Sanyo PRO-200 Review

Interface:

The PRO-200 features a familiar Sanyo interface, and in fact uses the same menu as the 700. The top level menu has nine subcategories: History, Messaging, Tools, Web, Missed Alerts, Contacts, Navigation, My Content and Settings. The Settings menu is still plagued with 22 subfolders, most of which lead into an even deeper rabbit hole, but that is our only real gripe with the UI.

The phone is very customizable, something we always like to see. The left and right Soft Keys are hardcoded to Favorites and Contacts, but Favorites allows the user to assign up to 12 shortcuts. So, with the 4 hardcoded and 4 soft coded keys around the d-pad, and 12 favorites, the user has 20 shortcuts that can be accessed in one or two clicks. Pretty impressive. The Sanyo menu system has a lot of things going for it, we just wish they’d clean it up a bit.

The phonebook can hold up to 600 entries and a total of 4200 numbers, 1800 email addresses and 600 web addresses. Obviously, each contact can store multiple phone numbers along with a NDC number. Contacts can be customized with personal ringers and a picture ID. In addition to personal contacts, the phone can hold up to 25 Group Connect entries (which in turn contain up to 40 NDC numbers) and 40 TeamDC numbers.

Unfortunately Sanyo’s archaic voice tag system is back, making voice dialing cumbersome and limited. We were excited to see VoiceSignal on a low-end model like the Katana LX and hoped it meant all models would be getting the wonderful voice dialing program, but unfortunately not.


Software:

The Navigation menu option takes the user to Sprint Navigation. Sprint is heavily pushing this service and its Everything plans, so it is not a big surprise to see this as an easy-access menu item. The rest of the user’s applications can be accessed from the My Content folder. The phone runs Java apps, and there are countless free and paid programs out there for the user to download.



The WAP browser is the same Access Net Front browser found on past models. The Sprint deck is lightning fast over Rev. A, but it doesn’t handle HTML pages all that well. As usual, we recommend Opera Mini for a better browsing solution.


The 200 has Bluetooth 2.0 and supports the HSP, HFP, DUN, OPP, PBA and BPP profiles.

Other standards are in place, such as a basic planner, calculator, alarm clock, world clock, etc. The user can set up to five alarms, and has several recurring options such as a specific day, weekly and only on the weekends. The calendar is thin on features as you’d expect, but setting up basic appointments works well enough. The rest of the applications are all basic, but get the job done. No one is buying this phone for its PIM functionality.

Mobile Sync is again on-board. We gave a more in-depth look in our PRO-700 review, but basically it is a real-time contact sync between the phone and a web tool and allows users remotely wipe the phone if it is ever lost. Unlike its predecessor, Wireless Backup, Mobile Sync is a free program which is always great. There’s even a free administrator version, allowing businesses to keep all their phones on the same page.