In our Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder review, do we beat up on this rugged new clamshell, or does it take us for a swim?
Review summary of the Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder:
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 Want a phone you can take surfing? How about a phone you can take to a demolition site? The Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder isn't just the best phone for those jobs, it may be the only phone. But that doesn't mean Verizon Wireless is resting on their laurels when it comes to improving this beast. The new Boulder gets a serious feature bump from last year's G'zOne model, with V Cast Music and Videos, VZ Navigator and more, all buoyed by Verizon Wireless' super-fast EV-DO Rev. A network. Most of the features don't work as well on the Boulder as they do on other phones, especially when it's time to dry the phone off and actually make some calls, but that might be what you have to live with to have a phone that can take such punishment. Release: July 2008. Price: $180.
Pros: Rugged, watertight construction. Loads of features, including a surprising set of fast multimedia functions. Compass, flashlight, GPS navigation and more outdoor appeal.
Cons: Tiny, slippery keys align at a weird angle to make dialing and typing tough. External screen wasn't useful for camera, navigation or media features. Reception and call quality were sub-par.
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Full Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder Review:
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Design - Very good
How much can you complain about a phone that you can use underwater? The Casio G'zOne Boulder isn't hiding its ruggedness, from the outside it looks like a rocky crevace, capable of withstanding extreme temperatures, shock and immersion. It can stand up to salt fog. We're not even sure what that is, but we're certain our wimpy Apple iPhone 3G can't handle salt fog. Unfortunately, as you might expect, all of that rugged durability comes at a price.
The Boulder is big, but the keypad is pretty small. The keys themselves are angled like stealth bombers, and almost as difficult to find. With gloves on, we can't imagine using this phone easily. The 4-way navigation button is especially small and slick. This keypad doesn't suit the intended use for this phone. We would have liked to see large, generous buttons.
The interface is also a serious step backwards for Verizon Wireless. The names may have change a bit, but the menus are as confusing as ever. Where can you find VZ Navigator, for instance? Certainly not up top, where it would be easy to find. Instead, the navigation app is buried under "Media Center," then "Browse & Download," then you'll find the program. If you want to find it a second time, be sure to write down our turn-by-turn directions.
Calling - Very good
Call quality also suffers on the G'zOne Boulder, perhaps because the micophone and speakers needed to be waterproof. In any case, the sound was fairly muffled, both from the speaker and the earpiece. The microphone was consistent, however. Whether we held it directly up to our face or at arms length, walkie-talkie style, it still heard us loud and, well, almost clear. The PTT functions were also fun to play with. We tested this phone simultaneously with Verizon Wireless' only other PTT phone, the Motorola Adventure V750, and found the PTT features to work as we expected. It doesn't feel like robust, mature experience that Nextel offers on Sprint, but it was a perfectly usable, low-latency walkie-talkie. If only there were more to choose from, as even AT&T's half-hearted PTT attempt includes a smartphone or two.
The contact list was also very basic. We were surprised to find that the push-to-talk (PTT) contact list was kept separate from the regular contact list. This might make the PTT list easier to browser quickly, but surely this is something the phone could organize on its own.
For calling features, we were somewhat disappointed with the speakerphone on the G'zOne Boulder, but for other calling features we couldn't have been more pleased. The speaker was faint for a PTT phone; we like a loud, robust sounding speaker for our walki-talkie. Otherwise, the phone features speaker-independent voice dialing, and this app worked perfectly in our tests. Bluetooth paired easily with all of our Bluetooth devices, including our stereo Bluetooth speakers. Conference calling was also simple, and we like when phones let us join calls with a single touch of the "Talk" button, instead of digging through menus
In terms of performance, we found the Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder also suffered, and we wonder if this was due to its rugged shell. Reception on the phone was never great, we peaked at about 3 bars in the New Jersey suburbs, even while the Motorola Adventure V750, on the same network, was always a bar or two ahead. For battery life, we managed a normal call, not PTT, that lasted about 4 hours, 15 minutes, which is okay, and beats Verizon's estimates.
Messaging - Mediocre
If the keys on the Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder made dialing difficult, they made typing text messages even more so. For a rugged phone, the Boulder packs a surprising range of messaging features, including SMS, MMS for picture messaging (if you opt for the Boulder with the 1.3-megapixel camera), IM and e-mail for AOL, MSN and Yahoo. The clients for IM and e-mail are as basic as they come, so these are more an add-on convenience, rather than a mature feature, but with the fast EV-DO Rev. A connection this phone uses for data, you might as well take advantage of every option.
Multimedia - Mediocre
Because this phone uses Verizon Wireless' fastes network, it gets the full host of V Cast music and video features. The phone can download songs from the V Cast music store, and can access the new Rhapsody-enhanced subscription service. Verizon Wireless doesn't package a memory card, but you can fit your own microSDHC card into a waterproofed port on the side, up to 8GB worth. The player may be very slow and basic, but the phone screams on the Rev. A network, and could easily download a 3MB track in under a minute.
Video playback on the Boulder was okay, but nothing that will recommend this phone. We downloaded some music videos and playback was fairly smooth, with a bit of stuttering in the middle of tracks. Videos also looked blocky, with jagged edges, especially in the letterboxed full screen mode.
For Web browsing, the G'zOne Boulder uses the simple Openwave WAP browser. It choked on our homepage, but coughed up the NYTimes mobile-optimized page in no time flat. Scrolling was very slow, and there were no options to make viewing pages easier, like zooming or full-page views. But with those network speeds, this makes for another feature that's a nice bonus in a pinch.
GPS Navigation - Very good
VZ Navigator has developed into quite the mature navigation software, and it worked very well on the Verizon Wireless G'zOne Boulder. It isn't as user-friendly as a good PND, but we found the advanced traffic-optimized routes to be very helpful. The phone informs you of traffic or congestion ahead and lets you choose how far around the traffic you want to detour, then gives you a simple comparison to make sure your new route is worth the trouble. The G'zOne Boulder found us very quickly with its GPS sensor. Our only complaint is that the external screen doesn't show upcoming turns, which is a great use of an external display in a navigation program. Even a little arrow and a distance estimate would have been nice.
Camera - Mediocre
Images from the Casio G'zOne Boulder's 1.3-megapixel camera looked pretty bad, with some significant problems. Images looked murky, almost as if the camera were already underwater. There was plenty of blurring in pictures as soon as you moved away from the center.
Meat Market
Here, the meat holds a natural red color, but everything else takes on a slight shade of green. Also, none of the labels are legible in this blurry pic.
Watermelons and Charcoal
The melons in the center of this pic look clean and fairly clear, but by the time you get to the bags of charcoal, the highlights are blown out, and the signs are completely unreadable.
Yo! Joe!
Poor Snake Eyes is a mess here. It's hard to see where his different features stop and start. The camera handles the orange explosion fairly well, and the closest text looks clear enough, but the entire picture took on a grey cast, even in our brightly lit light box.
Poorly Lit Editor
This sinister pic was taken in a dark room with only the G'zOne Boulder's LED flash. As you can see, it couldn't even illuminate our whole face. Also, with the strange black and white external display acting as a self-portrait mirror, it was impossible to frame this shot except by luck.
Odds and ends
Beyond these features we've mentioned, the G'zOne packs a couple extras worth noting. First, the G'zOne family traditionally has the ability to use the LED flash on the camera as a flashlight. The light on the Boulder wasn't especially bright, not as bright as you'd find on a high end cameraphone, but it was nice to have in a pinch, and the phone has a dedicated flashlight button on the keypad.
Second, the G'zOne Boulder has a digital compass. This was a nice addition, but it would have been much more useful if it integrated with the VZ Navigator software. Knowing which direction you are facing is convenient, but knowing which direction to move when you start navigating would be a real plus. We've seen this feature on the Nokia 6210 Navigator phone, and we know it's an obvious next step for navigation on phones.
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