Motorola i9, others coming to Sprint this week?

by Chris Ziegler posted Mar 9th 2009 at 3:52PM

We've seen a number of launch date leaks for Sprint courtesy of partner Brightpoint in the past; generally, they tend to be pretty accurate, so we're going to go ahead and put some weight to this latest one. Looks like we can expect Nextel to pick up the Motorola i9 on Wednesday -- Boost got it a little over a month ago, you might recall -- along with the ancient i580 in yellow. Brightpoint also reels in the Palm Treo Pro a few days earlier than Sprint's official date, while the LG Rumor 2 launches a few days later on the 15th or the 29th; Brightpoint's wording is a little odd here, so it's hard to tell exactly how it'll shake out. Finally, we have a camera-free version of the BlackBerry 8350i in the works, a logical product for RIM to be taking on considering the phone's all-business roots.

[Via phoneArena]

Filed under: Handsets, LG, Motorola, Palm, RIM, Sprint, Windows Mobile, EV-DO, CDMA, iDEN

Tags: 8350i, blackberry, curve, i580, i9, lg, moto, motorola, nextel, palm, rim, rumor 2, Rumor2, sprint, treo pro, TreoPro

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

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EV-D'OH! @ Mar 9th 2009 4:57PM

Sprint store employees have to attend a product training session this Sunday, which jibes with this release.

Neutral

emaildejan @ Mar 9th 2009 8:50PM

Well, what SprintNextel needs to do is simply put in AT LEAST a WiFi module (chipset) into every iDEN phone from this point forward. There really is no reason for the i9 to not have at least WiFi.

As for the release dates...I remember that people were claiming that the Palm Pre was going to be released on March 15th. What a joke that was. LOL. Ah well....I hear June 15th is still a go. So we'll see.

Neutral

Justin @ Mar 9th 2009 10:57PM

WiFI burns battery worse than EVDO by itself. EVDO is pretty killer and I wouldn't trade off battery life for WiFi. Not for phones like the i9. Now a real smartphone, thats a tougher call to make.

Oh..let me back up. As long as the push-to-talk (Nextel Direct Connect) is using QChat (EVDO network) rather than IDEN, the data is fast and furious. If you're stuck on the IDEN network (like the 8350i....not sure why that call was made) then yeah, wifi is helpful.

Neutral

Dejan @ Mar 13th 2009 6:49PM

Justin:

That was my point. The i9 is an iDEN-only phone. As such, I think that all future iDEN-only phones should automatically come with at least WiFi built in. If we want to conserve battery power, we can simply make WiFi a user-modulated option (i.e., allow you to turn WiFi on and off depending on whether one is in a WiFi hotspot or not). That way the battery won't be drained because the phone is no longer constantly searching for a WiFi connection.

Ultimately, what I'd like to see is an iDEN/WiMAX hybrid (and a complimentary CDMA/WiMAX one as well). Then that would give BOTH sides the best of all things. And plus it would be the precursor to allowing all SprintNextel users to transition over to a completely WiMAX VoIP setup handset...which can then default to Sprint's CDMA network if WiMAX goes down in an area. But whatever they do, they need to seriously dump the Sprint UI and adopt the Nextel UI, or simply scrap both and develop a completely new universal UI for both brands and be done with it.

Neutral

jesse @ Mar 15th 2009 5:26PM

i just replaced my motorola ic-902 with the i-9 and the phones great but the camera has horrible detail compared to my 2.0 megapixel ic-902. not sure why because the i9 claims to have the 3.1 megapixel, yet looks worse than the phones from sprint 5-10 years ago. the picture is all blue tinted and not clear at all. Maybe my phone just has a glitch in the camera, i checked all the camera settings and nothing seems wrong. either a glitch or a crapy camera phone, let me know what you all think. thanks.

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