Phone-Rush

My take on Sprint's Simply Everything plan

By Mehdi

Earlier this week, Sprint introduced its Simply Everything plan. The plan gives you unlimited voice, data, text, email, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, Direct Connect and Group Connect for $99.99 a month. Dan Hesse, Sprint's CEO and prez has called this "a bold, unprecedented move." Bold? Yes. Unprecedented? Yes. Good for you, Dan. Unfortunately your company's not too hot right now. But that's another story for another day. Let's keep our focus on the plan. AT&T and Verizon both offer unlimited voice for $99. T-Mobile took it a step higher with unlimited voice and text for the same price. And now, Sprint has knocked them all out with this. They deserve props. If you're on a family plan, each additional line gets a $5 discount ($99.99, $94.99, $89.99 and so on.) In my opinion, this plan is great for an individual line. But not so much for larger family plans like mine. There are 5 lines in my family plan. Lets add it up... and that adds up to $449.95 for 5 lines. That's a bit too much. Especially when not everyone's gonna use all of the unlimited features. So in that case I'm better off without it. If I was on an individual plan it would be a different story though.

There is also a dumbed down version of the Simply Everything plan for $89.99. This plan only includes unlimited voice, texting, and Direct Connect. So it's basically unlimited everything except the data. Kind of like T-Mobile's unlimited voice and texting plan. I'd take the 99.99 plan since unlimited data plans rock and considering Sprint has great 3G, if not the best in US. It would be worth the extra $10. Also, here's a chart that takes a look at different available plans including Simply Everything.   

Sprint launching new phones April 16

By Mehdi

Phone Arena has stated that Sprint will launch 5 new phones on April 16. Three of them will use QChat, Sprint's new PTT technology and one of them actually surprised me. Here's a rundown of the phones.

LG LX400

The LX400 will use QChat but other than that it looks like your generic camera phone, nothing special. I looked around and couldn't find any specs on it. One thing bugs me though, assuming the camera is on the bottom of the phone, what's the rectangular shaped thing on the top. And it's got a MSRP of $279.99.

Sanyo PRO-200 and PRO-700

MSRP's go for $249.99 and $269.99 respectively. Both of these super rugged devices will use QChat as well. I ran into some leaked pics of these phones back in November and I only have one thing to say about them. UGLY. i don't care if they have QChat or if they're extra durable. Like most of Sanyo's phones, these are not at all visually appealing. I'd rather be dead than caught using one of these phones. So far Sprint is 0 for 3 in my books.

Sanyo Katana LX

According to discussions on the SprintUsers Forums, the Katana LX will not be much of an upgrade over its low end brethren. Probably a simple, basic, slim VGA phone with Bluetooth for the average joe. It will most likely be a basic Vision phone as opposed to Power Vision. See Katana II specs for an idea of the LX.  No word on the MSRP. Sprint...0 for 4.

BlackBerry Curve 8330

I've been saving the best for last. Finally, the BB Curve for CDMA. There are more pics over at BB Geeks so go check them out. No word on CDMA specs but should be similar to the GSM version for ATT which has a 2 MP camera with zoom, microSD slot, and QWERTY keypad as well as the sweet trackball. Here's one phone I'll be looking forward to.

And Sprint avoids the sweep. 1 for 5 in their April 16 lineup.