Review: Sanyo Katana slim clamshell

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	Home / Review Center / Cell phones / Stylish and lightweight phones

	Review: Sanyo Katana slim clamshell	By Ben Patterson, Thursday 10 August 2006

GALLERY

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It's sleek, it's slim, and it comes in four colors. Check out our photo review of the Katana, Sanyo's stylish new fashion phone with a VGA camera, Bluetooth, and more.

Review summary of the Sanyo Katana:

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While it's lacking in the high-speed data department and it's saddled with a relatively low-resolution VGA camera, the thin, colorful Sanyo Katana makes for an impressive calling and messaging phone, and it's large, vivid screen is a delight for the eyes. Release: July 2006. Price: $30.

Pros: Good call quality; Bluetooth; speakerphone; roomy keypad; generous screen; decent VGA photo quality; thin design

Cons: Voice commands require a separate monthly fee; 1xRTT data only; flip design feels flimsy at times

Poor

Mediocre

Good

77%
VERY GOOD

Excellent

Full review of the Sanyo Katana:

Calling - Very good

Call quality was excellent on the Katana; we could hear our callers loud and clear, and our buddies said we sounded good even over a Bluetooth headset. The Katana's speakerphone sounded plenty loud, if a bit tinny (which is par for the course). We had little trouble adding contacts to the address book, but we were annoyed that voice commands aren't available out of the box; you have to order the feature separately and pay a $5/month service fee. We got about three hours of talk time from the Katana -- good, but not great.

Messaging - Very good

Tapping out text messages was a snap thanks to the Katana's roomy, flat keypad, and for once you get plenty of options for organizing your messages, e.g. you can create new folders and move them around willy-nilly. The Katana's generous screen displays up to 160 characters -- not bad at all -- and adding recipients to your messages is a simple matter of browsing recently-used contacts or live searching.

Multimedia - Good

Because the Katana only has 2.5G 1xRTT data capabilities, you won't be finding any mobile video or music downloads on the handset. However, Web browsing was relatively speedy, and we had no trouble visiting Google's XHTML mobile home page, although the lengthy New York Times site was (as expected) a little too much for the phone's limited memory.

Camera - Good

The Katana's snapshots looked fair for a VGA phone-based camera; our images looked a bit fuzzy and colors were relatively washed out, but that's more or less what we expected with the handset's limited 600 x 400-pixel resolution. You can't zap your photos to another phone or a PC via Bluetooth, but sending snapshots via MMS was easy enough, and we appreciated the Katana's full-screen zoom mode and slideshow capabilities. Expect to squeeze about 50 VGA photos in the phone's memory.

Nuts and bolts

Measuring 3.9 by 2 by .6 inches and weighing about 3.4 ounces, the Katana (which comes in four colors: polar white, blue sapphire, mystic black, and cherry blossom pink) felt relatively light considering its size, and it was thin enough to fit easily in a jeans pocket. We were a little annoyed by the poor design of the clamshell's hinge, however; when the phone was half-open, the flip assembly rattled around as if it weren't securely attached to the rest of the handset.

Price and availability

The Sanyo Katana will start selling for $30 to $280 ((Sprint)) in July 2006.