Tag Archives | Sprint

Blackberry Style Brings Back the Flip Phone

Posted by Jared Newman on October 18, 2010 at 2:07 pm

I doubt that anyone expects the clamshell phone to make a comeback, but that’s not stopping the Blackberry Style 9670, a flip phone that’s coming to Sprint on October 31.

The Style has a 624 MHz processor, 5 megapixel camera, microSD storage, GPS, Wi-Fi, and the Blackberry 6 operating system. It costs $100 with a two-year contract, after a $100 mail-in rebate. Coverage, which requires a data plan, starts at $70 per month.

Is it wrong that I’m totally fascinated by this product? Sprint and Research in Motion justify the Style’s existence by claiming that 100 million people currently use flip phones. They don’t say how many of those people would want a clamshell with smartphone guts. Usually, flip phones are dirt-cheap, and don’t require data plans. That’s the allure.

Which is not to say that a flip smartphone (a fartphone?) has no appeal. Have you ever tried to emphatically hang up an iPhone? You can’t. Ever tried to answer a call on a touch screen phone without looking at it? Good luck. With the flip phone, you flick it open with your thumb and forefinger to answer the call. You snap it closed with gusto. It’s wonderful.

But $100 wonderful? I don’t know.

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Galaxy Tab (Almost) Everywhere

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 10, 2010 at 8:06 pm

At Samsung’s Galaxy Tab launch at IFA in Berlin last week, Samsung executives wouldn’t say when the tablet would debut in the U.S.–but they did say that it would be for sale from “most” major wireless carriers. Looks like they spoke the truth: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint will all offer the Tab.

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Engadget Likes Sprint's Epic 4G

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 16, 2010 at 11:01 am

Engadget’s Chris Ziegler has reviewed Sprint’s Epic 4G, the second 4G phone, and the first with a physical keyboard. It’s based on Samsung’s Galaxy S platform, also available in various forms–but not with a keyboard–from other carriers. He pretty much raves about the thing. Engadget got close four hours of life using the Epic as a 4G hotspot, which sounds impressive; it hasn’t done traditional battery testing yet, though. (Iffy battery life is the biggest gotcha with Sprint’s EVO 4G, so it’s an important point.)

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Sprint + T-Mobile? LTE Holds the Key

Posted by Ed Oswald on July 13, 2010 at 4:24 pm

When rumors of Sprint and T-Mobile first cropped up in March 2008 thanks to Merril Lynch analysts, quite a few pundits out there thought it was a perfect idea to get the carrier on equal footing with its much bigger competitors. There’s a huge problem however with this marriage: cellular technology.

In current form, a Sprint and T-Mobile merger would be a hodgepodge. You’d have a CDMA network (Sprint), an iDEN network (Nextel), and a GSM network (T-Mobile). None of these technologies are really compatible, nor is there a phone out there that could successfully jump from one tower and technology to another.

But of all people, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has started the conversation anew. He told the Financial Times Tuesday that a pairing would have some “logic” to it. How? Pretty simple — Sprint could viably build an LTE network to partner with its WiMAX efforts, and T-Mobile is also on the path to the same technology as well.

(It should be mentioned that within say two to three years, the topic of cellular technology is going to be pretty much moot as all the major carriers save Sprint have considerable LTE plans. Benefit to the consumer? You bet. Manufacturers won’t have to worry about producing two versions of the same phone.)

Sprint is serious about its LTE move: it is already seeking bids to deploy the technology over its network. This is not to say it’s forgetting about WiMAX: the way the FT is reporting, it sounds like that’s part of what Sprint is looking for bidders to do.

No matter what the talk is, the only way T-Mobile would be able to effectively compete with either Verizon or AT&T is through a merger. It’s running short of spectrum — always an issue for the nation’s fourth biggest carrier — and coverage still remains spotty even after nearly a decade on US soil.

In one fell swoop, those problems could be alleviated. But the sticking point still remains the technology. No LTE for Sprint will mean no merger, and I think that’s pretty clear.

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Sprint's Supply Issues May Erase 4G Advantage

Posted by Ed Oswald on July 12, 2010 at 1:49 pm

For a carrier that made so much of being the first to 4G, it’s own issues with keeping 4G handsets in stock may end up costing it the lead in the race towards faster wireless speeds. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse was surprising candid about the company’s issues in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that appeared in Monday’s edition.

About 300,000 units of the EVO 4G have already sold since its early June release, and phone manufacturer HTC is having trouble keeping up with demand. Now Sprint cannot even promise a solid ship date to customers attempting to purchase it online, and good luck trying to find it in its retail stores.

Another 4G-compatible phone is on the way, dubbed “The Epic”, but is likely not going to be available for several months. That doesn’t help Sprint at all.

These issues likely mean that Sprint will only have a few months of lead time before competitors start turning on their own 4G networks. Verizon should start rolling out its LTE network in select cities by the end of the year, and AT&T plans to begin offering 4G services in 2011. T-Mobile, while far behind in 3G, has been rumored to move straight to its own 4G plans next year as well in a bid to stay competitive.

EVO 4G supply issues aren’t HTC’s only problem, as it has multiple phones in its portfolio that are doing well. Verizon’s Droid Incredible is another example. These shortages are not even the company’s fault: it lies in the parts necessary to build the phone which HTC doesn’t produce itself, such as the touch screen.

One thing is clear: the next several months will be critical for Sprint. If it cannot get its act together soon, it will once again find itself ceding ground to its rivals. A shame for a company who a year ago seemed so far ahead.

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Sprint EVO 4G Speed: Not Spectacular

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 19, 2010 at 11:04 pm

The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg has the first review I’ve seen of Sprint’s upcoming EVO 4G, the first phone that does data at 4G speeds. He doesn’t exactly rave about it–while it’s faster than a 3G phone, he didn’t find it as quick as he expected based on Sprint’s claims. And he couldn’t eke a day’s worth of life out of the battery. And he wasn’t able to test one of the phone’s most intriguing features, its two-way video chat.

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Sprint Nixes the Nexus One. Shocked?

Posted by Harry McCracken on May 10, 2010 at 2:53 pm

And one more bit of Android news: Sprint, which was going to let Google sell a Sprint-ready Nexus One phone, has changed its mind. Its rationale is perfectly reasonble: Its upcoming EVO 4G superphone is essentially a souped-up Nexus One, with more power in every department that matters. It’s not clear why the company is only coming to this conclusion now, almost two months after the Sprint Nexus One was announced. Or, really, why it announced the Nexus One at all, given that it unveiled the EVO a week later, largely rendering its version of the Nexus One obsolete before it ever shipped.

Sprint’s decision follows the lead of Verizon, which also announced a Nexus One and then killed it before release. That leaves the original T-Mobile Nexus One and an unlocked, AT&T-compatible version available in Google’s online store. If Google wants to have a future as a phone merchant, it’s going to need to replenish its lineup–Nexus Two, anybody?–and avoid the vaporous quality of two out of the four U.S. Nexus Ones that were announced.

Google may have been trying to reinvent the phone business with the Nexus One, but it fell victim to a pretty basic law of phone marketing: If you announce a phone in early January and don’t actually ship it on a given carrier for months, chances are high that said phone will start to look like an antique before it hits the market. Especially if it runs Android, an platform that’s still evolving in fast-forward mode.

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Palm's Bad News Just Keeps Adding Up

Posted by Ed Oswald on April 19, 2010 at 1:56 pm

Radio Shack is phasing out Palm phones, putting another nail in what seems to be the coffin for the once powerful smart device manufacturer. The confirmation isn’t coming from “The Shack” directly: instead a Sprint representative confirmed to Barron’s that the retailer was phasing out Palm in favor of other devices.

Sprint spokesperson Scott Sloat said that the move was part of Radio Shack’s normal refresh of it’s cellular phone lines to keep things current. The Shack must now feel that Palm is falling behind — or just plain unpopular among consumers — if it is ready to ditch the brand.

But that’s not all: analysts are now increasingly pointing out that Palm will likely not sell at its current share price (around $5 as of April 19th). This can be interpreted to mean that most don’t have the confidence that the company will have any value to investors (and heck, buyers too), and is poised to fall even more.

Indeed, 17 of 19 analysts polled by Bloomberg said the stock is overvalued, with at least one saying the stock has no value at all. And the longer it takes a buyer to emerge, the more the price of the stock will fall, allowing any buyer to pick up the company on the cheap.

With interest from buyers described as “tepid,” it may be a while before any potential suitor emerges. Then again, some may be waiting for Palm to become a bargain before moving to snatch it up.

Either way, the company probably has only a few months to figure out its next moves. It is believed that the company would have burned through at least half of its cash-on-hand by August, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think without a buyer, it would be all but out of money by the new year.

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