Motorola i285

I traded my Nokia 3560 on Beyond Wireless for a shiny little Boost i285. I'm thinking of making it my primary Boost phone. Though it has less features than my i415 is is much, much smaller, small enough to keep it from being immediately shown to be an iDEN phone, as they tend to be on the large side. As a size comparison, it is shorter and maybe a little thinner than my Nokia 6010 on T-Mobile To Go. If you want a candy bar phone this is about as candy-bar-ish as you're going to get :) with its rounded frame and stubby proportions.

OK, now for the bad stuff. First, the text messaging system is web-based, versus the i415's phone-based system. Ech. Not like I'd use Nextel's horrible text system anyway though. Second, the screen is small and pixelated, a result of the phone's being smaller and a little older. Both items are liveable though; the screen is no more pixelated than that of a Nokia 6010 or 2126, and has about the same screen area as the 6010. I'm just picky.

So if you're in the market for a smaller iDEN phone, the i285 is OK. A few warnings though: the battery life seems to suffer due to the size of the phone, so keep a charger at hand. Also, look for this phone used on eBay or something like that. Its smallness doesn't make it quite worth the $50 boostmobile.com is asking for it. Oh, and as with all other iDEN phones the ringtone selection outside of the monophonic bleeps is very slim.

And a few warnings about Boost service:

1. The i285 does not come with TeleNav. The program is $5 to download, plus the per-trip fees. The "unlimited usage" moniker is incorrect.

2. DO NOT download the "music" or "voice" ringtones. They are $3 and are about 10 seconds long. If you want to trick out your phone, either buy a data cable and put normal-sized ringtones on your phone or get an LG 225 on STi, which allows you to either download tones from 3gforfree or even record your own.

Well I guess that's it. By the way, anyone who is in the market for a Boost sim card contact me. I may want to sell the sim card that came with the i285 for a dollar or two plus the balance on it. I can't afford to have more than two or so expiration-based prepaids where there is basically a monthly minimum, unless it's really small.