The Sanyo Katana produced disappointing picture quality.
The Katana offers a VGA camera, which produced predictably disappointing picture quality with washed-out colors (not to mention way too much orange) and blurry object edges. You can take pictures with three different resolutions (640x480, 320x240, or 160x120 pixels), three quality settings (Fine, Normal, Economy), and the choice of either two shutter sounds or silence. Other camera settings include five picture modes (Normal, Beach/Snow, Scenery, Night/Dark, and Soft Focus), a self-timer of up to 10 seconds, multiple shot, stitch shot, 10 picture frames, eight color tones, brightness, and white balance.
You can customize the Sanyo Katana with a variety of screensavers and animation graphics, though there doesn't seem to be an option to change the wallpaper. Plus, you have the option of downloading more screensavers, graphics, and ring tones from Sprint via the wireless WAP 2.0 browser. On the gaming front, the phone comes with Midnight Pool, World Poker Tour, and demos of Ms. Pac-Man and Tetris. You also have the option of downloading more games from Sprint.
We tested the
dual-band, trimode (CDMA 800/A900; AMPS 800) Sanyo Katana in San Francisco using Sprint's service. Signal strength and call quality were great, as both parties could hear each other loud and clear. Speakerphone quality was similarly good, and we were impressed with how loud the calls were. We successfully managed to pair the Sanyo Katana with the
Jabra BT160. Browser speed was predictably poky, taking a few seconds to load each page.
The Sanyo Katana has a rated talk time of 3.5 hours and a rated standby time of seven days. In our tests, we eked out an impressive 4 hours of talk time, but battery life fell short at just four days. According to FCC radiation tests, the
Sanyo Katana has a digital SAR rating of 0.678 watt per kilogram.
