Sprint Phones for Prius

The Sprint guru is Vagabond. Search for his past posts in the Audio and Electronics forum.

 

Check with the manufacturer of the model you are interested in to see if the phone has OBEX enabled. OBEX is needed in order to transfer the phonebook from the phone to the car. Then check with a Sprint rep. to see if the phone will work with the Prius. If they say yes, get it in writing. If they don't know, make sure you know how long you have to return the phone if it does not work with the Prius.

 

Three phones have blue tooth capability now in Sprint network.
One is LG slide adjust phone which is lousy as its battery dies down with in a day. I think it is LG-325 some thing like that.
Next one is Treo 650 which is blue tooth enabled. It is bulky and expensive.
Third and the latest phone is Samsung a900 which is really cool with great clarity but if blue tooth doesn't work then you have to restart the phone each time you get in the car to properly get connected to blue tooth. I don't know whether it is a bug or not because I was not able to transfer all of my contacts from my old phone to new phone. Next week I will be doing that and probably at that time I can say whether this new sprint phone has improved blue tooth capability without having to restart your cellphone each time to register your phone with car's bluetooth.

 

There's more than 3 -
Treo 650
HTC 6700
Blackberry 7750
Samsung mm-a940
Samsung mm-a920
Samsung mm-a900
LG 325

The most reliable phone to get with the Prius would be the LG-325. It's ugly, but it's an allright phone and the Bluetooth setup is simple just like the Prius'. Any of the 900 series Samsungs will work, but they are not perfect with their Bluetooth and I can't give them a high thumbs-up on them. Otherwise they are good phones, except for the 900 because it's got a really really bad bug when it comes to Bluetooth. It will randomly send out a 'Incoming call' signal and it's f'n ANNOYING! The nice thing is the phones are updated constantly so hopefully soon, they all should be up to par.

The Treo and the HTC will work perfectly with the car. I have no idea on the Blackberry.

And as for mchinta's issues, what's your old phone? The 900 series only supports the VCARD portion of OBEX, so if your other phone does not have VCARD, your're gonna have issues.

 

Others have had their phonebooks transfer well - I wonder what are all the differences in the Bluetooth setup between the 04-05's and the 06's.

 

My phone is not old but released by Sprint just 1 month ago. It has all the latest features like Camera, Speaker phone, Sprint TV, Web browsing etc., but when it comes to Bluetooth it lacks quality.
I am not yet happy with my new Samsung Razor phone A900 Flip phone. When I went to sprint PCS store to transfer the contacts from my old phone to new phone they said that currently this phone's software is not yet released to do transfer of the contents and when I checked www.futuredial.com sure enough there was no updated driver available for this phone. I brought this phone bcos it looked so slim and it was advertised that this comes up with all these new features in one phone. My wait continues till I have all the contacts transferred to this new phone.
I don't know if other people have this problem or not but when I start the engine of the car with this phone then it doesn't recognise blue tooth mobile set unless I restart the phone manually every time. Also as you suggested it might have been sending fake calls to the receiver and I was really getting annoyed that I was not able to answer those calls via car's built in Bluetooth. When I press talk button it keeps on saying that this incoming is not supported and I was wondering why and what calls am I missing?. I don't have similar issue with registering the phone over my nextel Blackberry 7520 and I am hoping there might be some update of BIOS for thsi new which will fix this problem in the future. But other buyers beaware.

 

i've got the a900 also, and I'm HATING it. Do you think there will be new drivers available for download to fix this nasty bug, or will I have to wait for something like it to be released by sprint?

 

Yes I am also hating the blue tooth capabilities of this phone. Also it drains up battery for this phone very quickly.

 

Does anyone know if the problems occur with the Samsung MM-A920 (regular size version of the 'Blade')?

 

Some network issues but as far as bluetooth for Prius it works well for calls .Only able to send one address at a time . Use the speed dial its easier.

 

For those of you who are using Samsung Blade A900 if you are not already aware of it. There is a patch available which fixes some issues of this phone.
go to Settings->Others->Update Software and it will show & you can download that patch. After that now one problem in my phone regarding blue tooth is gone which is automatic reconnect to the Bluetooth is working now each time I start the car. Make sure your battery is fully charged as it takes about 5-10 mins to apply that patch.
But still it keeps on making fake phone calls to the car's receiver which is not yet fixed.
I heard from Vagabond and others in the form that some more fixes are on the way which will permanently fix this problem for the future.

 

I want to get a bluetooth phone for my wife to use in her Prius and the Samsung A920 is the only option in our area other than the Treo, which she doesn't need or want. Sounds like this phone still has issues, particularly the fake phone calls. Does anyone have a status update on when this might get fixed or better alternatives? Her old phone won't hold a charge and needs to be replaced soon.

Thanks!

 

I use the Samsung a920 and the wife has the a900.

First off, the a900 connects automatically no problems, everything is good except the fake incoming call thing others have mentioned. What is up with that?

The a920 is the better phone, sure it doesn't have the nice screen like the a900 but the a920 has a microSD slot so you can make the phone a MP3 player and plug it into the prius. It doesn't have any glitches with the bluetooth. You have to transfer contact at a time, can't do the whole phone book at once.

The battery life in the a920 is much, much better but the reception on the a920 is worse than the a900 so you have to pick your poison.

In our house with the a900, it gets 1 bar and clear reception, same spot the a920 gets no bars and fades in and out. Luckily I'm on the Sprint long time customer "SPECIAL" plan and get free roaming and the Verizon tower is close by.

Alex

 

There is no reason why the 920 would get less signal than the 900.... take it to a store and have them make sure the PRL is up to date. Make sure both phones have their firmware up to date as well. Check your manual on how to do an update over the air. Have a good battery charge and good signal before you try this.

 

The a920 doesn't have the fake call issue nearly as badly as the 900. You should be fine with it. As for an update, I'm told it's in the works.

 

Both phones were bought at the same time. I update the firmware on both, the a900 had a firmware update online and the a920 did not. Updated both to PRL 20218 over *2. The reception on the a900 is better. I'll have it checked at the store but I have a feeling, they will say it's normal.

Alex

 

Well, I train the people you talk to in a sprint store actually. But just for kicks and giggles I'll run a 920 and a 900 through a signal machine and check the output on both.