I decided to try this new wireless web thing Sprint has been marketing like mad. I was in dire need of a new dual-band phone, why not get the slickest phone with all the slickest features. One of these features is wireless web support. It doesn't cost much, $9.99/month, you get 50 wireless web minutes and 50 updates/messages on a monthly basis. Initial setup is pretty straight forward, you basically access the built in browser in your phone and go at it. It takes a minute or two for proper encryption key generation, but this seems to be a one time deal. Availability of the service is very sporadic. The service is especially bad in the middle of the day, I guess the availability is directly proportional to how many people are on the network (I'm no expert, just an educated guess). Web messaging is pretty slick. You setup what kind of messages you want (weather, sports, news, etc) through your my.yahoo account. Since I already had a my.yahoo account it was cake. Again the consistency on the delivery of the messages is pretty bad. At one point in time I didn't receive any messages for 3 days, only to be bombarded with a constant stream of messages on the 4th day. Pretty pathetic. I do enjoy that fact that I can access useful information from my cell phone, particularly mapquest and my my.yahoo calendar. It's a convince that I take advantage of quite frequently. The interface/navigation is pretty bad, but that is to be expected from such a small device as a cell phone.

BTW probably the coolest, most useful feature I've discovered is having reminders sent to my phone from my my.yahoo calendar. It's absolutely fabulous, I never miss appointments!

My wish list:
1. Flat pricing for unlimited access, this is already happening with some Palm Pilot wireless providers. Very cool stuff. Not to mention the interface is way better on a Palm, but the addition of the wireless modem makes it pretty clunky.
2. More consistent service
3. It needs to be faster, much faster.



Recommended: Yes