QChat-enabled LG for Sprint in the wild

by Chris Ziegler, posted Feb 2nd 2008 at 6:06PM

Despite recently spouting off about its continued commitment to iDEN, Sprint appears to be going full-bore with its QChat rollout, too. The FCC recently tipped us all off to the Samsung Z400, a rather rugged (or rugged-looking, anyway) clamshell that marks a departure from Motorola as the prime supplier for its PTT wares -- and now we have an entry here from LG. Looking considerably less rugged, we'd wager that Sprint is making the call to start marketing PTT in earnest to markets outside Nextel's traditional strongholds (construction and the like). Our tipster tells us that the display appears to be about the same size as the Muziq's, and in general, the phones feel similar. If all goes according to plan, we should see this one on the streets some time next quarter.

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Gallery: Qchat-enabled LG for Sprint in the wild

Filed under: Handsets, LG, Sprint, EV-DO, CDMA

Tags: clamshell, direct connect, DirectConnect, flip, lg, qchat, sprint

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Doug @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:22AM

Q Chat is gonna blow everyone out of the water Sprint will be back at the top soon

Neutral

Baylink @ Feb 22nd 2008 2:43PM

Well, that would be interesting, since Sprint's job board had "Senior Architecture Design Engineer" or some such posted for the Qchat project with a Fall 07 posting date, the last time I look.

I have no doubt they can screw up the architecture of Qchat as badly as they did with DirectConnect, er, PTT, um, WalkieTalkie. (And I say this as someone who sat in a conference room in Tampa in 1996 with a district and regional manager from Nextel, told them they needed to implement what they would later call Cross-fleet and Nationwide, and was told "nah; they'll never do that. Our customers aren't telling us they need that.".

I did; my client did. Look; there it was.

For Qchat, they need easy iDen interop, a PC/Internet desktop client -- even if they bill it as a separate line of service -- and the ability to cluster said desktops into a dispatch group, with manual release of the operator-radio association from the operator side.

Extra bonus points for using open protocols on the Internet interface.

That won't be what we get, though.