Letter to Sprint Regarding the Samsung MM-A900 and Bluetooth
For a long time your customers felt like they could get better (cooler, more useful features) from other cellular providers (Cingular, TMobile, Verizon). We wanted a modern phone, one with bluetooth. Just before it was too late for me you released the Samsung MM-A900. Shortly after you also released the MM-A920. We rushed out and bought your phones.
The A900 has proved to be an extremely popular phone. It is modern, good-looking, well designed, and easy to use. Many people who appreciate well-designed devices also use Apple computers. This is where the problem arises.
Just before I bought my A900 I posted about syncing the A900 with Mac OS X using bluetooth. this has proven to be one of my most popular posts ever. At least one person reads that post every hour of every day. Your customers really want to be able to integrate their phones with their Apple computers.
You could have provided a SyncML interface to the A900 and A920, but you chose not to. It wouldn’t be that hard to write a tool to do it, but you locked down the phone’s address book from being able to be accessed from the Java virtual machine on the phone. One of your customers would probably write a SyncML interface for these phones if you would allow JME to talk to the address book. Most likely they would release this software open source. I would even be tempted to write it myself.
Please release an update for the A900 and A920 that either provides a SyncML interface or opens up an API for the address book to be accessed by Java. Releasing such an update would reverberate through the blogosphere. I know you care about the viral marketing the blogosphere can provide. Why else would you have started the Sprint Ambassador program? We aren’t asking for free phones and we aren’t asking for free service. We are just asking that you open up some capabilities that the phone already possesses. I don’t think that is too much to ask.
Thank you for your consideration. Please let me know if there is anyway I can assist this process.
I am currently using my mm-a920 as a bluetooth modem with OSX. I am actually looking for a way to use the usb as the modem connection because it seems the bluetooth drops off. So I ran into this post and propose a petition.
With the stuff I found on-line I believe that it is possible to open the phone so that you could access the flash card via usb. There is a setting that when u plug the usb cable in, makes iphoto turn on and bounce like a camera is attached. The lack of the bluetooth profiles that would be useful is obnoxious.
EV-DO is great though. I continue to impress clients while on the road who say, “we need to find a starbucks to go on-line” I just have to say, “Do you Mind using my powerbook?”
The new sprint store uses Quicktime Streming Server to deliver its content, why couldn’t sprint continue to develope with Apple and standard technology. We all know it would work with OSX.