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Sprint's Samsung SPH-M620 UpStage media phone: $149.
On-the-go, over-the-air song downloads from the Sprint Music Store: 99 cents each.
Live Sprint TV subscription: $9.99 a month.
Being the first in your office to find out who the father of Anna Nicole's baby was (while watching MSNBC News live on your phone at your desk): Priceless.
It has a much lower price and a much more compact profile. But for me, the big thing the Samsung UpStage phone has on Apple's iPhone is media connectivity.
Both phones surf the Internet, send e-mail, have impressive MP3 functionality and play back music and video that has been downloaded from PCs.
But the much-ballyhooed iPhone, set to be launched by Cingular/AT&T in June, won't download music over the air and it won't stream live TV video--two things the UpStage does better than any other phone I've tested.
I got to fiddle with the UpStage in March at the big CTIA cell phone show in Orlando and liked it then for its innovative style, tiny size and cool form factor. After trying it out for the last few weeks here at home, I'm even more impressed.
The UpStage is a great device for users in the Fredericksburg area because, at least for now, Sprint's network is the only one fast enough to stream video, stream music (from Sirius Satellite Radio) and download music here.
In trying out the UpStage over the last few weeks, I've been impressed that it will stream live TV even in rural areas. As a passenger in a car on a trip from Fredericksburg to Richmond via Interstate 95, I watched MSNBC and quickly downloaded songs without a single hiccup all the way through Caroline County.
The live streaming video worked even inside the vault-like Free Lance-Star building, which is so heavily shielded it could withstand a gamma-ray-weapon attack by invaders from the planet Zedtron.
Meanwhile, Cingular and Verizon Wireless have yet to announce a target date for extending their high-speed network south from Washington to the Fredericksburg area. So Sprint maintains a big edge in the 300,000-person Fredericksburg market in terms of network speed, and the UpStage is the best Sprint device I've seen yet for exploiting that advantage.
I like the UpStage's "flip" function. It's a phone on one side and a TV/MP3 player on the other. Touching a button on the side easily changes it back and forth.
I love the fact that the UpStage comes with an adapter that allows you to listen to music on your favorite headphones.
The multitasking flexibility of being able to listen to music in the background while surfing the Internet, sending e-mails or playing games on the device is nice.
The built-in speaker isn't exactly suited for parties, but provides reasonably good volume and sound quality when listening to music alone.
Another cool feature is the wallet-style UpStage protector that includes a backup battery.
Expect about six hours of use on a charge, including the backup. But using the TV or MP3 player with the external speaker cranked can reduce that.
The 1.3-megapixel camera and camcorder provide solid performance.
Call quality is good.
There's only one major problem with the UpStage: It comes with a meager 70 MB of internal shared memory. A 64-MB MicroSD card also comes in the box. But plan to buy a 2-GB card (easily loaded in a slot on the side) if you want to download a lot of songs.
That--in addition to the Apple hype and a giant screen--is where the big, bad iPhone will have the upper hand on the little upstart UpStage. The iPhone will come with 4 GB or 8 GB of memory built in, but at a steep price--$599 to $699.
Michael Zitz: 540/374-5408