In a Shift from Nextel's Network, Sprint Releasing Rugged CDMA Phones

Although Sprint has already announced their plans to phase out their iDen network acquired by Nextel, they haven't given customers on the aging network a real reason to switch over to CDMA. In a first move to change this situation, Sprint has released the Sanyo Taho, a rugged flip phone that runs on the CDMA network. Although the phone isn't totally waterproof, it can withstand total submersion in up to one meter of water for thirty minutes, along with other military-grade specs. The phone doesn't have any type of push-to-talk service that doesn't use iDen, however, so this is only a phone for Nextel customers that like the rugged style of some of the phones. Sprint also has the Motorola ES400S smartphone, which is also a rugged phone. The ES400S has a full QWERTY keyboard on a candybar design and is running Windows Mobile 6.5.3. (Sprint)

My Experience With PdaNet for Tethering

As most hardcore Sprint subscribers know by now, when you switch to one of the Everything Data plans that includes the unlimited mobile to mobile calling you cannot get the tethering feature for your phone. Now, all that this means is that you can't use Sprint Smartview to tether your smartphone to your computer like a data card. For the past few months I have been trying out an application called PdaNet, which is a lightweight and free to try application for Blackberry's and other smartphones.

There are other applications that you can buy, such as Tether (previously Tetherberry), but those have a thirty day trial and then you have to pay up to fifty dollars for the program on your phone. Before going on a trip, I decided to install PdaNet to see if I could get it to work and how fast it was.

Setup was a breeze, you just had to install the lightweight app on your computer and desktop machine (I have a Windows 7 laptop but there is also a version for Mac), plug in your app, and go to the app and click use USB connection. You will either get a prompt on your computer to connect, or you have to click on the task bar and click connect on the pop up menu. After that, you can start surfing the web! The speed of the connection isn't bad, although I live with good Sprint 3G coverage and it depends on how fast your phone connection is.

After about a month of using the software, I now get a popup every once in a while to purchase the program because my "trial is expiring." You are allowed to just click exit to the make the popup go away. I think that the more data that you use when tethering your phone to the computer the more the popup will come, from what I have noticed.

If you are looking for a tethering application for your smartphone, go ahead and see if PdaNet will work for you. I am writing this article using the program to get online, since the hotel I am at doesn't have very good Wifi. Just make sure to watch your usage, because it can be easy to eat up your 5 GB of data every month tethering your smartphone to your computer. (June Fabrics Technology)