Review: Kyocera DuraXT for Sprint

Agreed, it is a good review and it sounds like Sprint & Kyocera are trying to correct the shortcomings/defects of the original models intended to replace the Motorola Nextel phones.

I still dislike the fact that the Kyocera phones when set to One-Touch DC require two touches (because the first touch only brings them out of screensaver mode), whereas the Motorola iDEN DC phones truly are one touch capable. Also very irritating was the fact that the clock on the DuraPlus can not be set to 24-hr mode (of course all Nextel Motorola phones have been 24-hr-clock capable for almost two decades). Too bad Sprint decided to put all their eggs in one basket with Kyocera being the only one making the ruggedized phones, shutting Motorola out of creating any rugged phones for the new Sprint Direct Connect ( I don't count the Moto Admiral because I myself have no interest in a smartphone whatsoever).

If I was to switch to Sprint Direct Connect from Nextel/iDEN today, the DuraXT is likely the model I would get to replace my i580. But I don't intend to switch from iDEN until the network gets powered off next summer. My i580 has been a superb phone, the i365 with rubber-ducky antenna even better, and iDEN is working very well where I am, so no need to switch just yet.

For me (in southern CA), the iDEN network is actually working better than ever (of course losing 600,000+ iDEN subscribers every quarter helps that aspect ;-) Hats off to the engineers & techs who are doing the work of changing some of the iDEN network over to CDMA/LTE, while still maintaining good iDEN performance.