Motorola Admiral (Sprint)

The Motorola Admiral ($99.99 with two-year contract) is the first smartphone?to hook into Sprint's next-generation?Direct Connect?service. The new CDMA-based Direct Connect is taking the place of Nextel's antiquated iDEN network, which Sprint will begin?to decommission in 2013?and switch off entirely in 2017. The Admiral is a great device to introduce the new service with, a rugged Android smartphone with a physical keyboard. It's the best push-to-talk smartphone on Sprint right now.

Design, Call Quality, and Direct Connect
The Motorola Admiral measures 4.7 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.7 ounces. It's made of a mixture of glass and rubberized plastic, with a textured, soft touch back panel that makes the phone very comfortable to hold. The Admiral is designed to meet Military Standard 810G for dust, shock, vibration, solar radiation, low pressure, and high and low temperatures. It feels solid, and a lot tougher than your average smartphone, but I'm not sure it would survive a hard drop onto concrete; keep that in mind and make sure to get your hands on the phone before you decide it's right for your workplace.

There's a camera button on the right side of the phone, power and speakerphone controls on the top, and volume controls and a push-to-talk button on the left. The 3.1-inch touch screen is a little small, but looks ultra sharp and vibrant thanks to the 480-by-640-pixel resolution. There are four haptic feedback-enabled touch keys right below the display. The QWERTY keyboard is about the same size as what you'd find on a BlackBerry. The keys seem a little cramped, but they're angled for optimal separation and super clicky, so typing is a breeze.

The Motorola Admiral is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (800/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. It also works as a mobile hotspot for up to five devices with the appropriate data plan. There's no 4G, but Sprint's CDMA network is much faster than the old iDen system. Download speeds averaged 1.4Mbps down, while upload speeds were around 1Mbps up.

Call quality was very good. Voices sound warm and full in the earpiece. The volume gets plenty loud, but the phone begins to rattle a bit at the maximum setting. Calls made with the phone sound clear and natural, and there's some side-tone to prevent you from yelling, though noise cancellation is just average. The speakerphone sounds very loud and clear, so you can definitely use the Admiral outside, though you may have trouble hearing it over heavy construction. Calls sounded good through a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars) and voice dialing worked fine. Battery life was excellent at 9 hours 53 minutes of talk time.

Direct Connect supports Call Alert With Text, which sends an audio alert and SMS to another subscriber letting them know why you're trying to reach them. There's also Group Connect, which brings 20 subscribers together all at once. In addition, you can mass-message up to 200 Direct Connect subscribers nationwide, or send recorded messages to email addresses or handsets via text message, all with the Direct Connect button.?

You need to be in a Sprint coverage area in order to use the Admiral, but you can still make push-to-talk calls to iDEN subscribers. Push-to-talk quality is excellent. I placed a call from one Direct Connect device to another. The response was nearly instantaneous, and the sound was loud and clear. Current iDEN users will find a lot to like here.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/sBi1wVvD1r8/0,2817,2397149,00.asp

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