Sanyo Katana DLX Review

Following on the heals of the SCP-8400, Sprint has now introduced its replacement, the Katana DLX, which keeps all of the features of the original model, yet packages them in a more modern looking phone. The DLX is at the top of the Katana hierarchy, with the Katana-II as a basic entry-level device. The retail package includes the Katana DLX phone, 128MB MicroSD card with SD adapter, 920mAh battery, wall charger, and user manual.

The Katana DLX is more streamlined and fashionable than its predecessor. The plastic and metal body is available in three color choices (Pink Satin, Platinum Ice, and Champagne). The edges of the phone are more rounded and the exterior front has a shiny radial finish. The DLX has slightly slimmer dimensions, measuring 3.7”H x 1.9”W x 0.6”D and with a weight of 3.5 oz.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.70" x 1.90" x 0.60"	94 x 48 x 15	3,50	99.2
Sanyo Katana II	3.70" x 1.90" x 0.60"	94 x 48 x 15	3,10	88
Sanyo Katana	3.88" x 2.02" x 0.58"	98.5 x 51 x 15	3,40	96

The DLX remains a flip phone; yet opening it does require the use of both hands. The flip doesn’t open as smoothly as we would like, and you can hear several “clicking” sounds. When the phone is placed in your pocket, it feels similar to the Razr, but not as unassuming as the Samsung UpStage. The overall construction of the DLX appears to be well made and should hold up to normal everyday use.

The front flip consists of a 1.3MP Camera (no flash), red status light, and a small 1” 65K Color TFT Display. It is unfortunate that the Katana DLX did not incorporate a larger external display. Despite its small size, we were able to read the date & time, and view the signal strength and battery level without any problems. On the left side of the phone are the Volume Up/Down Rocker and Charger/Data Port, while the right side has the Camera Button (for self portraits), MicroSD Card slot, and 2.5mm Headset port.

The main Internal Display has been updated from a 65K Color QVGA to a 262K Color QVGA with wider viewing angles. When compared to the Katana-II, the DLX did show images with greater realism and contrast, and text was shown without any jagged edges. There are five Contrasts Settings on the DLX (highest, high, medium, low, lowest) with the “high” setting chosen by default. However, when viewing in direct sunlight, even the highest contrast setting will not help much.

The blue backlit keypad is laid out well and is the same monochromatic color as the rest of the phone. At the top is the 5-way Navigational pad, which is used to access various parts of the menu. It is surrounded by the Left and Right Softkeys, Camera and Back buttons. The Numeric Keypad is spaced well and is easy to use for Dialing and Text Messaging. Overall response is good, yet the tactile feel is somewhat lacking, due to the keys having a completely smooth finish.

Main menu

Interface:

The Main Menu on the Katana DLX is organized into 12 categories (Web, Call History, Sprint TV, On Demand, Missed Alerts, Music, My Content, Messaging, Tools, Pictures, Contacts, and Settings), which can be viewed as a 3x4 grid or as a list. The menus are colorful and have a good response time. There are also 3 Menu Themes that you can choose from (Sprint, Sanyo, and Email), with the Sprint and Email Theme showing 4 options on the home screen (Main Menu, On Demand, Music, and Send Text). While this is designed to save time, we preferred using the Sanyo Theme, which keeps the home screen uncluttered.

Phonebook:

The Phonebook will store up to 500 Contacts, with each one allowing you to enter in the Name, 7 Phone numbers, 2 E-Mail addresses, Web Site, Group, Street Address, and Memo. You can also select a specific ringtone to be played and picture displayed when a contact calls. After your contacts are saved, you can assign them to one of 98 Speed Dial locations. Calling a person on your speed dial is as easy as pressing the 1 or 2 digit number followed by the Talk button.

Organizer:

Accessing the Calendar is done so through the Tools menu. Once there, the current months is shown with the current date highlighted. You can use the navigational pad to select any month, day, or year that you desire. Pressing the Right Soft Key will open the Options Screen. From there, you can input a Schedule’s Name, Category, Priority, Start Date & Time, End Date & Time, Location, Alarm Tone, and Repeat. When that date and time is reached, the phone will display the information on the screen and alert you by playing the selected alarm tone. This is an easy and effective way of keeping track of appointments.

Other phone tools include Voice Memo, Stopwatch, Countdown, World Clock, and Calculator. The Voice Memo will allow you to record a short memo that can be played back at any time. This is useful for things such as remembering where you parked your car. The Stopwatch and Countdown Timer both do as their name implies. The World Clock will show you the current time in cities around the globe, and the Calculator will perform simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

One disappointing feature of the Katana DLX is the Voice Activated Dialing. It requires the user to manually record a Voice Tag for each Contact’s phone number. Because of this, it can be cumbersome and time consuming to record Voice Tags for hundreds of stored phone numbers. We would have rather seen the more widely used Speaker-Independent system, where the speech-recognition only requires you to train it. Once that is completed, it will automatically understand the name and numbers you whish to dial.

The Katana DLX only comes with 32MB of Internal Memory. However, there is a 128MB MicroSD card that is included, and the phone is capable of using up to a 4GB MicroSD card. This more than makes up for the lack of larger internal memory.

Messaging:

Like most other modern phones, the Katana DLX is capable of sending and receiving Text, Picture, and Voice-SMS Messages. Text Messaging is simple and straightforward. You begin by entering the cell number or E-Mail of the destination, then type in the body of the message. This is done by using the T9 predictive text entry method. Sending a Picture Message is just as easy, except that you attach a stored picture to the message. Voice-SMS allows you to send a short 2-minute voice memo to another phone number, without having to dial the number and leave them a message. Sending and receiving E-Mail can be done through AOL Mail, AIM Mail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and GMail. There is also the option to add IMAP and POP E-Mail service. For Instant Messaging, you will be able to log into AOL, MSN, and Yahoo, and your Buddy List will be displayed on the screen.



Connectivity:

The Katana DLX is a CDMA Dual-Band All-Digital phone, which uses the 1900Mhz and 800Mhz frequencies. For data, the DLX can connect using 1x or the faster EVDO network. Since this is a CDMA phone, it does not require the use of a SIM card and can only be activated on the Sprint Network.

We were pleased to see that the DLX supports the newer Bluetooth 2.0 specification. When paired with another Bluetooth 2.0 device, this will provide better range and quality. Supported profiles include: GAP, SSP, GOEP, HSP (Headset), HFP 1.5 (Handsfree car kits), OPP (vCard Transfers), DUN (Dial up Networking), FTP (File Transfer), BPP (Bluetooth Printing), A2DP/AVCP (Stereo Bluetooth with Audio Control), PBAP (Phonebook access).
When used with our Jabra 250v headset, we were able to get up to 30 feet of static-free calls. For music playback, we were also able to get 30 feet using the Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth headset.

The Katana DLX does support the Mass Storage function, which will allowyour PC to transfer files to and from the phone. Unfortunately, thephone’s retail package does not include the Data Cable, so we wereunable to test the feature.

Internet:

Like all other non-smartphones, the Katana DLX is limited to a standard WAP browser for Internet Access. When first accessing the Web, you are connected to Sprints Power Vision site which has 10 categories (My Account, Messaging, Downloads, News, Weather, Sports, Entertainment, Money, Find it, and Portals). You can also type in a specific web site by pressing the Right Soft Key and selecting Go to URL. Keep in mind though that standard HTTP/HTML sites will take longer to load and may not be display properly. When viewing the www.PhoneArena.com site, there were several places where the phone did not format the page correctly, causing text and images to be overlapping. Because of these formatting problems, it is recommended to only view WAP sites with this phone. When used in an EVDO coverage area, most WAP sites will load in a reasonable 5 seconds, with HTTP/HTML sites taking up to 30 seconds.

Camera:

The Katana DLX features a standard 1.3MP Camera with no flash, and is accessed by pressing the dedicated Camera button on the keypad. The camera will start up in 1.5 seconds. Pressing the Ok button will capture and save the image in 4 seconds. You can also choose to have the image taken without automatically saving it. In doing so, it only takes 1 second to take a picture. However, the total time to take one picture, save it, and take another picture is 9 seconds, which makes it impossible to take fast pictures back-to-back. The overall image quality produced by the DLX is nothing but average. Images lack good color saturation and have soft edges. It is also unfortunate that there is no camera flash, but instead an annoying red status light that constantly turns on and off when you are in the camera mode. If this were not enough, the external display says “Camera Operating”. We can safely assume that this was done so that people can tell when you are using the camera and taking pictures.

Available Camera Options Include:

• Picture Mode: Normal, Beach/Snow, Scenery, Mirror Image, Night/Dark
• Zoom: +1 to +12
• Self Timer: Off, 10 sec, 5 sec
• Multiple Shots: Off, 3 shots, 6 shots, 9 shots
• Fun Frames
• Color Tone: Normal, Orange, Blue, Green, Purple, Sepia, B&W, Sketch
• Brightness: Auto, -2, -1.5, -1.0, -0.5, 0, +0.5, +1.0, +1.5, +2.0
• White Balance: Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Manual
• Sharpness: Auto, -1.0, 0, +1.0
• Contrast: Auto, -2.0, -1.0, 0, +1.0, +2.0
• Resolution: 1280x960, 640x480, 320x240
• Quality: Fine, Normal, Economy
• Shutter Sound: Default, Say Cheese, Ready, Off
• Icon Status Bar: On, Off
• Auto Save to: In Phone, In MicroSD, Switch w/Card
• Save Settings: Auto, Manual
  

Videos can be recorded at either 176x144 or 128x96 resolution, with length up to 120 minutes when using a MicroSD card. Because of the low resolution, video quality is poor and looks even worse when played back on a PC. Because of the low quality, we cannot imagine anyone recording 120 minutes of video at one time.

Multimedia:

Music playback is supported, which will allow playback downloaded songs or your own MP3s that are copied onto the MicroSD card. Music is arranged by Songs, Artists, and Genres. Once the song begins playback, the main display will show the song information and album art. You can use the navigational pad to Rewind/SkipBack, Play/Pause, FastForward/SkipAhead. Closing the flip will show the song information on the external display. However, there are no external music control buttons, which means you must flip the phone open each time you wish to change a song or pause playback. Despite this limitation, music playback is loud and lacks any noticeable distortion. The only caveat is that the speaker is on the back of the phone, which means you must flip the phone over to achieve the best quality sound. The other option is to use a Stereo Bluetooth Headset, since the phone supports both A2DP and AVRC profiles.

Streaming Video:

The DLX is the only model in the Katana line that is capable of accessing the Sprint TV service. This service offers dozens of available channels that will playback prerecorded programming. There are also several Live TV streaming channels available. Regardless of which channel you watch, video quality is lacking and is pixilated, due to the download speed of the EVDO network. If you require higher quality live TV on your mobile device, then you might consider the LG VX9400 and Samsung U620 that utilize Verizon’s MediaFLO service.



Software:

Like most other Sprint phones, the Katana DLX uses the Java format for applications. There are five game demos included (Brain Juice, Diner Dash, Ms Pac Man, Platinum Sudoku, Tetris), but there are dozens of other games that are available for download.

Performance:

We were pleased with the overall Reception and Call Quality produced by the Sanyo Katana DLX. The reception remained quite good with 3-5 bars showing as we placed calls around South Florida. We were also able to place calls in some fringe areas where the Samsung UpStage was not able to find service. The call quality in the earpiece was also good, but we could hear a small amount of background static during all calls. Even with the earpiece volume turned up, the speaker did not become distorted as most other phones do. The Speakerphone must be activated after the phone call is placed, and is automatically deactivated when the phone call ends. The speakerphone quality was also quite impressive, as there was no distortion even with the volume turned up. Just remember that the speaker is located on the back, so you must flip over the phone achieve the best speakerphone sound.

Sanyo rates the included 920mAh battery at 4 Hr of Talk Time (standby time is not provided). We were able to achieve 3Hr of Talk Time or 5 Days of Standby Time.

Conclusion:

The Sanyo Katana DLX is currently the most feature rich model out of the Katana series. The overall design of the phone as been updated with sleeker lines, a more stylish look, and is available in three color choices. The DLX now offers a 262K Color Display, 1.3MP Camera, and MicroSD card slot, which are all noteworthy upgrades from the previous models. Unfortunately, the external display remains the same small size. The DLX is also capable of good quality MP3 music playback, even though the speaker is located on the back and there are no external music controls. The Call Quality and Reception both remain the phones main strong points. There was very little static during calls and the phone was able to place calls in fringe areas, where other phones could not. Overall, the Katana DLX is a good quality phone that is designed for the average consumer that is looking for a device with many useful features.