Sanyo Scp 2700 Phone Covers Views

• General Goods

Messaging phones have become the latest cell phone trend to sweep the country, as all four national carriers now carry some kind of full QWERTY handset made primarily for sending out texts and e-mails. The latest manufacturer to jump on the bandwagon in the U.S. is Sanyo, which has just released the Sanyo SCP-2700 for Sprint. The SCP-2700 is not a feature-rich handheld by any means--it doesn't have 3G or a music player--but it does have that full QWERTY keyboard with threaded text messaging, support for corporate e-mail, plus a 1.3-megapixel camera and ... Expand full review

Messaging phones have become the latest cell phone trend to sweep the country, as all four national carriers now carry some kind of full QWERTY handset made primarily for sending out texts and e-mails. The latest manufacturer to jump on the bandwagon in the U.S. is Sanyo, which has just released the Sanyo SCP-2700 for Sprint. The SCP-2700 is not a feature-rich handheld by any means--it doesn't have 3G or a music player--but it does have that full QWERTY keyboard with threaded text messaging, support for corporate e-mail, plus a 1.3-megapixel camera and Bluetooth. It's also one of the cheapest messaging phones out there at only $29.99 with a two-year service agreement.

Features The Sanyo SCP-2700 doesn't have a lot of features going for it, but it does do messaging very well, which suits its primary purpose. It has a basic 600-entry phone book, with room in each entry for six phone numbers, three e-mail addresses, a Web URL, a street address, and a memo. You can assign contacts with a photo for caller ID and to different caller groups as well. You can also assign one of 37 polyphonic ringtones for incoming calls, text messages, picture mails, and voice SMS. Other basic features include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a countdown timer, a stopwatch, a voice memo recorder, and a world clock. There's also a wireless Web browser, Bluetooth, instant messaging (AIM, Windows Live, and Yahoo), e-mail, and voice SMS. There's also GPS support for location-based services like Sprint Navigator.

Performance We tested the dual-mode (CDMA 800/1900; 1xRTT) Sanyo SCP-2700 in San Francisco using Sprint's service. Call quality was very impressive. Callers could hear us loud and clear without a lot of background sound. We could hear them clearly as well, though there was the occasional static and hiss. Speakerphone quality wasn't as good, with a bit more of a tinny quality to the callers' voices, but we could still carry on a conversation.