sprint cell phone suggestions?

October 22, 2005 10:48 AM

my mom is looking for a new cell phone, need some suggestions and deal advice... details follow.

she's been a Sprint subscriber since the mid 90's, so she wants to stick w/ them (even though she sometimes has to sprint to find service). she's also planning on renewing her contract w/ them. what are some good tactics for her to get the best deal on the phone? should she do this in store or call them up? bluff a little and tell them she's looking at other services and wants to know what they'll do to keep her?

things shes looking for (in order of importance):
good reception
good battery life (or the ability to swap batteries easily)
bluetooth
ability to use isync to sync her contacts
camera

she doesn't want a giant pda sized phone, but she wouldn't mind some sort of pda functionality like calendar, todo, etc. but not very important.

anyone out there have any suggestions or know of any sprint specific phone review sites?

TIA.


.//chris

posted by hummercash to technology (7 comments total)

My favorite sprint phones were the sanyo 4900 series. Best reception...freaky battery life (towards 5 hours of talk time.) Large, brick phone.

But if you want to use bluetooth, and particualrly isync....you're gettinga treo 650.

They only have like 3 phones that are bluetooth capable....the T608 was a POS. There was another 'small' phone...and the Treo. Treo 650 battery life + reception has been great.

The cellphone site is howardforums.com
posted by filmgeek at 10:54 AM on October 22, 2005

First off, not a fan of Sprint (or Verizon, the other CDMA carrier). Bluetooth on Sprint SEVERELY limits your options. If she were to move to a GSM carrier (Cingular, T-Mobile, etc), she'd have a wealth of good phones to choose from.

If she has to stay with Sprint, you're only reasonable option is the PM-325 by LG. Depending on what bluetooth profiles are supported, you may be able to sync contacts using this and a bluetooth adapter on the Mac, but expect headaches!

The Treo 650 is expensive and potentially overpowered for what she wants, but it is a nice unit and very easy to sync compared to other phones.
posted by culbeda at 11:53 AM on October 22, 2005

I thought people who went with sprint had to buy their phones from the store, and that the phones they sell are crippled in regard to bluetooth and other areas. Is this true?

Can one buy a Treo 650 from anywhere and take it to sprint and hook it up?

I only ask because I'm working through this same thing myself right now. Your feature set, sans camera, is exactly the same as mine. What bugs me most, though, is that t-mobile is not available in this area, so my GSM option is pretty much Cingular.

What's most important to me, though, is getting a completely non-crippled phone. I can't emphasize this enough - I do not want to buy a phone that's been purposefully broken by my carrier, or anyone else, especially when phones are as expensive as they are.

For what it's worth, a friend with Cingular recently got a secondhand Treo, I'm not sure which model, and I was not able to sync contacts with OS X's bluetooth services. I was able to send files to the device, was not able to receive files, and that's about it.
posted by odinsdream at 12:38 PM on October 22, 2005

I believe the Razr does all these (don't know about iSync, as I don't have a mac but it does have bluetooth which allows you to sync your contacts over windows, I'm sure the mac version does the same).
posted by geoff. at 1:45 PM on October 22, 2005

geoff., when you say "does have bluetooth," please be aware that this doesn't necessarily mean it supports all that bluetooth can and should support. This is the problem with phones from Verizon and Sprint; they're labelled as Bluetooth phones, but have severely limited implementations installed on purpose to prevent you from doing things like using your phone as a modem to access the internet with your computer, or to access the phone's files.

So, it isn't enough that the phone is labelled "bluetooth enabled." The packaging and the advertising cannot be trusted.
posted by odinsdream at 2:04 PM on October 22, 2005

I like Sprint PCS Info for phone reviews and advice on dealing with Sprint.
posted by britain at 7:07 PM on October 22, 2005

In general, you want to call in, not go to the store. Because in general, the bozos in the store will get you into more trouble than the bozos on the phone.

I know, because I was one of those bozos on the phone (for Cingular/AT&T) and those bozos in the store were about 60% of my problems. They screwed up the plans, they promised things we couldn't give, and they'll call in to us to complain about policy. You know, company policy. THEIR company's policy.

But aside from that, you'll also get a better deal from calling in because Customer Service is authorized to give you a better deal. We have all kinds of fun retention tools we can use to keep you from cancelling, and that's where the key lies -- cancelling.

Call in to cancel. Think of what you want most from your service, and use that for the cancellation reason. Want more features? Tell them your plan doesn't have enough features and you're going to switch carriers over it. Want a cooler phone? Tell them carrier X offered you a cool phone to switch. You'll get what you want.

Even better, this is awesome for the poor schleb on the other end of the line. Most Customer Care centers offer bonuses based on how well you do in retaining customers. So if you just called in to update your service, you'd get a shitty deal and your Rep wouldn't get any credit. But if you call in and fake like you're going to quit, they'll give you a nifty bonus and your Rep will get credit for a "save."

But please, I ask three things:

1) Be nice about it. Don't call in frothing and saying you're going to quit because they suck, etc. That's aggravating to everyone, and no-one wants to help a whiner. Be nice and agreeable and the CS Reps will fall all over themselves trying to hook you up.
2) If you get an unhelpful/unfriendly rep, tell them you'll think about it and call back. A nice rep will end up getting you better stuff than an unfriendly rep and will deserve the bonus more anyway.
3) When you're finished the call, ask to speak to their supervisor to have it officially recorded that they gave you superiour service. This will literally make your CS Rep's day and turn a shitty day into an awesome one. Some centers give bonuses for this, but the simple fact that someone thought you were good enough to say something about is a great reward for a CS Rep after a day of shitty calls from angry people.
posted by Imperfect at 2:41 PM on October 23, 2005