With better looks and a little less substance than its predecessor, the Type-S has a specific audience in mind. Is this the phone you need on your trek?
Review summary of the Verizon Wireless G'zOne Type-S:
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 Don't be fooled by the low score, for a certain audience, this may be the perfect, or the only phone to buy. If you're going to be making calls while firing an M4 assault rifle, for instance, this is probably a good choice (though you'll probably want to keep both hands on the carbine). And, in that case, you won't mind the inability to download the latest Rihanna track. For every point this phone lost in capabilities, it made up for in improved style, and the addition of Bluetooth. It hits all the right notes for calling, with speaker-independent voice dialing, easy conferencing and a good speakerphone. So who cares if it doesn't make the best sounding calls. You're outside, live a little. Release: June 2007. Price: $100.
Pros: Very sturdy, easily withstood our pathetic attempts to destroy it. Half the price of the previous model. Good GPS sensitivity. Bluetooth.
Cons: Lacks many features of the original, including 3G networking and the 2-megapixel camera. Call quality is average. Voice dialing spotty.
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56%
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Full Verizon Wireless G'zOne Type-S Review:
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We are often asked to recommend a good phone, and repeatedly we get the same question: What's the best phone if I just want to make calls . . . while mountain biking . . . in a hurricane. The Verizon Wireless G'zOne Type-S adheres to military strength specifications, specifically the MIL-STD-810F spec for rain, shock, dust and humidity, among others nasty environmental obstacles. The Type-S succeeds the Type-V, which may have been a phone trying too hard to appease 3G multimedia fans, as the Type-S scales back some of its features, but still does a good job doing what it's meant to, which is making calls in extreme conditions. And at half the price of the former phone, we don't mind some of the differences.
Design – Very good
We weren't terribly put off by the G'zOne (pronounced "geez one," by the way) Type-V's aggressive, almost self-consciously futuristic styling. Still, the Type-S is a classier phone, if you can call a phone that can be dropped from a moving car classy. It's wrapped in a nice, dark blue, and though it will never be mistaken for a fashion phone, it is actually nice looking, what we might call "rugged chic." The phone retains some of the details from the Type-V, such as the large, bubble-like external display and the protruding hook, perfect for clipping the phone to a backpack.
The internal screen's resolution isn't great, at 176 by 220 pixels, and it only supports 65,000 colors, but on the small display, less than two inches, text and even some pictures show up clearly. This is a step down from the QVGA screen on the Type-V, but this is definitely a feature we don't mind losing, as we can't imagine spending too much time staring at the screen on this phone, except perhaps while navigating with VZ Navigator.
The phone's keys were large and easy to hit, and the navigation keys were bigger, with a better layout, than we saw on the Type-V. Number keys were a bit wider, making for easier typing, and we like that even the side buttons were nice and big.
Calling – Good
Calls from the G'zOne Type-S sounded fine, but not great. We heard some static lying low in the background of outgoing calls. Listeners told us we sounded clean, but things got muddy when we talked too loud or too quickly. The speakerphone is just as loud as it was on the Type-V, and the phone happily retains speaker-independent dialing, though we had mixed results with voice recognition, and only about two out of three attempts were successful. Bluetooth is a nice addition, something the Type-V definitely lacked, and we were impressed that the phone was able to hold a Bluetooth connection even while we submerged it in a glass of water. If only there was a G'zOne Bluetooth headset to match. Conference calling on the phone was easier than with most, requiring no menu digging to connect calls. The address book was a bit sparse, with a minimal number of fields.
Ruggedness – Excellent
We had a great time beating up the Type-S, though we didn't try the popular "kick the phone down stairs" test, because we didn't want to damage our house. The phone is just that sturdy. We did dunk it in water, make calls from our shower, bounce it around a bit on granite countertops and generally treat it poorly, and it still made calls just fine. We even bought a bag of flour, unbleached, of course, and dipped the phone in, then washed it off, and found no problems. Just be sure to keep the port covers closed, and all should be well. In fact, we were even happy with how nicely the phone cleans up, though we didn't go out of our way to scratch it.
Odds and ends
The Type-S lacks the EV-DO capabilities of the Type-V, but we can't say we miss them. This is not a phone for gadget hounds who want to stare a screen watching TV clips. With no memory expansion, this is not a phone for music collectors. This is a phone for the outdoors, and in that respect the phone excels. The GPS sensor was very sensitive, able to somehow deduce our location in a small, windowless office, and though maps updated a bit slower over the 1X connection, as opposed to EV-DO, we wee still please with the performance. The camera takes a performance hit, dropping from 2-megapixels on the Type-V to VGA on the Type-S, and though this is one feature that we think we might miss in the outdoors, lens quality is always more important to us than pixel count, and in that respect, neither phone was very impressive. We do like the fact that you can turn on the phone's LED light, which is very bright, even when the camera is not active. The speakerphone key inside the flip doubles as this flashlight button.
Price and availability
The Verizon Wireless G'zOne Type-S is available from Verizon Wireless for $100 with a two-year contract and an instant online discount of $50.
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