Observe customers first

Sprint gave free phones to bloggers. Bloggers try to use phones, hate them, and complain online. There is nothing Sprint can do now to fix the problem being publically aired because the phones have already been shipped.

In future, I would recommend that Sprint, other telcos, and handset manufacturers, give phones to normal people *early on* in the design process, *observe* what the customers do with them (what's easy, what's hard, etc.) and then incorporate that feedback to make the phones *better* **before** the design is finalized and they launch. The positive buzz created by quality phones will far outstrip any hype generated by bloggers.