While it might be easy to forget Nextel in the face of overwhelming iPhone, Instinct and Vu shaped competition, there are still legions of users enjoying push-to-talk with the carrier.  Since Sprint bought the company out, they’ve been promising to deliver QChat: an upgrade to PTT that uses EV-DO Rev.A rather than the iDEN Direct Connect system currently in place.  At CTIA Wireless the carrier announced the Sanyo PRO 200 and PRO 700, two handsets (the latter being ruggedised) that promised to bridge iDEN and QChat; now there’s a video to show the service in action.

Sprint has come in for some criticism for its handling of Nextel.  Many of the carrier’s existing customers felt unsupported by the people behind their new bill, finding Sprint’s customer service lacking and feeling the network had been left to languish.  Meanwhile, Sprint’s shareholders weren’t too keen on the big money laid out to buy Nextel in the first place; financially Sprint is still suffering.

So the pressure is on QChat to persuade users to stick with Nextel (and maybe even encourage some more to join) while pushing the company back into profit and making Sprint’s plans for a unified network feasible.  A WiFi-enabled BlackBerry is also promised for Nextel sometime this year.

[via Gear Diary]