I had a Qualcomm Q-Phone with Sprint PCS technology, but I ended up switching to GTE with StarTac phone since the rates were as good as Sprint, and the coverage was a whole lot better with GTE. Sprint has the advantage of a nationwide digital network so your voicemail indicator always works and you don't have to enable "follow me roaming" when you enter a new area.

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What I like about the Q-Phone.
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* Rates are terrific. The $80 plan gives me 700 minutes anytime plus free roaming, and free long distance. You can't beat that.

* Coverage is good, not great. It is covered just about everywhere I spend most of my time.

* Voice quality is superb.

* Power output is adjusted relative to your distance to the cell site so that you conserve battery power if you are in a strong signal area. CDMA technology actually requires this to work. This is a benefit since it means less radiation of your body when it is up near your head.

* Soft hand-off of CDMA means highly unlikely to have a call dropped between cells.

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Dislikes on the Q phone:
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* May not work inside many buildings.

* People have left me voicemails that don't show up on the phone for 3 hours. Very odd.

* Even though the phone is in range, it may not ring. I've been in my car and called my Q Phone from my other car phone and it didn't ring, even though the signal strength on the Q Phone was high.

* The phone gets polled by the system every 10 minutes or so and has to respond. That means your body is unnecessarily exposed to the 2GHz signal.

* Battery life sucks. I have poor reception in my office, so even without any outgoing calls, I often only get about 10 hours or so standby life. In comparison, the Motorola GSM PCS phones don't periodically transmit and they get about 3 times as much standby on the same size battery.

* My first phone had an inaccurate battery meter so I returned it and got a new one. You have to program over from scratch (unlike the Motorola GSM PCS phones which store your numbers on a credit card).



Recommended: No