 a month to access the service makes me consider changing carriers. I also learned about Dial Directions, a voice-activated search service accessed by calling DIR-ECT-IONS. Simply state your current location and where you want to go, and the service will text you turn-by-turn directions. Some of the navigation options from Wayfinder were useful as well.

Indeed, this year the excitement centered on mobile phone services rather than the phones themselves. For carriers worried about, in the words of Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin, becoming mere “bitpipes,” such an emphasis represents both a worry and an opportunity.

Playing with the Instinct, Samsung’s answer to the iPhone, is a fun experience, but not one I could handle on a daily basis. The touch interface is nice, with a satisfying vibration each time the phone registers a touch command, but lacks an accelerometer to register the changes in direction, like the iPhone has.

The Instinct will be available in June, and it appears to have all the features a consumer could dream of wanting.
In fact the phone has so many features crammed onto it, and it’s such a small device, that it was hard to do things without accidentally taking a picture or hitting one of the three hard-wired buttons on the bottom. The same thing happens on my BlackBerry Pearl, however, so my fat fingers might be the problem.

The navigation feature, which is powered by TeleNav and incorporates voice-activation technology from Microsoft (acquired through its TellMe acquisition), was my favorite. I could just tell the phone the name of one location and it would bring up a list of others nearby. Click on a car icon and it figures out where you are and then offers turn-by-turn directions to the place of your choosing. The icon will also appear near addresses in emails, eliminating one step in getting directions.

The phone uses a proprietary Samsung- and Sprint-developed operating system. The software-based keyboard can be used in landscape mode or vertically. When web searching, the keyboard contains a handy dedicated “.com” key. Surfing was easy and you could drag your finger across the screen to navigate down the page.

The television service, provided by Mobi, is still under development, so was slow to load and pixelated. Downloading music was easy, although the files downloaded from the Sprint store were a scant 1 MB, which makes me wonder about their quality. Battery life is about 5.5 hours, according to a spokeswoman, which includes a mix of talking and data usage. The phone will also come with a second external battery.

The best part about the phone seems to be that these features will be available under Sprint’s unlimited plan. That includes, texting, talking, navigation and data. But without an idea of what Sprint plans to charge for the phone, it’s hard to say how this stacks up against the competition that is similarly aimed at challenging the iPhone. And although not as intuitive as the iPhone, if the price is reasonable, given how many services Sprint includes in the plan, the Instinct may be a bargain.

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Like finding a $20 bill in your coat pocket at the beginning of winter, Sprint has “found” a potential source of revenue in its patent portfolio. While it will certainly be harder than reaching into a coat pocket, the beleaguered wireless carrier probably sees patent litigation as easier than its corporate turnaround.

After squeezing $80 million out of Vonage last year, Sprint has apparently decided that its 115 “voice over packet” patents might be its next cash cow. The carrier says it will sue four smaller phone companies — NuVox Communications, Broadvox Holdings, Big River Telephone Co. and Paetec Communications — for violating six of its patents associated with delivering voice over a data network. It is seeking damages and an injunction. Interestingly, the carrier didn’t try to negotiate with the providers before dropping the L-bomb on them. All of the carriers said they were reviewing the lawsuit and couldn’t comment at this time.

Considering that these six patents have been tried in the courts thanks to Vonage, Sprint is in a much stronger position when it comes to getting a licensing deal, which makes the fact that Sprint chose to go with a lawsuit interesting. It’s likely that when presented with the patent violations and a reasonable license fee, the companies could reach some common ground. Another VoIP company, VoiceGlo, was sued in 2005 along with Vonage, and negotiated an undisclosed license with Sprint covering its use of the patents.

That means Sprint is either going for the injunction (to shut down its competitors), or it is taking them to court in an effort to weaken them (by way of scoring a larger financial settlement). Either way, Sprint is playing hardball — and it isn’t alone.

After successfully coaxing a $120 million settlement out of Vonage last year, Verizon Communications is also asserting its VoIP patents against a competitor. Earlier this month, Verizon sued cable operator Cox Communications for infringing eight patents. Two of those patents are the same ones Verizon successfully defended against Vonage. Vonage may have had to pay millions, but it looks like the power its loss gives the incumbents might keep independent VoIP players paying for years.