Sunliner's Full Review: Sanyo Katana II Cell Phone
I've had a Sanyo SCP-6650 "Katana II" for ten months, with a Sprint family plan, and I kinda like it. When we signed up for cellular service, we told the salesman where we live -- way out in the boonie-weeds -- and he basically handed us this phone and said "you'll want this one, it has the best reception." I got a black one, my wife got a pink one, and they were free, after rebates, with our new plan. It's since been replaced by the Katana LX, but I've seen the Katana II on eBay recently (mostly from people who've upgraded their phone) in the $40-50 range.
I'll admit, I like the way the Katana II looks. I think it's cool, even if it is just a RAZR knockoff. I like the thin profile, and the fact that I can carry it in my shirt pocket. I like it a lot more than the average flip-phone, which I like to call a "rock in your pocket."
Making and receiving calls is easy -- I've used some phones that disguise the "call" button as a tiny bracket that's slightly more green than the other buttons -- and the sound quality seems to be as good as our land-line phone, as long as we're not in a fringe area of coverage. Speaking of coverage, our house sits in one of those fringe areas. We get about a half-bar of Sprint coverage in our kitchen, and that's it -- but the Katana II features the ability to force the phone to either Sprint or roaming service, and when forced to roam, we get about three bars of signal throughout our home. Thankfully, roaming is free on our plan...your mileage may vary.
The phone has a low-resolution camera, and it's a neat toy, but not much more. Sprint seems bent on charging for every last thing they can get money for, and I haven't enabled the photo-mail service and it's $5 per month charge, so any photo I take with this phone stays on the phone. It's good for snapping new backgrounds for the screen, or for taking photo memos...as in "my wife would like to see that flowerpot," or for using the phone as my portable family album. There is an available USB cable and software CD-ROM for the Katana II, but from the web research I've done it seems to only allow one to export their contacts, not their photos.
The screen itself is very nice -- the specs say it's 240x320 and 65.5k colors. It is very sharp, bright and easy to read, and Sprint's animated icons are darn snazzy. When using the web features of the Katana II, the screen handles it well.
Web features, yes. This phone is 3G enabled, and can surf the internet at will. We've used this a few times when traveling, to look at weather maps. The web on our Katana II is not speedy, by any means, but it is available, and has helped us out when we've used it. I wouldn't get this phone if you plan to do a lot of mobile web surfing, but having it available is nice.
The Katana II doesn't have very many ringtones (Sprint calls them "ringers") built in, but there are boatloads available on the Sprint website, and they generally offer codes for free ringers on a regular basis, so I've downloaded several songs for the phone at no charge...save for the $0.03/kb data transfer fees. The phone pipes these ringers out through a small 1/4" speaker and does so tolerably well, as long as the ringer is fairly simple -- more than two or three voices or instruments and it gets muddy pretty fast. The guitar intro to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is crisp. The full horn section of the Glenn Miller Orchestra...not so much.
Battery life is rated at 5.8 hours. I don't talk that long -- heck, my wife and I combined never reach half of our allotted minutes in a month -- but I can say that the battery lasts for several days (mostly on standby) before it needs a charge.
So, overall, I like the Katana II. It does what I need it to do, and I like the way it looks. It has enough toys to satisfy my meager needs, and the sound quality is pretty okay.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): free Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy
The pink katana II is an ultra-slim, stylish phone with a digital camera with zoom, a large color display, bluetooth, and the complete range of unique...More at kajeet
The pink katana II is an ultra-slim, stylish phone with a digital camera with zoom, a large color display, bluetooth, and the complete range of unique...More at kajeet
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