I received my Replenish yesterday, and here are my initial impressions.
As background, my previous experience with Android phones was my Sprint HTC Hero, which has the same processor speed, so I was prepared for some lackluster performance...
Executive Summary: This phone is an awesome smart phone as long as the limiting factors aren't a concern.
I have loaded most of the apps that I used on my Hero, and I am seeing no lag in anything, In fact, I decided to download Angry Birds which barely ran on the Hero and discovered that it performs much more smoothly on the Replenish.
Downloads and updates happen faster than they did on the Hero with the same wireless network.
The little bit of testing I have done with the phone shows it to be reliable and clear.
I played a little with Sprint ID and find that it is a nice feature if your desires fit in with one of the ID packs.
I think that performance is exceptional for this level of phone. If someone is spoiled with one of the higher end phones, they may find it slow, but the speed is definitely acceptable to me.
A plus in my book is that it doesn't use Visual Voicemail, so people I share my plan with can reply to my messages... but this is probably important to people who exchange voicemails with non-smart phones on Sprint.
The keyboard is very nice to use, and is comparable in feel to the keyboard on the Blackberry that I have from my workplace.
The interface is generic Android, nothing special like is found on a few other phones, but I find it very usable.
There has to be some down side right? Basically, the only major issue I have with it so far is that it doesn't come loaded with Sprint Navigator which I like a lot. It does however come preloaded with the Google Navigator (which is still in beta) Does anyone know whether I can get Sprint Navigator on this phone, and if so, how?
One major weakness (not a big deal to me) is with the camera. I haven't done much, but I did read a review somewhere that said the phone wouldn't even read barcodes, so I checked. I wasn't able to scan most barcodes, although a few worked. The issue seems to be related to poor focus on closeups, and I saw it intermittently clear up but not enough... Perhaps a software fix down the road may correct this.
The form factor might be a little big for some people's taste, but it fits well in my big hands.
I miss the better screen of the Hero a little bit, but the screen size seems adequate for my use, and the reduced screen real estate makes the phone size from getting ridiculous.
I also miss some of the widgets that came with the HTC Hero (HTC specific) but I got most of what I missed by installing Beautiful Widgets from the market (I am running the purchased version).
I will post more as I spend more time with the phone.