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Sprint's New Global Smart Phone, EV-DO PC Cards
09.12.06 Total posts: 1


By Sascha Segan

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2014486,00.asp

Sprint announced several products aimed at the high-end road warrior at the Fall CTIA trade show today, including a Pocket PC that can make calls in Europe, PC Cards for Sprint’s upcoming EV-DO Rev A network, and a router to let customers share EV-DO connections.

The Sprint International Smart Device IP-830w by Samsung isn’t totally new; Verizon has been selling a very similar smart phone, the Samsung SCH-A830, for a few months now. But as with Sprint's earlier IP-A790 international phone, Sprint has chosen to leave the 830’s GSM SIM card slot unlocked. That means you can use Sprint’s own service to roam at relatively expensive rates, but keep your US phone number, or you can drop in a card from any foreign provider to switch to a foreign number and make cheaper calls. Verizon’s model is locked to only use Verizon’s own Vodafone SIM card.


The IP-830w is a chunky Windows Mobile 5.2 Pocket PC with the latest Microsoft OS, supporting Microsoft’s Direct Push e-mail with Exchange 2003 SP2 servers. It’s equipped with a powerful 520 Mhz Intel processor with 70MB of free memory for downloads and user files; you can also pop in an SD card for more memory. It also has Bluetooth, EV-DO wireless for high speed data transfers in North America (with a modem function to hook up your PC to Sprint’s EV-DO network), and GPRS for much slower data speeds abroad—but no Wi-Fi. The SD card supports the SDIO platform, though, so Wi-Fi SDIO cards might be compatible with the device.

The IP-830w works like an ordinary Sprint Pocket PC phone in the US, supporting EV-DO on both American frequency bands. But when you take it to a country where Sprint’s CDMA network doesn’t exist, the phone will switch over into GSM mode, on the foreign 900/1800 Mhz bands, using the SIM card slot.

The IP-830w is priced at $749.99, going down to $599.99 with a two-year contract. Sprint says they’ll have international service plans sorted out by the gadget’s early October launch. We’ll get one into PC Magazine Labs to review soon.


To make things more interesting, Sprint plans on upgrading their EV-DO network to the faster Rev A standard later this year, most importantly improving upload speeds from Rev 0’s poky 153 kbps by a factor of three or more. A few weeks ago, the company announced the first PC Card for the new network, Novatel Wireless’s S720. Today Sprint followed this up with two more cards, the AC595 from Sierra Wireless and the PX-500 from Pantech. All three cards use Qualcomm’s MSM 6800 chipset.

The PX-500 will cost $199.99 but will run for next to nothing after various rebates and promotions. Think of it as the entry-level card, sort of the follow-up to the Audiovox 5740, which we found in tests on Verizon’s network got slower performance than the Sierra Wireless and Novatel Wireless models. The Sierra AC595 card will cost $249.99, going down to $99.99 with a two-year agreement. We’re sure to have a shootout as soon as Sprint rolls out their first EV-DO Rev A cities. For now, all three cards work on the existing Rev 0 network. Sprint said nothing about Rev A cards for the new ExpressCard slot format.

All of Sprint’s PC Cards plug into the carrier’s new router, too. The Linksys WRT54G3G, as awkwardly named as all Linksys products, is a standard Linksys 802.11g router and 4-port switch that sports a big slot for a Sprint PC Card on the top. The WRT54G3G can take a PC Card’s EV-DO connection and share it out to a Wi-Fi network, much like the Kyocera KR1 and Top Global EV-DO routers. The advantage here is that this Linksys router is formally approved and sold by Sprint directly. In another consumer-friendly move, Sprint won’t charge anything extra for the privilege of sharing your EV-DO within your household.

Unlimited EV-DO service plans on Sprint’s PC Cards start at $59.99 per month with a two-year agreement.

Finally, Sprint and Sanyo announced the SCP-8400 today, a colorful consumer EV-DO phone. The SCP-8400 is a cuddly, rounded MP3-phone with a MicroSD card slot to store music (a 64MB card is included.) It’s the evolution of the Sanyo 8200 and 8300, popular Sprint midrange phones, and it continues Sprint’s trend of bringing EV-DO services such as Sprint TV and the Sprint Music Store to more of the carrier’s product line.