After reading about these smartphones, and seeing my friends use different ones, I suddenly realized that there's really no need anymore for me to tote around both a Visor Edge and a cell phone. So, after months of following the two top Sprint smartphones (the Treo and the i330), I decided to go with the i330 mainly because the Treo is single-band only. I made the right choice.

To me, bells and whisltes are gravy (I love them, but they do not influence me getting an item too much). What matters most is that something does what you'd expect. In this case, I wanted the phone to work well, and the PDA to do all the things a PDA should. On that front, I have very few complaints about this phone.

The phone's clarity is as good as any Sprint phone I've had. If anything, I think the signal strength levels are more realistic than the other phones were. The battery life is great. It comes with both a slim and extended-life battery, and the charger/cradle can charge both at once. I plan to make it a habit of using each battery for a week at a time, so neither one goes unused for long. I think/hope that will make them last longer.

The leather case for this is nice and sturdy, but it makes the phone very bulky. Then again, I didn't buy this to be a mini-phone. The first thing I did when I got the phone was to put on a Write Right screen protector. I highly recommend that since there is no other protection cover for the screen.

As for the Palm OS, it does all I ask of it (datebook, to-do, address book, etc.) and the amount of 3rd party apps out there to enhance this is staggering. I really like how the address book integrates with the phone. Go to address book, look up a number, and dial it right from there.

With the unlimited Vision service on my plan, I'll make more use of the internet applications features. SMS has it's issues (see below), but I found AIM for the Palm, and that's worked fine. The Blazer 2.0 browser has only crashed on me once.

With a new phone, I expect there to be some bugs along the way, and there are. The good news is that for just about all of them there's either a 3rd party fix, or it's a known issue and Sprint claims they are less than a month away from a software upgrade.

First let me tell you about the two issues that are fixable via 3rd party apps. They are that he Palm alarms (not the phone ringtones) were very low even at the highest level, and the SMS capabilities were one-way (receive only) by default.

On the Palm alarm issue, admittedly my hearing is just a tad below average, but while I heard it fine in my office, outside I never heard it. But, after some Google surfing, I found a site that is dedicated to FREE upgrade applications just for the i330. The website is http://i330.nopdesign.com/ and the application that helped me here is called i330 Alarm Extension. What it does is attaches your phones text-message ringtone to any palm OS alarm. Solved all my problems right there. There's also a skin selector/changer there too for the graffiti area and the phone face, if you're interested.

(Yeah I know that this is starting to sound like an ad for this site. Well it's not meant to be, but this guy's got some great apps that work!)

The other issue - not able to send SMS messages - is solved for a $20 fee. That $20, spent at http://www.pdaapps.com/ will get you the product called I330SMS. This application sets itself up so that you can send SMS messages. The catch is that you have to use their server as the gateway, and if the Sprint Messaging site is down (it goes down every so often), there's nothing you can do about it. But, in many tests sending to both text-capable phones and email addresses, it gets the job done. It was worth it to me, and I have had reasons to use it as of late.

Now for the bugs that are not fixed yet - the main ones for me was that some Palm OS settings (like alarm vibrate, alarm level) don't always take when you try to change them. Also, on the SMS front, I can receive notifications of one-way messages fine. But for Short Mail (two-way) I do not get notification. After a call and a visit to the Sprint Store, they told me that these were two of many known bugs, but that they are going to have a software release soon to take care of it. The downfall is that I have to call them to find out if it's available, they have no plans to notify us. I think that's dumb, but I went to Sprint over a year ago understanding that their support was sometimes questionable.

One thing I decided to do was to do all my syncing via the IR port. After some initial playing with the cradle, I found it's pseudo-USB connection (it has to convert to a serial connection on the fly) was sometimes flaky, and also used a different port (COM4) than my Visor's USB cradle sis (COM1). For about $30 I bought a simple USB-IR Port adapter. It's a clean installation, and if you install that first, then install (or reinstall) Palm Desktop 4.01, it offers IR Port as it's own selection for the HotSync options. So my wife (who got my old PDA) can keep the USB cradle settings as is. Also, I can take this adapter to work with me, and sync up my Outlook calendar there and not have to spend another $70 on a second cradle.

At this point I'd have to rate the i330 as the best Sprint SmartPhone out there. I know they are due out sometime soon with the i500 (I think that's for Sprint), and Kyocera is due out soon with a clamshell smartphone that's supposed to rock, but I'd feel very comfortable recommending the i330 to people. And when those new ones come out, the price on the i330 should drop, making it an even better deal.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 350