First 4G Phone Might Be Coming January 6

CES, one of the biggest electronic events of the year, is almost upon us. But for Sprint fans, there is expected to be a big announcement at the event. Sprint has been inviting people and calling it a "must attend", and CEO's from Sprint and Microsoft are expected to be there, with LG involved, too. Now, most of this is leading to the first 4G phone for any U.S. network, one from LG running Windows Mobile, if this is to be believed. We think the chances are pretty high, considering that Sprint has already said that a 4G phone will be announced in 2010 and they are promoting this so much. Make sure to check back to see what the news is actually about! (Sprintusers link)

LG Lotus Elite Expected January 10

If you are up to date on your phones, you have probably heard about the weird, square shaped LG Lotus. Well, it's coming back in 2010, with the LG Lotus Elite. The phone is going to have the same square shape, QWERTY keyboard, dedicated email, text, and social network keys, and now have an external touch screen included in the package, almost like the Razr 2. The phone is expected to be available on January 10, so if you have been wanting more square goodness, you don't have to wait much longer. Oh, and the picture is of the original Lotus, for lack of a good looking picture of the new phone. (Sprintusers link)

Sprint's Year In Review

What a year it has been in mobile. So many innovative and creative phones have been released, and some of them have even been on the Sprint Network. But it wasn't just phones that made it a good year to be a Sprint customer. Here are our top moments of Sprint in 2009:

-Sprint introduces Any Mobile, Anytime. Almost every other carrier has a way to help you save your minutes every month, but Sprint topped them all by letting you call any cell phone in the United States without using your monthly minutes. The feature is available with all of Sprint's Everything Data plans.

-The Palm Pre released solely on Sprint. The revolutionary phone that has kept Palm alive, the phone has a full keyboard and great multitasking ability. The phone is expected to be available on other carriers early next year, but Sprint is still the exclusive carrier for now.

-Sprint gets two Android phones. The HTC Hero and Samsung Moment are both great phones for any network, but they made Sprint the second carrier to offer an Android phone in the United States. Both phones have great touch screens, are very customizable, and offer tight integration with all of your Google services. Now you just have to decide if you want Sense UI or a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

-Two new Blackberry's released. RIM's Blackberry smartphones have always been popular for their great security and push email, and now Sprint has two new phones with updated features and operating system this year. The Tour has a great keyboard and also offers world roaming capability by using GSM networks, while the 8530 has Wifi and an optical trackpad for even better navigation.

Blackberry Tour Impressions

Sprint has been very good lately with their phone selection, and their line of Blackberrys is no exception. The Tour is the premier business phone for Sprint, and after using it it's obvious why. Holding the device, it's not too heavy and is very balanced. The keyboard is great on the phone, with sloped buttons for a better surface, and good tactile feel. The lock and mute buttons on the top of the device are great to use, but sometimes have a little lag in performing their function and aren't the most tactile and easy to press. The screen on the Tour is very clear and easy to read even on a low brightness setting. The trackball works good, and since it is a darker color, I wouldn't be afraid of it turning yellow over time. Email works great like on any other Blackberry, and messaging is also good. You can use Blackberry messenger to instant message any of your friends with a Blackberry, also. The browser is one of the weaker points of the phone, though. You can use the trackball to navigate a mouse, but it's a bit clunky and slow compared to Android, iPhone, and Web OS. Overall, the Tour is an amazing phone if you don't need to use it for a high functioned web browser.

HTC Hero Impressions

One of the most popular smartphones for Sprint, the HTC Hero offers Android with a 5 megapixel camera and a capacitive touch screen. Going into the Sprint store, it was fairly obvious to see that the new Palm phones were what Sprint is focusing on. But the Hero wasn't too far away, and placed next to the Moment. Upon holding the phone, you can tell some effort was put into making the phone feel solid in the hand. It has a good weight without being as heavy as the Moment, and the keys feel nice. You can go to the home screen on the device easily, and the screen looks great. Swiping between screens was quick and easy, and the trackball worked well and felt great. Opening some apps was a big laggy, but that should somewhat be expected with a store model. Using the keyboard was a joy. I felt the prediction was even better than the iPhone, and the haptic feedback was a really nice touch. It's nice to be able to use the keyboard any way you want to to make it more convenient for you to use, too. The web browser was pretty straightforward, and it loaded fast and rendered nice. Texting was good on the phone. Overall, it's a great phone for people who want to customize to their heart's content and like to use a touch screen on their phone.

Need Calling to Friends and Family? How About Every Cell Phone in the United States?

Some people choose their cell phone plan for the add on features that come with it. Some wireless carriers offer you unlimited calling to five or more specified numbers. That sounds great, but what if you could get unlimited calling to every cell phone in the United States? Sprint has done just that, with Any Mobile Any Time. The award winning feature comes with Everything Data plans, which also features GPS, TV, and unlimited messaging included with the plan. Once you break down the plans, Sprint has more features for your money.

My Best Buy Experience

Recently, our family made a trip to the local Best Buy to buy a new Sprint phone. If you haven't thought about buying your phone from Best Buy, you might want to at least give them a look. They sometimes have their phones cheaper than the price that you could get directly from Sprint. After walking into the store, we went straight to the mobile department. After choosing out our phone, the Blackberry Curve, we waited about ten minutes for the representative at his desk to get done with another customer getting an upgrade. After the wait, we got seated at the bench and began giving him our account information. He took that, and after changing out account to accomidate the Blackberry (which took quite some time considering that he had to call Sprint to get the plan activated) he took the Blackberry out of the box and put the battery in. The best part of this was that the phone slipped out of his hand after putting the cover on, and hit the desk. Great. Thanks. He turned the phone on after this, and while waiting for it to turn on, he talked to his coworker in the adjacent desk. After it turned on, he went through some of the menus, but then pulled the battery and went through the same sequence again. And again. And again. The whole time that he kept on pulling the battery after turning it on, he didn't tell us anything about what was happening and why he was pulling the battery. After about ten-fifteen minutes of this, he finally tells us that the Blackberry Internet Service wasn't setting up, and then sent us out of the store. He didn't just set us free without setting it up, he knew that I could set up the Blackberry, but it was still somewhat rude and odd that he couldn't set up the phone there. Overall, we got a great price for it, but the service was less than spectacular.

Looking For Information or Help For Your Smartphone? Forums Are Your Answer

We have all been there: you have an itching question or problem with your new smartphone or phone and you can't or don't want to go to the store or get on the phone with a chat representative. But now, with the internet and all it provides, there are people out there that can help you with your phone problems, or where you can discover how people like you already got help with the same problem. Introducing online forums. They come for many different products and interests, but the purpose is for discussion, learning, and helping other people. No matter what type of phone that you have, there is a forum that can help you out. For general Sprint users, you can discuss everything at the sprintusers.com forum here. For specific operating systems, you can go to their forum and blog websites here: Precentral.net, androidcentral.com, wmexperts.com, theiphoneblog.com, and crackberry.com. It only takes a couple seconds to register for an account, and after you get one you are free to explore the forums and discuss your favorite smartphones with other people. If you have a question, it doesn't help to search the forum for an answer before you post your question, either.

Confused by What Sense UI Is?

If you are following Android phones, you might have heard of phones like the HTC Hero and the HTC Droid Eris that use "Sense UI." In short, Sense UI is an overlay of the Android operating system on the smartphone that gives you more options to customize your phone. Some of the extra features include having seven home screens on yoru device instead of the normal three, custom widgets from HTC (widgets are little icons that give you information or are shortcuts on your home screens), and syncing your Facebook with your contacts list. One other and notable change with Sense UI is the different keyboard from the standard Android keyboard, with more typing options (QWERTY, keypad, compact QWERTY) and better prediction. For a visual walkthrough and more explanation, you can see the Youtube video on the page here.

Wall Street Journal Editor Reviews the HTC Hero, Calls It the Best Android Phone He Has Tested

This October, Walter Mossberg, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, has done a review of the Sprint HTC Hero. He gives praise to the phone for it's great Sense UI, the Android operating system, and the Sprint network. He also enjoys the camera and how large the Android Market is and all the useful widgets that can be found in it. He found the battery life and memory to be lacking, and sometimes felt the touch screen was unresponsive, but he sums up the article by telling us that it is the "best Android phone I have ever tested, and a worthy competitor to the iPhone, Blackberry, and the Pre." Pretty heavy words there. To read his full review and thoughts about the Hero, you can find the article on the Wall Street Journal here.

Palm Pre Wins Multiple Awards in 2009

The Palm Pre, the revolutionary new smartphone that handles multitasking like a charm, has now won many awards in 2009. After being introduced at CES early this year, it has since been released in June, it has won many technology awards this year, even for being released for half of the year. At CES where introduced, it was chosen as the Best Product of CES. It was also named one of the ten most brilliant products of 2009 by Popular Mechanics, won an editors choice award by Popular Mechanics, and was also chosen for the "People's Voice Awards." Other Sprint devices also won awards this year, including the HTC Hero and Sanyo 2700, but the Pre is notably the smartphone that has won the most awards and praise this year from Sprint, and maybe from any carrier. To read other awards the Pre and other devices have won this year, see Sprint's website here.

First 4G Phone Expected in 2010

Amid news from Sprint that they are going to release a 4G phone using their partner Clearwire's 4G network, much speculation has gone on about what kind of phone it is going to be and what features it is going to have. PC World seems to have a good speculation on the rumored and upcoming device, saying that it will be a joint venture by Sprint and Samsung, will feature dual band 3G and 4G, will run on the Android operating system, and will be released around quarter three of 2010. This all sounds probable to me, considering that Android is a great OS and would do good to compete with the iPhone, dual mode 3G in there is basically a must, and that Sprint and Samsung have partnered for phones in the past, such as the Instinct and the Reclaim. Time will tell what kind of 4G phone that we are going to see, but I think it would be a pretty amazing device if it isn't too far off from these predictions. You can see the full article from PC World here.

Award Winning Sprint Network Named "Most Reliable" by PC World Tests

If you have watched a Sprint commercial lately, you probably know that they claim to be the most dependable 3G network. Well, PC World has tested all four networks for speed and reliability, and it seems like their word is true. Sprint easily won the award of the most reliable 3G network, with over a 90% connection rate for transferring 3G data. They also did well in the speed department, coming close to the top competitors and beating out AT&T's "fastest 3G network" handily. For the full test results, you can see the six page PC World article here, and a chart with all averaged test results here.

Sprint Ties for Second In Customer Service, Ties for First With Store Service

In a recent Laptop Magazine test of the four national carrier's customer service, we get to see how each of the carriers turns out regardless of how good of service, plans, or phones that they have. After all the tests, Laptop Magazine found that Sprint and T-Mobile tie for first in in-store customer service, and Sprint tied for second overall with Verizon for general customer service. Considering this is from the company that has been known in teh past for bad customer service, it is a very good showing, especially since they beat out Verizon, the largest carrier in the country, in two of the three rounds. After years with Sprint, I have had no problems personally, and would recommend them to anybody if they get good service in your area. For the full article about the customer service, you can click here.

Three Sprint Phones Make Cnet's List of Top Phones of 2010

Looks like Sprint got lots of smartphone love this year, getting three phones out of the ten on Cnet's List of Top Smartphones of 2010. The three phones that made it aren't horribly surprising, being the Palm Pre, the HTC Hero (or the European version, which is identical to the Sprint version in software), and the HTC Touch Pro 2. To look at the other phones that made the list of the top smartphones, you can go to Cnet's slideshow here.

HTC Hero and Samsung Moment Getting 2.1 Update

Many Android users (HTC Hero and Samsung Moment) have been out in the cold lately with their outdated Android operating systems, at least ever since the Droid came out with the latest and greatest, 2.0. But now there is hope for all Sprint Android owners: you will be getting the update right to Android 2.1, blowing right past the Droid! Sprint has said earlier this week that they hope to get the update sometime in the first half of 2010, with a specific date yet to be announced. Although this is rather vague, especially for users waiting to get a new update for Android, we can only hope it will come sooner rather than later. For now, you can all enjoy some looks at the Nexus One, or the "Google Phone."

Want 4G In Your Home? Sprint and Motorola Have You Covered

If youa re lucky enough to live in one of the cities where Sprint 4G has been released, you might have seen some people hooked up to the service with their USB Modems. For all of the people looking to take advantage of the 4G speeds, but in their home, Sprint and Motorola now have you covered, too. This week Motorola released a desktop modem that runs on the Sprint/Clearwire 4G wireless network. The modem is designed to pick up the signal indoors, and is Plug and Play compatible with all operating systems. The modem will cost you a reasonable $99 after mail in rebate, but you will have to agree to a two year contract with the service, too. More information on the modem can be found here.

New Sprint 3G/4G Broadband Modem

While the release of Sprint's 4G in many different markets has been outstanding, customers have only been able to purchase one USB modem that can handle the 4G speeds, until now. Yesterday, Sprint introduced a new 3G/4G broadband modem. Similar to the first modem, it can handle the 4G speeds in cities where it is available and works with the 3G network everywhere else. The modem also supports GPS and GPS applications, such as Blackberry Maps. More information on the device can be found on Sprint's page, here.

Sprint Offers Most For Your Money

For quite a while now, Sprint has offered some of the most features for your money with cell phones. They bundle in things like GPS, TV, Music, NFL Mobile, roaming, and nights starting earlier than other carriers. What you really get with some of their newer plans, though, is even more minutes and better calling plans without restrictive "calling circles" like other carriers. If you are on an Everything Data plan from Sprint, you get unlimited calling to any mobile phone in the United States, regardless of the carrier. This means that you not only get unlimited calling to everyone on the Sprint network, but you can call any cell phone without using your anytime minutes. Other carriers offer free calling to their own network, but they only offer calling circles with five-ten people that you can call for free, definitely not every mobile phone in the United States.

Get a 3G/4G Modem for Free From Sprint

If you keep up with cell phones, you have probably heard about Sprint's partner, Clearwire, creating the first United States 4G network. As a Sprint customer, phones with 4G speeds are expected to come next year. But if you live in a city where you get 4G coverage, you can take advantage of the speeds (and freedom from a 5 GB monthly cap) with a new 3G/4G USB modem from Sprint. In an area where you don't get 4G coverage, you can always use the 3G bands with the modem, which work fine, but have a 5 GB monthly cap, like every other carrier. While using the 4G network, you get cable-like download speeds and you have no monthly cap on the amount of data that you use. The modem itself uses Sprint's standard software, and otherwise operates as a normal USB modem. You can get the modem for free with a new contract with Sprint.

Touchscreen Samsung Intrepid Windows Phone on Sprint

The last Samsung Windows Mobile phone to hit the Now Network was the Samsung Ace, now way past it's release date. It looks like Samsung has decided to have a follow up device, plus improved features. The Samsung Intrepid offers a good Windows Mobile experience in a candy bar phone design, in case you don't like the sideways sliders of other Windows Mobile devices. The Intrepid also offers a resistive touch screen, international roaming, Wifi, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. In case you don't like using your finger on the touchscreen, or you can't with it being a resistive screen, the Intrepid has a stylus included with the phone to use with the display. As all Windows Mobile phones do, it offers many features for business professionals, with great support for Microsoft Exchange email and Microsoft Office documents. Windows Mobile now has an app store like the other major smartphone operating systems, so you get access to hundreds of apps right on your phone. The phone is available now on Sprint for $149 with a new contract or qualified upgrade, making it cheaper than Sprint's Android phones.

New and Innovative Sanyo Messaging Device

Sanyo has really been focusing on their messaging devices lately. Not only did they release the entry level Sanyo 2700, but now they have a new messaging device. Enter the Sanyo Incognito. The phone looks like a weird touchscreen phone from the outside, but you can open it up sideways, similar to an LG enV or other phone, and it has a great full keyboard and OneClick interface. the outside screen is great for checking your messages and calls, if you can use the full touch interface without any physical buttons, and then you can type out texts and emails with the spacious full keyboard on the inside with the great display. Other included features are a two megapixel camera, threaded text messaging, and Sprint TV and Music. You can get the Incognito for $49 after a mail in rebate and a new line or qualified upgrade.

Free Messaging Phones for the Holidays

For a limited time only, you can get one of three full keyboard messaging phones from Sprint for free online. You can choose from the LG Rumor 2, with a slide out keyboard and threaded messaging, a Samsung Reclaim which is made from many recycled materials and features a slide out QWERTY keyboard, or a Sanyo 2700, which features a full QWERTY keyboard and a simple design. Hurry and order one online while the phones are still free!

Delivery for Holidays by December 21

Are you getting that someone special a Sprint phone for Christmas? If you are ordering online, make sure to place your order by December 21 at 5:00 P.M. to get your order at your doorstep by Christmas Eve! Of course, if you miss that deadline, you can always head into a Sprint Retail Store or Best Buy location and pick up the phone in person.

Tour 2 Coming 2010; Wifi, Trackpad Included

The flagship CDMA Blackberry smartphone, the Blackberry Tour, is going to be receiving an update early 2010. The new model will include Wifi, the trackpad (already available on many of the new Blackberry's), and maybe even more memory for storing your apps from the Blackberry App World.

An article of the Tour 2 here.

Palm Pixi Impressions

After going into a Sprint store to get service on my phone, I remembered that I haven't yet looked at the newest addition to the WebOS family, the Palm Pixi! After making my way over to the phone (right next to the Pre), I couldn't help but noticing how small the keyboard was. It looks to be a little bit bigger than the Pre, but when it isn't under a slider it looks that much smaller. Opening a few applications and swiping them away, there was some noticeable lag, but that might have been the fact that so many people play with the phones all the time. Opening up a message to try out the keyboard, I could type fairly accurate with only a few mistakes, but that was going a little slower than normal in account of the small buttons. The missing pixels from the Pre are noticeable, but most people won't be too bothered by this. The power button was easy enough to find, and the phone felt good in the hand. The phone had a much more solid, yet thinner, feel than the Pre, which is a good thing. Swiping between the menus and hitting buttons was easy with the nice and crisp capacitive touch screen. Overall, I would make sure to try out the phone in the store and make sure you would be able to use the keyboard, and you don't need Wifi.

Blackberry Curve 8530 Now Available on Sprint

The newest addition to the aging Curve linup, the Blackberry Curve 8530 is the newest entry-level Blackberry from RIM. Featuring a two megapixel camera, trackpad navigation, GPS, Wifi, and a full QWERTY keyboard, plus all of the great messaging and email features that come with every Blackberry smartphone. You can now grab one for just $49 after a mail in rebate if you start a new account or have a qualified upgrade, it is one of the most affordable smartphones on any network.