Excellent find! Early reports on the alpha seem positive.
The best part is it looks like T-Mobile is going to run a
Father's Day special with all their 4G smartphones for free (with a 2-year contract, of course.)
The phone itself didn't get great reviews, but it'll certainly be an improvement over what she's using now. Main complaints were a sub-par display and keyboard. I'll make sure she at tries to type a bit on it first, but unless it's absolutely terrible, that's probably the right phone.