Casio G'zOne Commando user reviews (Verizon Wireless)

Pros I've upgraded 5 days ago from G'z One phone to the Commando, same rugged phone only now it's in a smart phone format. Too early to tell for the over all quality of the phone, but it's been good so far.
Good reception, screen clarity good, touch buttons o

Cons Picture Quality ok but not great, Camera on back of phone, not good for Skype users if you want to do video conferencing, texting a bit different, touch screen keys need to be more sensitive.

Summary Overall, I'm happy with my choice of phones.
I hope it takes the abuse I gave my G'z One phone for the past year or so.

Pros You can make and receive calls. Call quality is acceptable. Sometimes you can text messages to your friends. The time is very accurate. You can use it to hold down papers on your desk that might otherwise fly away. I hear they are rugged too.

Cons more often than not you press the screen to do any action ...nothing will happen for a while. Laggy. Applications are sluggish.

Summary I have 2 phones. A t-mobile G2 (my personal phone) and the Casio Commando(my work phone). Actually I bought over 50 Commandos to supply our workers a means of communicating through Push To Talk. We came from Nextel which was going thru major changes with Sprint and was getting ready to close down completely. So what sold us on the verizon Commando was the push to talk feature. The reason i mention this is that this isnt an isolated quirk on a single phone. This phone is slow and unresponsive across the board, company wide, right out of the box.

Here are a few examples. On my G2 i can talk to someone on the phone. once that conversation is complete, i will pull the phone from my ear, look at the face and hit the hang up icon. thus ending the transaction. On the Commando when you finish your conversation and pull the phone from your ear you will look at a black screen for about 3 seconds before the red hang up icon appears.

Here is another example. When you get ready to type an email or a text you will hit the letter on the keyboard but nothing will happen....you try again...maybe a third time until finally it registers that youre trying to type and the phone will respond. This is extremely frustrating when you are typing in passwords where the letters show up as asterisks on the screen so youre not sure which letter didnt get typed out.

Mind you, this doesnt happen all the time just alot of the time.

Another example: This one is odd. I can touch the icons and keyboard and sliders and will get varied responses. sometimes it will work sometimes it doesnt register at all. but when i put it in my pocket i will hear bells and chirps or an occasional butt dial. when i pull the phone out i have found it was opening apps making calls and pressing buttons ...it is a very odd thing. it likes my leg but wont respond to my finger.

I spoke to 2 surprised Verizon reps who said they never heard of these types of complaints before and that these phones were actually very fast. One suggested I try turning on the "roaming" feature. I cant exactly remember why though...

I believe they are rugged. I havent tested that in any way but i have no reason to believe they arent. maybe the screen is TOO rugged and it just has low low sensitivity. maybe its a laggy OS and we are all just waiting for the software to catch up with our fingers. Maybe its the hardware. a slow processor struggling to keep up. anyway, maybe we got a bad batch from the company. maybe our phones are the only ones out there that have these issues. Overall I would not recommend this unit. Its a frustrating mess.

Pros Takes a beating and is water resistance.

Cons Really really bad battery life.
User dictionary useless.
Surfing on the net is slow.
Camera lag is really high.
Signal is always low.

Summary I spend lots of time outdoors and in places the signal is nonexistence. Battery time and power sucks. If your not plugged into a wall this phone doesn't last long at all.

Just surfing on the internet or playing on Facebook will only allow about 1 hr. that's using the home wireless, less if using Verizon's 3G(when available).

The GPS uses lots of power, if you are planing on using the Gzone for camping, hiking or any outdoor activity, as was designed, you better bring a power source. In the city use doesn't last much longer (but why would it be used in the city). It would be nice to be able to have an option to be able to stop this phone from always searching for a signal and just be able to use it as a media player.

Playing games is just not something you can do for long on this phone.

All the apps that Verizon and Google put on this phone and that are running in the back ground ALL THE TIME, that you keep having to turn off, don't help at all (it would be nice if you could get a phone without all this junk on it).

It is impossible to pick up this phone and with out looking at it do anything with. For instance, if your not able to take your eyes off a task for what ever reason you will not be able to feel if the phone is upside down. So you will not be able to unlock or answer a call.

Surfing the internet is extremely slow.

The user directory is useless. Every time I put in a word it never remembers it.

I've had this phone for 6 months and looking to get something else.

Pros Rugged, it is SUPER . Can with stand kids, 6 foot drops, water, super hot and super cold temperatures (normal use for me). Invincible! Loud speaker (better than my husband's HTC Inspire, G'zGear is great! Decent camera.

Cons Touch Screen is a little unresponsive, have to press a little harder due to the gorilla glass. Lags slightly after adding numerous apps. Camera does not great if there is any movement.

Summary This is the only phone I have had for a year. The average phone only survives 3 to 6 months with me. Everything has water seal gaskets, screen is made of thick gorilla glass making the touch screen a little unresponsive but I got use to it really quick. Average battery life for a smart phone. Screen is a little small for a smart phone but for all the added rugged features I was willing to accept that. My son plays with it. He drops it and gets it wet. Works perfect.It has been drooled on by babies, accidentally left in the fridge, taken a ride through the dryer, takes a 5 foot drop on a daily basis, gotten soaked with a water hose, fell in a mud puddle. Works just like the day I got it. I will NEVER get a normal phone again. I am in love with the G'zGear! The icons start to look rusted over time with use. I think this little effect is so neat. I use them all the time. The pedometer, the compass (the layers are the best!), the sun-rise graph, the thermometer, trip memory. Suits my active outdoor lifestyle and my role as a technology savvy mom. Yeah I would love to have an HTC but it would never survive.
I get great service. I even placed a call while hiking the Appalachian Trail! It looks manly and hard-core. You can buy cases for it to give it a little feminine touch.
If you have kids or love the great outdoors I highly recommend this phone!
I have tons of apps on my phone and it does lag ever so slightly but if I keep the cookies, data, texts cleaned up I don't have an issue.
I could not live without this phone!