[vonnieglen]

On a beautiful afternoon a little more than a year ago we took my wife's pen pal from England on a ferry ride in the puget sound. As we were getting off of the ferry my wife's friend commented on how friendly everyone was... they were all waving to us as we left the ferry. I realized immediately that something was wrong... people aren't that friendly when you are getting off the ferry in Seattle. My wife's phone was hanging from it's charging cord and dragging on the ground outside of her door.

It was a Samsung A900 "Blade". I didn't realize that the alloy case could take so much abuse. The phone was all scratched and dented up, but for a month my wife used it. Then she saw a flyer from Sprint offering us free new phones. We decided to upgrade our phones. I had a Samsung SPH A920 and a PPC-6700. I thought that I would replace the A-900 and the PPC-6700 with Android phones. When we went to the Sprint store we were told that we could not get the android phones without upgrading our plan. I also learned that if we activated any smartphones after January 31 we would have to pay an additional $10 per month per phone. Our grandfathered plan had shared minutes among the three phones and unlimited internet access for each phone. With our "fair and flexible" old plan if we go over our limit we get charged $5 and 100 minutes are added; if we were to go over 300 minutes past our limit they start adding 200 minutes for each additional $5

The new plan we would have had to go to was considerably more expensive. I was told that the best phone we could get and still keep our plan was the Touch Pro 2. Unfortnately, even with a two year obligation the Touch Pro 2s were still going to be $200 a piece and the store was out of them and the employees told my wife and I that the Touch Pro 2 was a bad phone.

I felt a little discouraged, but I came back and checked with this forum and decided to get a couple of Touch Pro 2 phones through Ebay. We paid a $100 a piece for them. They both looked like new; they activated without any problems; I didn't have to renew my contract; I went ahead and retired the A900 and the A920 so that I wouldn't have to pay an extra $10 a month if I decided to reactivate the PPC-6700. I am not paying a dime more per month. We both love our Touch Pro 2s.

They have been completely trouble free. I did have the advantage of using the Windows Mobile Operating System for several years prior with the PPC-6700 so it may have been a smother transition for us than some others. I have gotten to play with some of my friends' more powerful and newer smartphones... for what we use our phones for there simply is not enough justification to pay twice as much per month for service. I have to admit that even my six year old PPC-6700 with Tinkerbell's ROM is almost enough for me.

Replacement parts are available so we may be using these Touch Pro 2s for a lot longer.