Help is this phone gimped?

[millermayhem]

I was wooed by the droid, awed by the evo and surprized by the i1. I worked for virgin mobile back about 6 years ago and one thing I learned was pre paid phones were not as feature laden as their cousins. Sprint and Boost are both promoting this sturdy phone. are the feature set in this phone the same across the board? I believe the 50.00 flat rate some of the pre paids are charging are undercutting the traditional contract savings. What brings me to android is the choice of software. I understand that the i1 is currently "stuck" on os1.5. This could be theoritically remedied, but I really want to see an update performed on the i1. I thought that since android was a os google would release an os update and like magic it would update. iden seems to be an issue for some, although as I understand it opera browser may make it , um ... useable. plus there is wifi all over so no harm no foul. Unless it is like my Sony PSP's wifi. useless. I can use the psp wifi at home and that a few locations and that was it. anyplace that had the confirmation page to log on th the internet was a failure. on the road at a rest stop. no. at a hotel with wifi, no. resturaunts. zip. Will I see the same kind of service with the i1? ok im done for now. thank you.

 

[MrDangerous]

It should be the same as any other android on wifi. From what I read, the i1 will still use IDEN for data when no wifi is around but it will be a 1G speeds. Some users that I read said it works fine for reading e-mail but if you are going to download attachments you need to be in wifi coverage or you may as well wait for modem-like download speeds. The browsing on Opera is supposed to be optimized and they said it worked suprisingly well for a 1G data connection.

 

[dp32185]

The wifi works and it catches signal relatively well. Probably not as bad as your PSP, but no better than your PC either. If you aren't on WIFI, forget about surfing the web or viewing videos because it's slow. If you're an email user, without wifi, you'll receive an email within about 1 minute after it's been sent. On wifi, it's almost instant.

Downloading an app from the market takes 5 seconds on wifi (this also depends on your wifi speed, ofcourse) and without wifi, roughly 10-15 minutes per app. Ridiculous.

As far as service, a flat rate of $50 is nice and clean. No strings attached as long as you don't buy any apps that cost money. You can easily download mp3 files and transfer to your SD card and change ringtones, messages, emails notifications etc. Text messaging with SWYPE is easy and quick once you get used to it.

The speaker on this thing blew me away. Wow. Wish the iPhone had a speaker like this one...It's AMAZING!