Sprint service smartphone recommendation for F10?

[Les Mikesell]

Max Pyziur wrote:
>> 
>> What do you expect to be able to do from the phone?  They would all work
> 
> My first PDA was/is a Sharp Zaurus which used UTF-8 encoding. Many of my
> contacts are in the FSU, hence the information is in Ukrainian (a bit in
> Russian) I'd like to be able to move my contact information to a device
> where I can continue to use this information.
> 
> I've looked at the Samsung Instinct at a Sprint dealer. While the touch
> technology is appealing, I saw that the Instinct's web browser couldn't
> display Cyrillic characters, replacing them with empty squares. Looking
> briefly through Instinct-related forums to see if a Cyrillic font could be
> downloaded, there were none.

After a recent update, the instinct can run some 3rd party java apps, 
including Opera Mini.  I don't know if that changes the font situation, 
though.

> Can the Palm Centro handle UTF-8 or are their fonts only 8bit and Cyrillic
> is shown in CP1251?

Can't help with that.  There's a Sprint phone forum at
http://forums.buzzaboutwireless.com/baw/ that might have something.

> Also, I'm not sure what else to look for in a phone. When picture-taking
> phones were introduced, I thought that it was a novelty and a feature that
> I would never use. When the choices on an upgrade only included
> picture-taking phones, I got one. Now, I see that they are useful,
> especially when there is an expedient need where quality isn't as
> important as the ability to illustrate the shot (a display in a window, an
> emergency situation).

The instinct camera is so-so.  No zoom, no adjustments - but not 
horrible if you have enough light and video mode isn't bad.

> I see that the Instinct has GPS; I generally know where I'm going, but I'm
> amazed that when driving during evenings on the New York State Thruway at
> how many people have a GPS device of some sort visible through the window.
> Perhaps I too would find GPS useful.

The instinct has a handy 'search' feature to locate nearby restaurants, 
banks, and about anything else (gas by price, etc.) that is handy when 
traveling even if you know the route.  It also has 'movies near me' 
where you can drill down to review, but that may be on all the sprint 
phones with gps and data.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com