PCS Phone Samsung I330 (Sprint) Review

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(More customer reviews)I recently purchased an i330 for my wife and have been putting it through its paces for the last week. I've owned dozens of PDAs and mobile phones, and currently use a T-Mobile SideKick (a/k/a Danger HipTop) as my personal mobile phone. I use the Sidekick as a point of reference for my review of the i330.
First, here's what I like about the i330:
* Familiar OS: Despite its relative age, the Palm OS still has of the fastest, most efficient user interfaces of any PDA. The folks at Samsung have done a good job integrating the phone functionality into the Palm OS.
* Sleek Form Factor: The shape, size, and weight of the i330 feel great. It's a nice compromise between portability and screen size. The heft lends a nice, dense feel to the phone, and the construction is top-rate. This thing could have been built by Apple.
* Button Layout: The buttons are well placed and function intuitively.
* Application Availability: You can download and install thousands of different applications on the i330, including a decent SSH client (TopGun SSH). Not so with the Sidekick: as of yet *no* 3rd party applications are available.
What I don't like about the i330:
* Lack of Applications: There are no Email, Instant Messenger, or SMS applications installed on the phone by default. For the price, I had expected these. For comparison's sake, my Sidekick came with excellent versions of all of these apps right out of the box. I don't want to have to choose between, and ultimately purchase, versions of these applications.
* Not Always-On Internet: In some ways, the i330 acts like three separate devices: PDA, Phone, Internet Device. Each must be turned on separately. The i330 must "connect" to the internet (complete with "Dialing" dialog box) before you can use internet apps. The Sidekick, in contrast is always connected to the internet if wireless coverage is available.
* Lack of Multitasking: In my opinion, this is the biggest flaw in the i330. Applications like Email, Instant Messenger, and SMS do not continue to run in the background when the i330 is in standby mode. Combine this with the fact that you have to remember to manually connect to the internet, and you've severely limited the "communicator" functionality. Again, compare this to the Sidekick: the SMS, AOL Instant Messenger, and Email applications are *always* listening for incoming messages, even when you're running other applications or when the phone is in standby mode.
* Feels a bit "hackish": Let's face it: the Palm OS was never designed to power a telephone. Although Samsung has done an admirable job on integrating the phone and Palm OS, there are times when the phone functionality still feels like a hack. There are subtle things like separate preferences for the phone and Palm, and the fact that when the OS freezes, you must wait for it to unfreeze before you can use the phone.
Summary:
With the i330, I think Samsung has done as good of a job as anyone in terms of building a Palm OS based phone. But I suspect less advanced computer users will frustrated by the out-of-box experience, the lack of default applications, and the not-always-on internet connection.

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