Messaging, Internet, & Connectivity
Editor Rating: 
4.3
Messaging on UpStage is a challenge, to say the least, given the display/controls limitations already described. If you use your phone regularly for texting or email, this is not the handset for you. Composing messages on the music side is possible, but you're not going tolerate all of the scrolling that's involved. Composing messages on the phone side isn't harder than it is on any other phone, it's just that you can only see three lines of text at a time. 4.35
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UpStage also supports SMS and MMS messaging and AOL, Yahoo!, and ICQ instant messaging. Photos and Videos can be attached to MMS messages with relative ease, as can short audio clips. The internal display can show up to 16 lines of text at a time, which makes for easy reading of incoming SMS and MMS messages.
Sprint's "Power Vision" EV-DO network provides 3G data speeds across their nationwide network. Connection speeds during my tests in the San Francisco Bay Area were quite good, as evidenced by reliably speedy downloads of songs from the Sprint Music Store.
The WAP browser on UpStage is fine for mobile optimized Web sites, though the need to flip the phone to enter URLs and other information makes this a less than ideal handset for anything more than the occasional foray online. Sprint did bundle the excellent OnDemand application with UpStage, however, and it proved a far easier way to get quick news, sports, weather, and entertainment updates.
As previously mentioned, Sprint's music store offers 99-cent over the air downloads along with a free, higher-quality download of the same track from their Website (for use on your computer or mp3 player). While the Sprint Music Store doesn't offer quite the selection or interface niceties of iTunes or some of the other big online music vendors, I was impressed with it, and it's selection is rowing.
A dual-band CDMA phone, UpStage supports the 850/1900 bands and 1xEV-DO r0 data transfer. The phone is locked and so may only be used on Sprint's wireless network.
Bluetooth is supported on the UpStage, including object exchange and audio device support. The phone paired easily with mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets and worked well for voice calling and stereo music playback. Audio caller ID, voice dialing, and voice commands are supported over Bluetooth. UpStage can also be tethered to a computer via USB or Bluetooth for use as a data modem.
UpStage features 53MB of built-in memory and a microSD slot for expansion via removable memory cards. A 64MB microSD card is included in the retail packaging, and cards up to 2GB in size are supported.
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Cons: User interface is awful. Front display menu is VERY limited. Touch pad is poor quality. Power supply and headset both go into the same jack so you can't change phone while listening to music. Can't use your own music as ring tones. The micro SD card cannot be read my the card reader on my PC, laptop, or my work laptop - must be the way the phone formats the card.
Pros: Very thin and small.