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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 20 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"More bugs than features"
Pros: Bright screen, compact design
Cons: Horrendous battery life, sluggish response, lacking muscle
Summary: First, this isn't one of those "I used my friends and it sucked" or "This phone would be perfect if customer service knew what they were doing" kind of reviews. I used the phone for nearly 3 months before finally deciding the headache of buying a new phone was more acceptable than the headaches of keeping this phone.
Price - I'm still not 100% sure how it happened, but thanks to the "New Every Two" program and a mail-in rebate, I actually got this phone for free. I haven't found a better price for a cell phone and since no one is willing to pay me to use their product, I'd say the price was a 10.
Service - Verizon cellular and EV-DO service is still the best on the market for my dollar. Coverage is amazing given the areas of the country I have to routinely travel. Zero issues with service.
Features - I loved the idea of having a smartphone in a flip-phone design. I have the big, bulky brick of a Treo stuck in my pocket most days, so the idea of something that could handle the basics of a Treo while providing the slim profile of a flip was tantilizing. The first issue I had with this phone was no document viewer. I was dissapointed to read that I could view Micrsoft Word and Excel files (I don't remember where I read that) only to learn that a software upgrade was needed first. Dissappointing, but I was really only after the ability to view email and send a short response.
Setting up the email accounts for enterprise and POP3 was a breeze, as it typically is with most smartphones. Sending and receiving emails was a breeze, as it is with most smartphones. Text messages are a breeze. The phone also has the ability to tether to a laptop and PDA for use as a modem (I kept my full-featured IPAQ for planning purposes) using both a USB cable and Bluetooth.
The greatest shortcoming in this phone, however, is the battery life when trying to accomplish those things in a single day. I work, as do most, from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. In a garden variety day I might send and receive half a dozen text messages and a dozen or so emails. Many was the time that I would leave my home with a full charge and return with a dead phone at the end of the day - and that was without making a single phone call!!! When speaking with Verizon and surfing Pantech websites, there is not currently on the market an extended battery for this phone. There is also no cradle with which to charge a spare battery. Ultimately, this was the issue that killed my ability to use this phone.
Second was the backlight on the keypad. In winter months when the sun sets at an early hour, being able to see the keypad is pretty essential. The backlight on the keypad stays lit for approximately 3 seconds after the last keytap. Nowhere in the settings does it appear you can change this feature. Reading the manual indicates and area where the change can be made. After setting the timeout on the keypad light to 60 seconds, it still goes out after 3. Very frustrating.
Along with the slim design comes the lack of significant memory or processor speed. As such, soft resets were an almost daily occurence. I only ever went to two internet sites using my phone (both webmail sites) and it seemed I always found the phone to be ridiculously sluggish after viewing either site, thus requiring a reset. The phone also routinely got stuck on any webpage over 100kb in size, also requiring a reset.
Nearly every other day I found that I would open my contacts list and see empty space. It wasn't that the contacts weren't there; but for some reason, the phone simply wouldn't display any names or numbers. The only solution - soft reset.
Call Quality - Here, again, is one of the more frustrating issues that ultimately led me away from this phone. Calls never seemed to have the same quality twice, no matter where I was making the call from or signal strength. Tinny voices, delays, static, and echoes hounded almost every call. Furthermore, calls seemed to drain the battery at about twice the pace of any other phone I'd used previously; even the bohemouths like Treo and HP. With just about every smartphone and standard cell phone I'd used previously, I could get at least 24 hours of garden variety use before the battery sunk to a dangerously low level. With this phone, the battery was drained and the phone dead within 7 hours of normal use.
Ultimately I went back to Treo to ensure that the functionality I need and desire is always there. I guess I'll just bide my time until Treo comes up with a flip-phone version.
I hope this review helped. Thanks!
- 1 reply to this review
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Seems you may have just got a bad one out of the bunch my friend.... My battery life is great and that includes phone calls. Sounds like you just dont know what to do when you get a new toy and you want to set the battery up.
I do agree with the software clitches though. Hopefully they will get that sorted out
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