Since Sprint is beginning the phase out of iDEN, I'm curious as to whether the CDMA 8700 series will have ReadyLink capability to help ease the BlackBerry users over to the CDMA network.

Discuss.

being as how Sprint is supposedly releaseing dual mode CDMA/iDEN in the fourth quater 4th quater i would assume that either they will release a dual CDMA iDEN blackberry or one for each provider so i wouldnt count on it. But friggin Sprint is confusing so who knows. i persoanlly would hate to see it because that would just make the BB look bad, imo.

how would it make the bb look bad? the nextel bb has direct connect... and it doesn't look bad

sorry i meant it would make BlackBerry look bad as a manufacturer since the read link system SUCKS! i had it when it first came out ofcourse i only knew one other person with a ready link phone and hte friggin lapse time killed me then the speaker sucked also but the worse part was the damn sound it would make it sounded like the phone was throwing up. i dont wanna see that happen to my precious blackberry

ahh gotcha.

ReadyLink will be obsolete once EVDO Rev A is released. Sprint will be releasing QChat on the network. Not certain if the 8700, when released, will support it. Hope it does.

Yeah, continuing to develop and release product for iDEN or ReadyLink will be a waste of time once faster data networks become available (EVDO Rev A, UTMS) as it would be more cost effective to simply use that bandwidth than an already saturated network.

The next few years will definitely be interesting.

I was told by our Sprint Nextel rep that the "dual mode" phone coming out would use CDMA for voice and iDen for PTP. Makes a bunch of sense. Why get rid of a great walkie-talkie network. Use the bandwitdh just for PTP and with the new CDMA coming out by the end of the year, that would be a great phone. Even if I doubt they will do it with a 8700 series BB, which would give both Nextel and sprint users their 8700 fix.

Sprint will make dual-mode phones, but those will almost certainly be niche products. A number of new phones will be released shortly for iDEN, and hopefully an Electron BB will be among them.