Sanyo Katana DLX 8500 (pink satin, Sprint)

Summary: I purchased this phone less than a week ago as a web-enabled upgrade to my old Nokia candy-bar phone, and put it through its paces. Internet access was simple and easy, but in spite of my purchasing the Power Vision plan, there were a lot or 'premium' features that required payment to use.

The display was colorful and very readable- even the tinier fonts.

Unfortunately, the browser had difficulty rendering some pages- even their 'mobile' or 'text only' versions. And a particularly frustrating problem was the inability to read entries on moblogs after writing and posting them. The phone came up with a 'too many redirect' error. I found that odd, because on the computer, there were no redirects at all. It went straight to the "format=light" page.

The firmware error came up when I attempted to access my email- no matter what route I took to get to it, the phone would lock up, and required my removing the battery in order to reboot it. Two hours of head-scratching with customer service determined that this was a firmware error in the phone. It's a doozy, though. I got it mainly for email and moblogging. I can't do either, which made me down-rate it.

One feature that I liked was the wireless contact backup feature offered by Sprint. I don't know if it was exclusive to this phone, but it's very useful and extensive. For $2 a month, you can enter your contacts online through your computer, then exit the application and have it instantly update the phone. Considering that I am going to have to swap out this phone, the wireless backup is a handy thing.

All in all, it's a nice phone with all sorts of bells and whistles- but you'll have to pay for a lot of them.