We said earlier this year that we hoped to see some great smartphones on Sprint this fall, because there wasn't a whole lot to brag about in the first half of 2009. Well, it now seems like Sprint customers can finally choose between several up to date smartphones, and there's nothing better than that. Two Android smartphones now tops our Sprint list, and Sprint promises more Android goodies to come next year. Just as important, Sprint will release a Wi-Fi version of the BlackBerry Tour as well next year. How about that? Anyway, check out the best Sprint has to offer in its smartphone portfolio below.
The HTC Hero on Sprint is the best Android phone to date, and one of the best smartphones on the market. This isn't a novice smartphone. The Sprint Hero will take some time to learn, but the device rewards patience. The interface running on top of Google's Android, HTC's Sense experience, is thoroughly enjoyable and intelligent. In almost every way, from the intuitive contextual menus to the desktop widgets to the detailed calling screens, HTC gets things right with the Sprint Hero. It's not an Apple iPhone killer. It handles some functions much better than the iPhone, like integrating and managing social networks. But in other ways, like multimedia playback or even camera performance, the Sprint Hero still comes up short. That said, if your phone is a conduit to your social network, the HTC Hero on Sprint does a great job delivering the information to you, and helping you connect with your online friends.
The Samsung Moment is a solid piece of Android hardware with some specs that put it at the top of the pack. That AMOLED screen, for one, is the best of any Android phone we've seen, and you'll love watching movies or just flicking around the interface on the sharp, rich display. The phone lacks the heavy customization and extra features of other new Android phones, especially the Motorola CLIQ and HTC Hero on Sprint, but the secret to Android is that, if you're willing to do a lot of research and digging through the Android App Market, you can find almost all the features you're missing, often for free. If anything, we miss great video support the most, especially with that large, sharp display, and we'd like to see more apps and widgets to bring our favorite social networking services up to the desktop, and into our address books and calendars. But the Moment is still a solid piece of hardware, and even if it doesn't match the others in interface design, it sets a new bar for speed and hardware features on Android.
The BlackBerry Tour on Sprint finally brings the updated BlackBerry OS to the Now Network, and the Sprint Tour is undoubtedly the best BlackBerry device the carrier has to offer. Unfortunately, as so many other smartphones pass RIM by, the Sprint Tour is less and less exciting with each day. The hardware looks and feels solid, for a BlackBerry, and it seems like RIM has stopped innovating in their phone designs. Thanks to diligent work by RIM building some very useful apps to connect to the major social networking and instant messaging services, the BlackBerry Tour isn't too buttoned up for business, and it makes a solid all-around choice. In fact, the phone has great multimedia features for music playback and sync and one of the most competent video players we've used on a smartphone. The screen is also fantastic, perhaps the best we've seen on a business device in this form factor. Still, more and more the BlackBerry platform is showing its age. The Web browser is nearly useless compared to the desktop quality browsers you'll find on other advanced smartphones, even on new Windows Mobile devices like the HTC Snap. The calendar and messaging apps, while powerful enough, were downright ugly to use, and the phone still relies heavily on long, confusing, textual menus for settings and advanced features. Unfortunately, the Sprint Tour also lacks Wi-Fi (a Wi-Fi version will come next year), and it's one of the more sluggish BlackBerry phones we've used.
The Samsung Intrepid is not a very exciting Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone, especially compared with some of the new models that are hitting the market. It mostly reminds us of AT&T's Samsung Jack, though there are a few solid improvements beyond the addition of the touchscreen and the new WinMo OS. The Samsung Intrepid has a great keyboard, for one thing, and for battery life the Intrepid ranks among the best Windows Mobile phones around. Web browsing has been greatly improved with the new Windows Mobile, but it still lags behind the best of the best, and some apps, like the calendar, Windows Media player and all those system settings menus, have seen little or no improvement at all. If you're looking for a BlackBerry alternative, the Samsung Intrepid makes a compelling choice, though it isn't as adept at handling messaging and social networking as the BlackBerry Tour, for example. Still, with the new Windows Mobile Marketplace app store and some great new services from Microsoft, Windows Phones are getting more interesting all the time.
The HTC Touch Pro2 is one of our favorite business phones, and it's definitely the best Windows Mobile phone money can buy. But not necessarily this HTC Touch Pro2. Something has been lost in the translation to Sprint's fast EV-DO Rev. A network with our review unit, and that something is reliability and responsiveness. The Sprint Touch Pro2 that we tested was a mess of buggy software, sluggish menus and unresponsive interface. The best features are still there, like the fantastic keyboard and the best-in-class business calling that puts important information about your callers at your fingertips during a call. But the additions that Sprint has made, like the Sprint Music Store and the Sprint TV streaming service, didn't work well on this phone, and all around we think it lagged behind the unlocked version and the model that T-Mobile is selling. That said, if you're a WinMo fan on Sprint, it's absolutely a smartphone worth considering.
The Palm Pre is a very good phone, and an exciting addition to the smartphone world. We enjoyed our time with the phone, and would have no trouble recommending the phone. But to who would we recommend it? iPhone users might be put off by the less intuitive interface, which would be a shame because they would miss the snappy feel of the e-mail and address book apps. BlackBerry fans might gripe about the smaller QWERTY with those grippy keys. That would be too bad, because the Palm Pre does all the great consolidation of e-mail, contacts and messaging that BlackBerry users take for granted, but extends these to social networking and Internet search, as well. So, here's how to know if you should buy the Pre. Do you use Gmail, Exchange and a variety of e-mail and scheduling services? Do you text, twitter, Google Chat and send messages over Facebook? Do you have dozens of duplicate phone book entries that need some organization? If so, the Palm Pre is an impressive way to bring a lot of disparate services together in an organized, intelligent way, and it might be the smartphone for you.
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