Kyocera Marbl K127 review (Virgin Mobile)

Features
The Marbl's features could hardly be any simpler. The phone book is small, with just 200 contacts, but each entry holds six phone numbers, two e-mail address, two Web addresses, two street addresses, and notes. You can save callers to groups, but only groups can be paired with one of the four (yes, you get only four) polyphonic ringtones. You can assign groups a photo as well, but keep in mind that without a camera, multimedia messaging, or an external display it's all a bit pointless.

Other features are decent for this caliber of phone. Inside you'll find a vibrate mode, text messaging, a speakerphone, a voice memo recorder, a calculator, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a scheduler, a countdown timer, and a tip calculator. The Marbl also supports speed dialing, and we were excited to find voice dialing onboard as well.

You can personalize the Marbl with a variety of color themes, wallpapers, screensavers, and alert sounds. Personalization has always been a big Virgin Mobile theme, so naturally you can get more options via the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser and the carrier's VirginXL service. For playtime, the Marbl offers two games: Brick Attack and Race 21.

Performance
We tested the dual-band (CDMA 800/1900) Marbl in San Francisco using Virgin Mobile service, which operates on Sprint's network. Call quality was pretty good; volume was quite loud, and voices sounded natural for the most part. At times the audio sounded a little tinny, but it was nothing that was particularly bothersome. Callers didn't report any significant problems on their end, though they could tell we were using a cell phone. Speakerphone quality was about the same.

The Marbl has a rated battery life of 3.8 hours talk time and nine days standby time. Our tests came close, with a rated talk time of 3 hours and 57 minutes.