I've got one of the 5250 TP's... Frankly, it's one of the best phones I've had. It seems to hold the signal VERY well (one dropped call out of thousands.... and I pretty much forced it.) Long term durability... I don't know, but it's probably going to be the best sprint phone you can get. I went from a Samsung 8500 which was OK, but had some reception problems.

Signal strength is not a variable on the SprintPCS phones, as they are always varying the signal to be the bare minimum needed to hold a connection. It's actually a pretty nifty process. Thanks to the error-detection on the phones, they actually adjust themselves down to the point that one to two errors a second are being introduced to the call. The Error-detection takes care of that, so you don't hear it. This process occurs hundreds of times a second. You can try to force the higher power usage in some of the phones, but the tower will override it.

They do this so that A> battery life is longer, as the phone is using the smallest amount of power needed, and B> so that more phones can use the same tower.

Some chipsets are better at holding the signal and doing those corrections than others. The Old TP was one of the best ones made.... Period.

Don't get the "older" TP5200.. It did suck.

Usenet had a pretty good Sprint forum a while ago... It's gotten worse over the last 6 months.