i315 or i58sr

Our company is looking into buying about 30 phones. Does any one have an opinion as to which is a better phone: i315 or i58sr. Since the i315 is realtively new, the blogs we have seen lack anything about it. Thanks

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"Tester" <[email protected]> wrote in message
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>
> Our company is looking into buying about 30 phones. Does any one have an
> opinion as to which is a better phone: i315 or i58sr. Since the i315 is
> realtively new, the blogs we have seen lack anything about it. Thanks
>
The i58 is on the way out.It is a great phone and you might be able to get a
good deal especially if you are looking for 30 phones.

The i315 is also a great phone. Especially if you might be in rural areas
off the Nextel network you can commicate with other i315 phones via the
Moto-Chat which is more like the traditional walk-talkie.

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My corporate customers continue to buy the i58, because it is still the
only durable phone (excluding the i325) with Java. The GPS applications
they use (Xora, Gearworks, Cloudberry) require Java on the handset. If
you have no interest in such applications, I would lean toward the
i305. The Directalk feature of the i315 hasn't proven to be worth the
extra cost. During demos, it lost it's practical effectiveness at 2
miles and hasn't interested any of my clients.
FYI: At 30 phones, make sure you pay zero for equipment.

We can get the i58sr for free, but have to bay $55 for the i315. We would like the GPS but each of the GPS programs cost about $10 in addition to the total connect of $10, for a total cost of $20 per phone. (Accutracking is free, but the total connect of $10.00 a phone is still required). The walki talki function is useful because of the dead areas that can occur, in addition to inside work when the cell signal cannot get out of building.

The Direct Talk feature is cool - in theory. Make sure you borrow a
couple of demos demonstrating the functionality. The Direct Talk mode
and regular cell/direct-connect iDEN mode are mutually exclusive.

While you are in off-network mode:
1. You cannot know someone is attempting to reach you from the iDEN
network, even if you have returned to a coverage area.
2. It does NOT switch back by itself once you return to coverage.
3. The off-network setup is clunky.

The only people we've sold it to is a large road-striping company that
works consistently in the middle of nowhere and Public Service for the
city and county - who wanted a back-up system for their Nextels in the
event of a catastrophe. The shortcomings were big deals to most of our
customers, but if you think it's cool - go for it.

With thirty mobile guys, you can't justify an extra $0.75 a day per guy
to know where they are? Has your sales-rep done a return-on-investment?
On average, we're saving service companies $1,700 per-guy per-year.
Overtime goes down, production and customer service improve. Of course,
that's only service companies - it doesn't work for everybody. The
bosses who got it because they were control freaks, got bored after a
few months and turned it off.

I don't intend to make your sales rep look bad, but thirty phones is a
sizable deal. While free i315s is not an easy arrangement, it's
definitely do-able unless you're going for weenie rate-plans. Two-year
contracts, naturally.

Buy the damn phones already! If you get the 315s, let us know how the
DT goes.