One of the Greatest Phones Available the Sanyo 8400
Written: Jan 18 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
|
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Absolutely feature complete Durable dependable
Cons: It's a flip phone. Lacks some nice but not critical 3rd party accessories.
The Bottom Line: Name it this phone probably has it and then some. Macro switch and 60mb internal huge bonuses Excellent screen and desirable extending antennae.
|
|
|
| nerys71's Full Review: Sanyo SCP 8400 Cell Phone |
First I love sprint. Very affordable and feature rich. Works everywhere and I travel all over the country and not to big cities. I travel to the middles of no where.
I got a new SERO plan. $30 a month 500 any everything included (txt internet etc..) on thing was I had to get a new phone. I was intrigued by the 8400 and it was available in blue so I got that.
WOW is all I can say about this phone. The only "con" to me is that its a flip phone and I prefer candy bar phones.
The feature set of this phone is simply astonishing. Its a fully featured phone (name it and it has it) and its fully multimedia. I guess I will just start listing features and why I like it.
The phone is actually pretty compact. If you like sanyo's one of the things you love is that extending antennae. When you travel all over you learn to love that antennae. Literally makes the difference between signal and no signal.
Shape wist its standard sanyo affair. Cookie cutter basically to all there flips. Its the meat thats good.
The screen is fantastic. Its a smallish screen but its 240x320 resulting in a very high pixel density. Even though its the same resolution as my A900 screen because of its smaller size and therefore higher pixel density everything LOOKS cleaner and sharper on the screen. If you had eyesight issues this will definitely be a NEGATIVE attribute for you.
The phone permits you to turn off all clutter for a nice clean interface. I love having a nice background image on my phones so I do not want things cluttering up that image.
The outside LCD is rather small but does its job.
The keypad is normal sanyo affair nothing special works well.
This phone is PTT capable but I do not use this feature. The built in recorder works well and still has that nice sanyo call screening feature which works nicely as an answering machine. no need to dial into vmail the message store ON the phone when you use this.
It has full function bluetooth though I does not support A2DP (stereo BT headphones) though why you would want this on a phone at all??
The BT works well no compatibility issues with any of my many and odd headsets.
Battery life is good though I am a VERY light user but pretty heavy internet user. I can usually get 2 solid days between charges.
It takes MICRO SD cards upto 2gig. More pictures than your likely to take and lots of music. The phone software it intelligent enough to recognize FOLDERS so you can subdivide your music AND your pictures (and even Videos) into sub folders to make division and access much easier. Many phones will only read the "root" of the specified folder.
As expected no ringers or games from the mem card they must reside within internal memory (they want you to buy them) another bonus of sprint you can upload your own ringers using sites such as rumkin.com waptoys.com is a fantastic site from another Sanyo 8400 owner so its optimized for this phone (well any 240x320 phone really)
YOU CAN load your own images and screen savers into the memory card and use them but only jpg's not animated images.
Another aspect that this phone shines with. Internal Memory. This is CRITICAL especially if your a heavy media user like me. I love my mp3 ringers (yes it supports full mp3 and m4a ringers just keep it under 30 seconds) and games.
2gig sd card is meaningless sine they an ONLY occupy internal memory. Most phones have 12-16mb of internal memory. thats only 30 or so nice full sound ringers. The 8400 is the ONLY phone I am aware of with this much memory. 60 whopping MB's. Thats a TON load of ringers and games :-) your just not likely to run out of space.
The 8400 also lets you backup your phone book to the SD card so you do not have to buy sprints expensive monthly service to do this. You can also BT transfer multiple contacts (many phones force you to send them one at a time)
The Camera is quite good for a meager cell camera. It has the (to me) highly desired macro swivel. I tend to take mostly macro shots so this is important. Close to a friends face or pet. Pictures of flyer's ad's products labels etc.. Very nice. It also has an insanely bright "led light" for the flash. I even use it quite effectively as a flash light. Just turn it on in video camera mode and it stays on.
The video camera is ok. Your run of the mill crappy tiny 3gp video but it does record sound in 30second or unlimited (to memory card limits) video length. I got as much as 90 minutes before I killed the battery so its really unlimited :-) If you do the 30seconds or less you can also SEND videos to other phones. This is so much nicer than txt'ing which I abhor. hit camera select video close it aim at me using the outside LCD which is now the viewfinder and hit the camera button to record. SO much nicer :-)
The speaker phone is quite good (though still the normal half duplex) and very loud as is the ear piece.
Ringers are also very loud and since it can use mp3's you can optimize the volume in sound editing software before upload to make it even louder.
You can assign ringers to individuals and of course the sanyo invented (I think they even had it on the B&W phones) Picture Caller ID which I love works wonderfully here as well and you can select images for this from the memory cars so no need to upload.
Its an EVDO high speed phone. You can get tethering. The only downside is unlike the samsung's you an not disable the NAI so you will need a tethering plan to use this.
Downloads and updates are snappy and fast. The Opera browser works wonderfully on this phone and browsing is quite usable in pinch. I love being able to google search a person or business and click there NUMBER and have the phone dial it for me.
The On Demand works great and its FREE now though the GPS portion is gone on the 8400 (it was on the A900 but was not free) Its supposed to have GPS but sine I have many dedicated GPS units I have never had a need to even try to use it.
The only thing annoying about this phone is that sprint killed is pretty fast. Its "too" feature rich for its price and eats at sales of there higher end phones so no one ever made a desktop charger for it. Pity I love those.
It is literally the best phone you can get on sprint. Its WORTH buying used if you have to and doing an ESN swap. The only phone they have now remotely comparable to the 8400 is MAYBE the new IC902 and its EXPENSIVE at $300 WITH contract! Ouch :-) and no macro switch.
Call quality is sanyo excellent. I never have any problems with it. Hardly ever a dropped call on my end of the link. It can grab and use a signal when a samsung just blinks no service. It can off course roam both digital and analog but I have never had a need to so far in my 10+ years with sprint but its nice having it there. Though I think they are turning off the analog towers this year.
All around its about as good a phone you can ask for. It lacks nothing really feature wise and includes a lot of Never knew I would need that till I needed it stuff :-)
I would whole heartedly suggest anyone to purchase this phone. You are almost certain to not be disappointed with it.
I would be in heaven if they would take these exact phone specs and put them in a candy bar phone not unlike the Sanyo 6200 from years past.
The Phone is surprisingly durable for a flip phone. After nearly a year of usage (I don't like to review phones till I have abused them for at least 6 months) its still hanging in there. Almost no where on the paint and the flip hinge is still solid and firm. I am impressed. I baby my phones. They are expensive after all but I also HEAVILY use them. They get tortured pretty good. This phone has held up fantastic. Teeth pulling that antennae a dozen times a day does not show. Still straight still locks in place.
So far no wear on the buttons everything still legible.
Very good build quality. You will love this phone.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
nerys71
|
|
Member: Chris Taylor Jr.
Location: Edgely, PA
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
I Love Rockets, Airplanes, and off course Gadgets :-)
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.