If you are a current Sprint subscriber, what follows will be of particular interest to you. Looks like the 2008-2009 roadmap for Sprint’s releases has been leaked, and now we can all wait on the edge of our seats for what’s to come.
It looks like we’ll be seeing the Motorola i950 followed by the Motorola i576 and the Motorola i776 in early Q4. In late Q4, we’ll see the BlackBerry 8350i, which will have an internal antenna, Wi-Fi and GPS.
At the beginning of the year, we’ll see the Motorola “Monolith.” But then in Q2, a Samsung slider with a music focus, a Motorola “Immersion” phone and the Sanyo Pro410 will hit Sprint. Even though Sprint profits have been down over the past several quarters it looks like they have a full line up for the months to come.
[via The Boy Genius Report]
A week ago, I went to Sprint and got the Blackberry 8330. Sprint’s 3G network is blazingly fast. Then I saw a colleague with a Blackberry 8350i, so I went back to Sprint and exchanged the 8330 for the 8350i—since my job requires me to also have a walkie-talkie.
The Sprint salesperson did point out that the 8350i runs on the Nextel radio network, but failed to make it clear that Nextel’s network is slow and nowhere near Sprint’s 3G network. The store only had two 8350i’s and I was lucky enough to get one before they were put out as display models.
Now I’m stuck with the 8350i (since Sprint would only allow one return/exchange within 30 days of purchase) which takes 2, 3 or 4 times longer than the 8330 to open a website. Watching Youtube.com is a joke as Nextel’s network is rather slow.
If you love to surf the ‘net, don’t get the 8350i and stick with Sprint’s 8330 or other 8000 models running on the 3G network. But if you use the walkie-talkie more than you surf the ‘net, then get the 8350i.
I know I cannot have everything in one phone such as the 8350i. But considering that I have to now carry only one phone instead of three (and capable of using a 16gig MicroSD compared to the 8330’s 2 gig capacity) —more than outweighs the shortcomings of the 8350i running on Nextel’s network.
Overall, I’m still happy with the 8350i. I only wished that Nextel runs on the 3G network.
Just use the Wifi wherever possible. You can make and receive phone/dispatch calls while still using data at the same time. This what I do with my 8350i when I’m at home or in the office. Blackberry Maps wants to use IDEN all the time, but every other application I’ve installed will use Wifi whenever possible.
I think the 8350i is one of the best IDEN devices ever to appear. No longer is my cellphone a shame to my friends with PCS devices.