Sprint PCS Phones?
My cell phone has been threw a lot in the year or so that I have had it and its time for a new one, especially since the screen just shattered yesterday.
I was hoping i could hold out till the next series of Sprint PCS phones came out but now I can't.
Any suggestions? Do they have a bluetooth enabled phone or any plans for one?
And should I stick with Sprint PCS? I kind have been happy with them and my mother uses them. anyone use Sprint PCS in California? How's the service... i wasnt too happy with the coverage the times I was out there. It didnt even work in Disneyland
I was hoping i could hold out till the next series of Sprint PCS phones came out but now I can't.
Any suggestions? Do they have a bluetooth enabled phone or any plans for one?
And should I stick with Sprint PCS? I kind have been happy with them and my mother uses them. anyone use Sprint PCS in California? How's the service... i wasnt too happy with the coverage the times I was out there. It didnt even work in Disneyland
Comments
there are currently no bluetooth phones available from Sprint. supposedly they're going to be carrying the SE T608 at some point.
If you do go with Sprint again, you might want to be careful in the activation process. The morons at Sprint gave me a number that was already assigned to someone else's phone!
Originally posted by pesi
SprintPCS is definitely spotty in California. heck, ALL cell phone reception is spotty in CA. los angeles, anyway.
there are currently no bluetooth phones available from Sprint. supposedly they're going to be carrying the SE T608 at some point.
What cell phone services in LA do offer bluetooth phones
Personally I have a Samsung A460 and I love it. I believe it is discontinued now but if not you can find it pretty cheap like between $50-100. It's monochrome but it's nice and sharp with a good blue backlight. It's slim and light and has some basic organizer and calendar functions although I never use them.
I'd try howardforums.com for a good discussion of phones/service/rates, etc.
Originally posted by Eskimo
It's hard to pick out a phone to suggest without a little more info about you and your habits. What do you use your phone for? Do you favor portability or features? Do you want a camera in it? Does color matter to you? Do you like flip phones or candybar style or do you not care?
Personally I have a Samsung A460 and I love it. I believe it is discontinued now but if not you can find it pretty cheap like between $50-100. It's monochrome but it's nice and sharp with a good blue backlight. It's slim and light and has some basic organizer and calendar functions although I never use them.
phew, you're right, should be more descriptive.
um.... need a good sounding/performing phone. use my cell quite a bit. Lot of minutes each month. Need good California and NYC service but primarily California. I'm looking for a color phone. Favor a good mix of portability and features. Camera isnt really important, dont plan on using it but could i guess come in handy if it were there. Definitely prefer flip phones. Is there any downside to flip phones or something? I dont "get" the bar phones.
right now the Sanyo 8100 for Sprint PCS has my attention but i want this to last for a while so I'm still looking around and im open to switching providers if i would benefit.
Does Sprint PCS work internationally? Do any? I've had a hard time finding info on Sprint service internationally
Originally posted by applenut
Does Sprint PCS work internationally? Do any? I've had a hard time finding info on Sprint service internationally
I can't speak for Sprint, but many of the GSM phones work internationally. You have to get an unlocked phone or have your phone unlocked by your provider. That sounds harder than it is though. I just got my TMobile phone (a GSM phone) and I call the cust service and told them I was travelling to Europe and needed my phone unlocked so I could use a prepaid SIM card when I was over there. They emailed me an unlock code and now my Cingular SIM works in it too. I'm sure Sprint has some sort of international roaming plan, but it would probably be really pricy. You're better off going with a GSM phone (TMobile and Cingular) as opposed to Sprint or Verizon (I think they're CDMA).
what's the difference between GSM and CDMA.... my understanding is CDMA has faster data services which probably is more useful everyday than the once or twice a year intl trip. no?
Originally posted by applenut
hmm.. well.... i dont plan on being overseas much. perhaps a week or two in russia this summer, maybe asia at some point in the next year and greece next summer.
what's the difference between GSM and CDMA.... my understanding is CDMA has faster data services which probably is more useful everyday than the once or twice a year intl trip. no?
I don't know what the differences are except that GSM uses SIM cards and my Sprint phone didn't. And that GSM is a standard used everywhere but here. For some really good info, see bradbower's stream of consciousness thread on it. It's several months old, but he's got some good detail in there.
Originally posted by torifile
I don't know what the differences are except that GSM uses SIM cards and my Sprint phone didn't. And that GSM is a standard used everywhere but here. For some really good info, see bradbower's stream of consciousness thread on it. It's several months old, but he's got some good detail in there.
Lemme save you the trouble of digging through that thread. Here's brad's good description of the differences:
Yeah, you are missing something. Ironically, one of my favorite aspects of GSM technology is exactly where your reasoning becomes a reason against CDMA. You can only use your StarTac with Sprint. You can't change service providers without buying another phone. Not only that, but as a Sprint or Verizon customer, you can only choose between, buy, use, and upgrade to the phones that they have chosen to enable or have had made specially (and have branded) for their network. With GSM, you can use any GSM-capable phone, an unreleased phone, a smartphone PDA, a wireless internet PCMCIA card, an old phone, your friend's phone, a loaner phone, an Apple phone, whatever, just put your SIM smartcard into the phone and you'll be on the chosen carrier's network as your subscriber, your phone number, and under your account. You can have a backup phone to put your SIM into if your main one dies. You can trade handsets with friends with no hassle. You can take your GSM phone all over the world and use it with any of thousands of wireless service providers, as GSM is the standard de facto outside of the U.S. (GSM is the leader in coverage for everywhere in the world except for the U.S., where we jumped on the inferior TDMA/CDMA technology bandwagon too soon), to use a tri-band GSM phone, just put the SIM card in and you're on whatever carrier you wish, in India or China or France or Zimbabwe. Speaking of handsets, the coolest ones are always GSM. Smartphones, camera phones, really great-looking, stylish, and compact phones, the really neat models, they're GSM. Take Sony-Ericsson for example, 90% of their phones are GSM. And Nokia has a ton of them. Then there's GPRS, which was the first wireless broadband internet, and it's a GSM technology. GSM has always been the more advanced technology, it was developed from scratch by wireless experts as the best global solution for mobile communications ever. (CDMA was a commercialized side-effect of outdated war technology for guiding missiles.) Then there are the companies offering GSM, including T-Mobile which has awesome deals and cool phones, AT&T which has... well, they're AT&T (and they're both GSM and CDMA), and Cingular which has equally awesome ideas about mobile communication like the rollover minutes.
But eventually, it shouldn't be that much of a problem. In 3-5 years, we'll have hundreds of phones from a dozen or more manufacturers with all kinds of form factors, featuresets, and aesthetics, and they'll all be using chipsets which are capable of using UMTS (3G), all three bands of GSM/GPRS, and WCDMA (the future of CDMA) technologies with whatever provider you wish, the nation will be saturated by GSM just like it is with CDMA today, and the cost of using wireless communications will be coming close to putting landline telephone companies out of business (even your home phones will have gone wireless, but kept the nice home phone-type form factor, without having to deal with annoying telephone jacks and the like). Once there is great coverage and the cost comes down, I can even see the respective internet access/VPN technologies of each of the different technologies becoming standard for home and work internet/network usage. I see a day when we'll have derivatives of Bluetooth and 802.11 for short-range connections and for mid-range fast networking (respectively), and UMTS/etc for internet/WAN/VPN, built in to every computer.
I'm in L.A. with Sprint PCS and a Sanyo phone. It does cut out occasionally when you are in the Hollywood Hills, but I'll agree with others in the forum all cell phones do.
My roommate, who had a AT&T CDMA phone would often have to borrow my phone to make calls because his service was the WORST. Complaining to AT&T, they talked him into a GSM version of phone and it ended up being just as bad. Later we found out that the service being new is also filled with gremlins and dead zones. It seems GSM in L.A. IS the future, but just not there yet. Basically, it seems with a GSM phone you are like a 'beta' user.
After all that...he ended up with a Nextel phone. His service/phone rivals mine and may be better. In my opinion Sprint PCS and Nextel are your best bets...but remember all service is sorta shoddy in LA LA land.
Hope our experience helps some...
I got a Sanyo 8100. Very nice phone. dual color LCDs, tad bit thicker than I would have liked but cant complain too much. Seems like it will hold up fairly well.
So far its gotten good reception. My PCS Vision account isnt activated till June 3rd so all I can use are the basic, gasp i know, phone features. The screen is great. Camera is interesting but fairly useless at this point to me.
Hopefully it'll get good reception in California (Bay Area and LA).