Ben Patterson takes the Kyocera Switch_Back -- Virgin Mobile’s first full-QWERTY messaging phone –- for a spin.
Review summary of the Kyocera Switch_Back:
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 No teen we know would turn down the compact, too-cool-for-school Switch_Back, and its solid thumbboard and impressive VGA camera certainly weigh in its favor. However, we can’t help but be disappointed by the phone’s lackluster messaging abilities, and its lack of conference calling is a key omission. If Virgin Mobile would support more IM clients and add three-way calling, we’d really have something here. Release: April 2006. Price: $150.
Pros: Great design; roomy thumbboard; good snapshot quality
Cons: So-so messaging options; no conference calling
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Full Kyocera Switch_Back Review:
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Since its launch back in 2004, Virgin Mobile’s pre-paid phone lineup has mainly consisted of basic and gaming handsets. Last year, the flashy, teen-oriented MVNO upped the ante with the Kyocera Slider Sonic, its first music phone, and now comes the Switch_Back, a QWERTY messaging phone that takes aim at such text-focused handsets as Cingular’s LG F9200 and Verizon’s LG VX9800. But while this sleek clamshell scores plenty of fashion points, its actual messaging features fall just short.
Super cool
The black-and-silver Switch_Back comes in a relatively compact package: about 4.3 by 2 by 1 inches, making it easy to slip into a jeans pocket -- although at 4.1 ounces it feels a bit on the heavy side. The Switch_Back’s curved, butterfly-shaped shell boasts a sleek silver trim that surrounds the 1.2-inch, 65,000-color external display, with the stylish (if small) keypad just beneath. While the angular numeric keys sure look cool, they’re tough to press with precision; when dialing numbers (and even when using the smallish four-way navigational control), we had to slow down and look to ensure we were tapping the right keys. The good news is that Kyocera squeezed in a dedicated speakerphone button, good for engaging the speakerphone before you’re in a call.
Flipping open the Switch_Back was a bit more difficult than we expected; try as we might, we couldn’t open the stiff clamshell without using both hands (at least there’s no chance the phone will accidentally fall open). Once we managed to pry the Switch_Back open, we were greeted by the 1.75-inch, 65,000-color LCD (which looked sharp given that it’s a cut-rate STN display) and the silver QWERTY keypad, which is split in two by the internal four-way navigational control (indeed, all the controls on the front of the phone are duplicated inside, which is a nice touch). The silver letter keys are about as small as those on other messaging phones we’ve seen, and numerals don’t get their own keys; that said, the thumbboard itself is relatively roomy, and both the comma and period merit their own buttons.
AIM only?
Messaging options on the Switch_Back are good, but we’ve seen better. In addition to the standard SMS and MMS messaging tools, the phone comes pre-loaded with a Java-powered, $4/month version of AOL Instant Messenger, which (once you’re signed in) loads up your buddy list and lets you launch chats, send emoticons, save your conversations, and fetch buddy info. All well and good, but there’s no support for Yahoo, MSN, or ICQ IMers (as opposed to the LG F9200, which supports AIM, Yahoo IM and ICQ), and while an AOL mail client is available for download ($4 a month), there’s no built-in client for fetching mail from popular Web services or via POP or IMAP.
Otherwise, the Switch_Back comes with the standard suite of phone tools, albeit with some key omissions. You get an address book, voice dialing and memos, a calendar, an alarm clock, a calculator, a timer, a stopwatch, and a flashlight (which uses the LED flash). Missing in action, however, is conference calling -- a crucial feature for the young’uns, as anyone who’s seen Mean Girls can attest.
Sharp photos
Back on the plus side, we managed to take some surprisingly sharp pictures with the Switch_Back’s VGA camera. Boasting resolutions ranging from 640 x 480 to 160 x 120 and with an LED flash, a low-light mode, a self timer (three, five, or 10 seconds), five picture frames, a multishot mode, and color tone/white balance settings, our snapshots looked pretty sharp and vivid for a VGA camera, with little in the way of fuzziness or video noise. As usual, you can use your photos as the phone’s wallpaper (although you can’t blow up the image to fill the screen, which is disappointing) and assign them to contacts.
The handset comes with a standard WAP 2.0 mobile Web browser, which loaded pages relatively quickly over it’s 1xRTT data connection. Keep in mind, however, that you’ll have to fork over $1 for each day of Web browsing, so surf wisely (other pre-pay carriers charge similar rates). Gamers can check out demos of Lemonade Tycoon and Tetris, but not the previously announced Sexy Poker, which Virgin Mobile has evidently (and perhaps wisely, given that the Switch_Back is being marketed as a “teen” phone) decided to drop.
Call quality on the Switch_Back was good; voices sounded a bit tinny, especially on the speakerphone, but overall our buddies sounded loud and clear. In our battery tests, the phone managed about three and a half hours of talk time, just shy of the four hours promised by Kyocera, while we got the expected six days of standby time.
Price and availability
The Kyocera Switch_Back will start selling for $150 ((Virgin Mobile)) in April 2006.
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