I bought the Timeport 8167 and Sprint 800 minutes+web because my PacBell phone was fading, the Motorola was smaller and had the wonderful vibrate-then-ring option. I was also suffering under the painful roaming charges when carrying the PacBell phone to Denver and other big cities and Sprint's nationwide no-roam capability was very interesting.

I review the phone elsewhere and was basically happy with it. The service, though, was a big disappointment. The biggest problem was with the coverage. Since I wasn't sure, I didn't disconnect my PacBell phone and had both available. Coverage on Sprint in the Bay Area was so much worse than PacBell that it's hard to compare the two. I was able to get semi-decent reception at my house, but the drive on Alpine road from my house to the highway has always been a challenge (which PacBell has upgrade over the last two years to full coverage) and Sprint drops out in 4 different places on a 3 mile drive. This was nearly fatal to me, but the sexiness of the phone kept me hoping. Calls would be dropped randomly while driving around the middle of downtown Mountain View. Sound quality is not in the same ballpark with PacBell, it fades in and out like analog phones w/o the comforting hiss that implies something is at least trying to stay connected. PacBell, OTOH, works perfectly until the moment it drops the call due to 0 signal.

Voicemail/callerid worked fine and are at least comparable to PacBell.

The straw that broke this camel's back was the limiting ring time that Sprint switched to in January. Apparently before January the ring time was 30 seconds before switching to voicemail. In January it was reduced to 15 seconds. PacBell is around 22-25 seconds. This is a system-wide feature that cannot be changed. 15 seconds is not enough time to always find your phone (or get it out of your pocket) and answer it. Even worse, the main feature I wanted from the Timeport (Vibrate-then-ring) is ruined because all you get is 2.75 Vibrates and then it switches to voice mail w/o ringing, so if, for any reason, the phone is not in your pocket, you will miss your call. Unacceptable.

I called Sprint to complain about the ring-time and was told there was nothing they could do. I escalated to a CSR-manager and canceled my service with them. Since it was 29 days after receipt, I was able to return the phone and only pay for the minutes incurred.





Recommended: No