I’m a phone fanatic! I love Cool phones and Sanyos are one of my favorite indulgences. I’ve had the Sanyo 4500, 4700, and now the 4900. The 4900 is the best of the series so far. I skipped over the 5000 series as they were too expensive and something just didn’t’ seem right about them. I bought this phone on auction with free shipping, which was hard to pass by. You can now buy this phone for 12 interest-free payments of $14.99 at the Sprint store online.

If you are also picky about what you buy, you’ll be prepared for the frustration or elation of the phone’s idiosyncrasies.

Is it just me, or are the Sprint Phone Catalogs getting more vague about their features? I have had this phone for a few days and have spent quite a bit of time discovering its features with little help other than the Internet and my husband.

THE PHONE

SIZE: The device is slightly smaller in length complimented with slightly larger width, including a larger display screen. In simple words, it’s shorter and fatter than the Sanyo 4700 and 4500. If you are used to those two phones, it will take a little getting used to. It has a deceptively bulkier appearance. But it’s actually pretty light weight. I don’t notice it in my purse as much as its predecessors. The phone has a straight, candy-bar silver style. This phone provides talk time of up to 4.5 hours and standby time of up to 16 days. I’ve used up the battery voraciously in the first few days of using it constantly, but as the novelty wears off, I know I won’t have to charge it as much. The phone weighs 4.6 ounces It is 4.88" x 1.89" x .98" in dimension.

ANTENNA: I can put my thumb and forefinger around the whole of the phone, but less comfortably than the other two, which was an obsessive-compulsive irrelevant measure of the device, but something I noticed right away. The phone’s antenna is larger than the Sanyo 4500, and 4700. The entire antenna when pulled up to its full length is about the size of my small-woman hand. The phone itself is about this same length. When the antenna is down in place and you look at the back side of the phone the antenna component is the size of my thumb. I’m not kidding! The antenna is protruding and bulky. If you place the phone down on its back side (antenna side down), it wobbles to the touch which is noticeable and annoying. Oh well.

BUTTONS: The buttons on the phone are very “clicky”. You can hear the clicking if it’s quiet enough around you – which is most of the time if I can help it. If I wanted sound when clicking the buttons, I would turn on the Key Beep Volume off, oh wait I already did that. They keys are just a little noisy for my taste.

MENU/OK: When you click it, you will see the: Call History, Phone Book, Messaging, Web, Downloads, Voice Mail, Settings, Calendar, Voice Services, Tools/Extras, Phone Info, Key Guard choices on the menu. You can change this view to either the cool graphic or the text. The Right Navigation button takes you to the phone book, and you can set the Left Navigation to a shortcut. I have mine on Downloads.

ONE-TOUCH VOICE MEMO along the side of the phone allows for up to eight 18-second voice memos or incoming caller messages

MORE FEATURES:

SPEAKER PHONE: My husband says he can hear me just GREAT when I call using the speaker. He says it sounds like I am talking into the earpiece. YAY

GAMES: I don’t play many games, but if it’s a novelty you want to show off, it’s not very impressive to have to wait one and ½ minutes for a game to load. I timed them. It takes THAT long the first few times using it, even if you have the game downloaded. That’s too much time. That’s about as much time as I would actually spend playing the game itself. The games are “ok” as far as games go. The phone comes with Crab Catch, in the TOOLS/EXTRAS Section and in the DOWNLOADS: CyRace, SEGA Monkey, Space Invaders.

RINGERS: Don’t be surprised if the first tones you hear are bad, very very BAAAD. They SUCK! The phone itself comes with 5 of the worst possible tones. Think retro. But once the phone is fully charged, you get the full 19-ringer range with lots of cool choices. There are one or two that are the same as the Sanyo 4900. You can choose from “La Bamba”, Foster’s “Dreamer”, “The Star Spangled Banner”, Schubert’s “March Militaire”, Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”, Debussy’s “Arabesque”, “Nedelka”, Brahm’s “Hungarian Dance # 5”, “Rodeo”, “Birds”, “Toy Box”, and Ringer and Voice (for incoming calls).

You can download ringers that will take some of the allotted storage (limited) space. Most are $1 to $4. I found a place called http://www.midiringtones.com. You can also go there to test your own ringer and download others. There is also software that allows you to download ringers for your pc without paying for the download. FutureDial SnapMedia is the software. It's priced at $29.99 with a sync cable sold separaely for the same amount.

When you download from the phone itself, you can choose ringers by genre:

Animated
Pop
Rock
Rap
Hip Hop
Disney
Movie/TV Themes
R&B
ESPN
Country
Sports
Sound Effects”

Under country there is “On the Road Again” and "Always on My Mind”. I downloaded “Hey Baby” from another section, but couldn’t get it to work. Actually there are few that don’t work. Under TV Themes I downloaded Gilligan’s Island. Too cute.

I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, but when I download a ringer and try to assign it, it takes me to the first screen saver my husband downloaded, “How Ya Doin?” I think the problem is that my PCS Vision has not kicked in properly. I’ve been on the phone with Sprint 5 times already since the initial activation trying to get to sign in to the PCS Vision on the website from my pc. I’m afraid to call them again, as I hear there is a $3.50 charge per customer service call. But that’s another epinion.

Much to my chagrin, Britney Spears’s “Oops… I Did It Again” worked just fine. Just my luck, but my middle school students will like it, hmm?

CALL HISTORY stores your last 20 incoming, outgoing calls, and missed calls. You can erase any of these at any time. When you click to “VIEW” your calls in the Call History, you are provided with the already-displayed information. It’s a worthless function. Unlike the older models of this phone (4500), the Call History will not record the duration of the call for later viewing. I don’t know why this feature would be removed other than to require the user to call in (and use more time) to determine how many minutes are remaining.

PHONE BOOK: It stores up to 500 numbers and 300 email/web addresses. I only have 100 names stored. My guess after the first 300 it doesn’t allow you to include the email/web addresses. I won’t have that problem as I don’t have that many numbers to add. You can assign information in any of these categories: HOME, WORK, MOBILE, PAGER, DATA, FAX, NO LABEL, EMAIL, WEB, RINGER, and IMAGE. If you have only a mobile or pager number for someone, you have to click through to get to the one you want when you call out. There are a few extra steps there. It’s not a big deal if you have speed dial which you can assign for your top 8 frequent callers (2-9). You can assign different ringers and images to each of the names in your phone book. I haven’t used the image feature yet.

SCREEN SAVER: The phone’s original screensavers (especially the animated ones) are SKUNK. I thought I would like this feature, but the image is not discernable with the back light off. It looks as if the phone has all kinds of grubby fingerprints moving on your phone. So I did download screen savers I like. The animated ones still don’t look that good once they are in place and the back light of the phone is off. The categories for choosing a screen saver are similar to those of the ringers. There are lots of cool ones to purchase.

DISPLAY: I don’t have similar phones to compare the cool color screen display to. At first I thought it was cheesy, but it’s still way ahead of it’s time with the depth of color, and for the price, it’s not bad. I paid this much for the Sanyo 4500 and 4700 without all these features.
ADJUSTABLE FONT SIZES: You can use this feature for Notifications and Browser. (4 selections – Large, Normal, Small, Smallest) –I thought you could choose different fonts, but they’re not there yet.

ADJUSTABLE DISPLAY: From the display button, you can change these features:

Set Back Light (LCD/KEY always on/off, 8,15,30 seconds),

Greeting (Customize or use your User Name),

Colors choose from: ( Forest, Sunset, Evening, Dawn or High
Contrast)

Contrast (Lowest to highest)

Animation (for Standby, Outgoing Calls, or Service Search)

Incoming Calls (you can choose from a variety of colors or
download new)

Stand by Display (Screen saver, Calendar, Time {large},
World Clock, or Off)

Main Menu (Graphic or Text) Sleep Mode (Off/On)

The LOCATION (Global Positioning thingy)feature can be turned off or On but the icon is always on the display screen whether you want it or not.

ROAMING Set to: Sprint, Automatic, or Analog.

CALL GUARD can either be placed off or on.

MESSAGING: You can click for Pop-up Message if you get incoming calls during Game Applications or Browsers. Like the 4700 and 4500, you can set the phone on Any Key Answer and Auto Answer

PERSONAL PROFILE: this feature lets you store your name, blood type, birthday, address, 2 phone numbers, and 2 email addresses, Kind of spooky – like I would like anyone who finds my phone to have this much information on me.

ELECTRONIC ORGANIZER: a scheduler/calendar and to-do list with function alarm reminds the user to make important calls, and helps to keep track of important events.

CALL SCREENING: It acts like an answering machine to allow you to listen in as the caller leaves a message.

This supposed 3G is understandably slow. Web pages take time download on the phone. I still like it better than text only.

The Support for the new plans is soooooooo lacking. I called about problems with my pcs vision and ringers. One rep told me I'd have to call from a land line and have the phone programmed. (BS) and in another case, I was told PCS vision was not set up by the previous reps I'd called in the 3-day period!! Stop the insanity!

All in all, it’s a great phone. This is my third Sanyo phone and I look forward to the latest and greatest of ‘em all.


Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 150.00