Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500) Cellular Phone - I killed this in under 6 months....
Written: Dec 13 '04
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Pros: easy to use, great menu, color screen, nice look, speaker and flip phone
Cons: Readylink not practical, battery life, quality of speaker phone, Not Durable!
The Bottom Line: Great features, looks great but doesn't hold up to normal use.
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| marytara's Full Review: Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500) Cell Phone |
I received my Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500)cell phone as a replacement from Sprint PCS when my Samsung SPH-N400 stopped working suddenly after having just shy of one year of use. Because I was in need of a phone right away and the Samsung phone was not available they gave me the Sanyo - a better phone, at no additional cost to me.
My experience with this phone
The Sanyo SCP-5400 (RL2500)cell phone has all sorts of great features and looks cool. I prefer flip style phones and this is a fairly compact one in an attractive silver color. It has a nice color display screen and you can download (at a charge) additional screen savers and what not. The same thing goes for ringers, games, etc. The phone came with plenty of options but Sprint wants you to spend more money souping the phone up with all sorts of useless custom bells and whistles. The phone retails for around $150 (I believe) but like I said, I got it under warranty for free.
I really liked the menu and directory system on this phone and found it very easy to use, navigate and store numbers. I never did figure out or set up voice dialing - but that option is available. The phone can connect to the internet (at a fee) but it is not a camera phone.
One of the things that the sprint guy went on and on to me about was how this phone is ReadyLink Equipped. What that means is that you can use your phone similar to a walkie talkie and "beep" other Readylink users and carry on conversations. These conversations don't use up your airtime or minutes, so if you have friends/family etc who also have Sprint PCS phones with Readylink then this is a good thing. For me this was pretty useless since my friends/family either all have phones with a different company or their phones don't have this Readylink feature on it. Plus, the readylink really affects your battery life and eats it up. So if you do use Readylink you probably should consider getting the extended life battery.
I had very good luck with this phone in terms of reception, clarity of calls, etc. I didn't have a problem with calls dropping out and signals fading except for the usual times when I was driving and going through mountain areas, etc where it was definitely to be expected.
This phone has a built in speakerphone for hands-free conversations. I found that I could hear people just fine when I had them on speakerphone. However, word from the people that I was talking to was that my voice cut out and was not good quality when I used this option. I ended up not using the speakerphone much and doing the illegal talk on the phone while driving or plug in an earbud/mouthpiece handsfree kit.
From the get-go I had problems with this phone and a short battery life. I'm a gabber and I use my phone quite a bit while I'm out and about. This phone just would eat through a battery almost daily and end up on the car or home charger. I am not sure the cause of the short battery life, but I suspect its the fancy backlit display, the screen savers, buddy icon, etc. I really found it annoying how often I needed to charge my phone up and how often it would lose its charge when I wanted to use it - but found it powered down and unable to place a call.
Ultimately the battery or something with the charging system/port led to the death of my Sanyo SCP-5400 phone. With under 6 months of use this phone died on me. It no longer will retain a charge or even power on, so I've replaced it and upgraded to a cameraphone.
This was a decent phone while it lasted. It definitely has some nice features but lacks in others - no camera, poor battery life, poor speakerphone quality. Because of the durability issues, I just cannot recommend this model.
Other Cell Phone reviews
Samsung SPH-N400
Samsung SCH 3500
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): free
Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy
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marytara
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