Review: Sanyo SCP-8400 entertainment phone

Sanyo's colorful flip-phone graduates to full 3G status and packs in a 1.3-megapixel camera, GPS navigation and push-to-talk. See if the SCP-8400 survived our torture test.

Multimedia - Very good

Though it suffers from a feeble Web browser, multimedia offerings on the SCP-8400 are good thanks to Sprint's online content. Plenty of tunes are available from the Spint Music Store, and the player can show artwork and group music into playlists. Sprint TV also works well: shows look good, with a little blockiness on some programs, and the phone can display video full-screen in landscape view, revealing a nice, wide picture. Sirius offers 20 music channels through Sprint's Power Vision network, at an additional cost, of course, and these sound great, although track titles and artist listings would have been nice. The browser, while snappy, cannot handle any complicated content. The New York Times homepage looks jumbled, with overlapping fields and missing images. We liked the phone's GPS navigation abilities, courtesy of Garmin Mobile. Directions were accurate, though the maps were not very detailed. The GPS software can recommend nearby points of interest, including the cheapest place around for gasoline.

Camera - Good

The camera on the SCP-8400 is above average for a multimedia phone, but it won't be competing with Nokia's high-end camera offerings any time soon. Image colors were accurate, though bright lights tipped the balance toward overexposure. Sanyo claims a dial near the lens will switch between macro and landscape images, but there was no visible difference between the two. Time between shots was a little slow, about four seconds, and navigating the camera's settings was confusing, as menus had ambiguous names such as ''Picture Mode,'' and ''Image Controls.'' The photo album viewer was disappointing, with no zoom and no quick method for sending pictures to the computer via Bluetooth. The camera boasts an LED flash, but it was hardly effective, as low-light pictures were too grainy to be useful. The camcorder -- low resolution though it is -- functions well, without stutter or blurring.

Messaging - Good

The screen on the SCP-8400 displays text at tiny font sizes, making it easy to fit a couple hundred characters on screen in your IM client. Yahoo, MSN, and AOL clients are available for an additional fee, and, once purchased, function more or less like their desktop counterparts. Typing on the phone is made difficult by the recessed keys, and the sluggish interface had a hard time keeping up with our speedy keystrokes. The phone does not handle multiple applications well, and though it is possible to leave your IM client running in the background while you access other functions, it is too easy to accidentally quit your client and go offline, which means you won't get new messages until you sign on again.


Part 2

View images >
---

Pantech C120 debuts in Cingular's pre-pay lineup
DoCoMo showcases 5.1-channel cell phones

Mobile Phones News
News