Sanyo Katana Eclipse Review
4

This is a CDMA phone offered with Sprint.
Introduction:
Design:
Like the Katana LX, the Eclipse has departed from the slim design language of earlier Katanas. Unfortunately, like the LX, it has also downgraded the build quality. The Eclipse has a 176x220, 65K color display instead of the 262K color QVGA panel found on the DLX. The feel is decidedly more plastic than its predecessor, and overall the Eclipse feels like a step backwards from the DLX.

You can compare the Sanyo Katana Eclipse with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Camera and Speaker

Multimedia keys

Internal display
The keypad is typical Sanyo as well. The keys are hard, translucent plastic and offer good travel but poor feel. The d-pad is set in a silver rectangle, with the left and right softkeys, camera and back buttons being the corners. Send, speaker and end are actually part of the dialpad, which can be a bit disorienting. We often found ourselves pressing the back key when we meant to press end due to the unconventional placement.
The left side of the phone has a covered microUSB charging/data port at the top with the volume rocker and a camera button below. On the right side is a 2.5mm headset jack and microSD slot, both of which are also covered. The back of the phone is completely bare.
The illumination feature is one of the main selling points of the phone, sadly enough. Users can choose from 7 different colors and several patterns, with 42 choices overall. Patterns and colors can be set for just about any event, such as text messages, calendar, key presses and can also be used to identify different callers. It’s a fairly juvenile feature that we just can’t get into.

Illumination effect
Overall we are unimpressed with the design and materials of the Katana Eclipse. It is, in our opinion, a definite step back from the more grown up DLX. The illumination is straight out of the Japanese market, but we don’t see it being very popular with most people over the age of 16 here in the States. The plastic feel is not reassuring, and we expect it would easily be scratched. Furthermore, when you’re at the same price point as much more capable phones such as the Curve and Touch we’d expect some serious “wow” and premium materials, but the Eclipse fails to deliver any of this. As the cellular world moves at an even more rapid pace Sanyo is increasingly falling further behind.
Things that are NOT allowed: