Sanyo PM-8200 - decent enough that it lasted 2 years!
Written: Dec 10 '06 (Updated Dec 10 '06)
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Pros: picture phone, fast charging, camera easy to use, lasted 2 years
Cons: battery life seems low, pin charger failed
The Bottom Line: A functional phone, feature packed, quite durable
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| marytara's Full Review: Nokia 5100 Cell Phone |
I got my Sanyo PM-8200 after I killed my Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500). I don't seem to have the best luck with phones and have had to replace the last 2 after what I'd say is a very short time (6 months for one, 1 year for another). Well, maybe the curse has been broken because this Sanyon PM-8200 actually held out for the full 2 years so I could renew my contract with Sprint and upgrade to a new phone without suffering a huge penalty.
This was a great phone for me, so much that I actually held onto it and only had a few minor urges to upgrade it (because I wanted the Pink Katana!). Functionally this phone worked great for me.
Here's what I liked about it:
Sizewise, the PM-8200 is really just right at 3.34" x 1.85" x 1.02" and only 3.6 ounces. I found it comfortable to hold (its a flip phone) and it fit well in my hand. My husband found it a bit small to hold, so maybe this is a male/female issue! When not in use, it was small enough to stick into the front pocket of my jeans or into a small pocket in my purse.
Stylewise, this phone is not fancy. Its pretty much a typical flip phone with a camera. Mine was silver, though it comes in red, blue and perhaps black. My husband opted for the silver one too. The case held up to many many drops by me, onto hard surfaces without damaging the phone's function. Formwise, it has quite a few scuffs, scratches and places where the color rubbed off.
Featurewise, the camera phone was very easy to use. I'm not a dummy but I need things simple and straightforward when it comes to techie things. The loved to be able to take pictures with this phone and send them or upload them into albums. The memory can hold quite a few pictures depending on your settings. I would set mine at about the medium level and generally kept about 16 favorite pictures on it at all times. Its not the best camera in terms of quality - its VGA (640 x 480) - but that suited me for snapshots of my kids or friends when I didn't have a digital camera with me. The camera has a flash on it, as well as a timer and the ability to zoom. There's even the option to add some fun frames onto your pictures, not like that is necessary - but a fun toy.
The battery on this phone is pretty fast charging. Within an hour it was fully charged whether on the home charger or in the car. If you are charging it indicates it on the display, and you can charge while the phone is off or in use. If the phone is powering down it gives you a warning to plug it in. I saw that warning many many times, as it seems the battery life on this phone was really not long. I was charging this phone almost daily with the amount of use I put into it. I admit that I am a chatty cathy though, and used this phone many times a day and often for long converations of an hour or so. When I complained about this to Sprint they assisted me in setting the display so that the backlight was minimal and turned off quickly. The menu and backlight and any screen-savers on it eat up battery life which impacts the talk-time. They offically claim that it has 3 hours solid talk time and 12 DAYS in standby mode. I'm not certain I've ever gone a day without a phone call let alone 12 days to test this out!
The display is decent with a color LCD screen. I put a photo of my kids on it as a screensaver and there is also a little dancing polar bear that comes on the phone and is your "buddy". The menu on this is text with some icons and you navigate using a large round button on the phone with buttons at the center, top, and side to side. I found it easy to navigate the menu and change settings, access my phone book, my call log, a calendar and the like. The phone book can hold up to 300 names and numbers and mine got used daily.
It has caller ID on it and call waiting, and a few very basic ringers. You can download extra ringers for a few bucks from Sprint using their Vision service - though they are good for 90 days only. The novelty of downloading crazy rings wore off eventually and I just stuck with one of the basic ones. Using PCS Vision you can access the internet though navigating I always found challenging so this was a feature that I ended up changing from the monthly fee to the more pricey general usage charge. While I didn't use the internet on my phone very much I did love the text messaging and did tons of it. I set it so that when I got a text message it gave me a different alert ring. Plus, when you have a message an icon comes up to tell you and the icon displays whether its voice or a text message.
This phone has readylink on it - which means you can use it like a walkie-talkie. My husband and I used this a few times before removing paying for this extra feature because it wasn't worth paying an extra monthly fee for. Perhaps if more people we usually called had it, we'd use it. But, with a generous calling plan and lots of free time it was easier to just call people outright.
Reception-wise, this phone was decent. Signal-wise had occasional dropped calls but no more than previously experienced with Sprint. When using the phone with the antenna extended the phone the reception was fine. If I switched to using the speaker-phone, it broke up a lot. I could hear people fine, but they would tell me that I was cutting out on them. Using a headset remedied that but it wasn't bluetooth enabled for a cordless handset. Since I lost my headset for this phone I admit to being bad and driving while on the phone more than I should have. My new phone remedies that for me, however.
A minor glitch about a year or so in
About a year or so after using this phone, daily, I began to experience charging issues with it. My husband had been experiencing the same troubles for several months before hand. What was happening was the pin charger would seem to be connected but it wasn't connecting properly or allowing the phone to charge. When we went into the Sprint store they gave us new chargers that had the flat connector. Once we switched to these connectors in our car and at home, then we had no more troubles. This appears to have been a widespread issue because several reviewers complain of charging issues remedied the same way.
Despite this glitch with the pin charger, overall, this was a decent phone that was quite durable for me. After two years it was time for me to upgrade to a phone with greater technology, and more fashionable too (I got the pink katana with bluetooth). Still, I'm really impressed my Sanyo PM-8200 was still working for me after 2 years of daily use and abuse! I'm not complaining!
Other Cell Phone reviews
Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500)
Samsung SPH-N400
Samsung SCH 3500
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable
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marytara
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