Pantech C3b (AT&T)

Summary: The C3b is the upgraded model from the C3 and C300, I believe. The "b" stands for BlueTooth (YES!). My primary phone used to be a Treo 650 and now I use a Samsung BlackJack. However, those phones are great for business and doing all the heavier stuff. I need an evening/weekend phone, and the Pantech C3b fits the bill nicely. Being a sucker for miniature electronic gadgets, I found this phone irresistable. With Cingular's 30 day return policy, there's nothing to lose.

A swap of the SIM card and I was having my first call right out of the box (it comes partially charged). Call quality was good, speakerphone is just "ok", as it isn't very loud and gets a little distorted at higher settings. It does sound kinda small because it IS small. The phone feels solid overall and well-built, but no phone is gonna take many rounds at the kiddie park or playground, so one must be reasonable. I have a BlueTooth Motorola H500 headset and it paired up with the Pantech easily and quickly. I was able to get clear reception between the headset and phone up to about 30 ft line-of-site. Nice! My BlackJack does not do so well (about 10 feet and you get static). This means you can set the Pantech down in your livingroom, and go all around inside the house with minimal breakup. If you're going to tether it all day in the house, I'd recommend keeping it on the charger so you don't wear down the battery before you leave the house later. Don't forget to turn the BT off when you're not using it, or you'll waste your battery.

The ringers are nice and you can download extras. The camera I'm no expert on, as I mostly don't use them. I took a couple of snapshots; they seem fine to me I guess. You certainly can't expect a 2.0MP camo in this little device. I took a picture and sent it along with a personal voice memo, since this phone has a voice recorder - a very nifty feature which neither my Treo, RAZR, nor LG has. You can write ideas down in the Notepad section, you can set alarms (though only one can be set to snooze). Here's a few tips on using the phone as a morning wakeup alarm: just set your alarm as you would, setting it to snooze. Then leave the phone OPEN on the nightstand. This is the only way you will able to view the software interfce that allows you to either snooze or turn the alarm off. You can also snooze by using the Up Volume key, but the volume down key turns the alarm off, so you have to be more careful that you don't accidentally turn the alarm off because the Up/Down keys are so close together.

The interior screen is nice; bright and clear, and the outside screen is nice; it shows you just about all the information you need to know at a glance (see the pics- it really does look like that). Cingular's (now AT&T) MediaNet is decent; MUCH faster than my old RAZR. I didn't like the Instant Messaging application because it keeps reverting back to T9 text input mode for every single entry you make, so I keep having to reselect Normal text mode every time I add text. That's bad programming in my opinion. I just don't bother with it, I use the regular text message application which is much better. Every other text input application works fine, I just didn't like this feature in the IM app. Oh- plus the IM app is kinda sluggish, but I've seen the same thing on other phones.

Getting Yahoo email is a snap, but make sure you turn off the feature that automatically sends you email notifications. Otherwise it'll keep sending you garbled text notifictions all the time at a cost for each notification; another way they get you to fork over more cash.

Overall this is a great little phone. I'm not sure if many people other than kids would want this as a primary phone. The features are good, the call quality is good, the reception is just as good as all my previously mentioned phones, good battery life, the cuteness factor is obvious, etc. It's not a perfect phone, but after 3 years and 7 phones, I have yet to find a "perfect" phone.