Sanyo Taho Review

Introduction:

With Nextel Direct Connect becoming an increasingly niche market, more and more users are switching to the more feature-rich Sprint network. One of the main draws to Nextel, however, was its unmatched lineup of military spec phones. Sprint has dabbled in this field, first offering the Sanyo 7050, then the Motorola Renegade and Sanyo Pro-700 Direct Connect on Sprint phones, but not until the Sanyo Taho by Kyocera has there been a full mil- spec phone available to Sprint users. The Taho is certified to military standards 810G, meaning that it can withstand dust, shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, blowing rain and up to 30 minutes of full submersion in one meter deep water. This phone even surpasses the Motorola Brute in terms of what it can withstand. Included with the Taho you’ll find the AC adapter, Li-Ion battery and a pre-installed 1GB microSD card.

Design:

As a mil spec phone, the Taho was not designed to be pretty. It’s something you’d likely find in Mike Rowe’s pocket (with all due respect to the Motorola i1) rather than Paris Hilton. It is styled in typical Sanyo fashion with over-exaggerated features, such as a giant speakerphone, large monochrome front LCD and 2 megapixel camera on the back in faux metal trim. Despite its over-the-top features, the Taho still manages a professional, almost elegant design. The mix of black and silver works well, and the pockmarked back gives the phone a tough appearance. At 4”x2”x0.9”, the Taho isn’t a small device, but then again its target audience wants something they can hold onto, not some waif of a phone.



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

The Sanyo Taho is billed as having an “ergonomic design,” though to us it seems like a relatively normal flip phone. It is comfortable to hold, however, and thanks to its Dura-Grip coating the Taho won’t easily slip out of your hand. The flip is very solid and when opened reveals a 2” QVGA TFT display. Though small, the display is quite sharp and fairly easy to read in direct light. The outer display is 1” and a monochrome white-on-black and readable in any lighting condition.



The Taho sports a traditional 12 key keypad, with dedicated Speaker, Back and Camera keys to go along with the Send and End keys, right and left soft keys and a 5-way directional pad. The keys are slightly slippery, but large enough and well-spaced so that is not a problem. They offer a reassuring feel and slight click when pressed. The center of the d-pad has goosebumps and is large enough that it almost feels like it should be an optical pad, but alas is not.



On the left side of the Sanyo Taho by Kyocera you’ll find the volume rocker and camera key, as well as the microUSB charging/data port. The right side simply features the 2.5mm headphone jack, while the bottom and top are bare. The ports are of course well-constructed and fairly recessed to ensure that the Taho remains waterproof. The front of the phone draws your attention to a large speakerphone up top and the 1” display, but below that is a slick LED indicator that is well-integrated into the curved lines of the Taho.



The battery door is dimpled with oval impressions that give the Taho a modern look. The door has a locking mechanism to keep it water-tight. Above the door is the 2 megapixel camera with LED flash. It may be fake, but the silver trim enhances the Taho’s rugged appearance.



It comes as no surprise that such a rugged phone has a great build quality. There is a small amount of side-to-side play in the flip when closed, but this disappears when opened and is not a major issue. The flip motion is smooth and snaps open and closed on its own once you get it started. For users of rugged Nextel phones like the Motorola i580 or Brute the Taho will feel very natural, if not a bit more modern. The Sanyo Taho is a well-built phone that feels like it will withstand a beating.

Interface, Phonebook and Messaging:

There is nothing special about the software found on the Sanyo Taho, but it is a bit surprising that it does not run the One Click interface found on most of Sprint’s feature phones. Instead is a standard, fairly plain homescreen with a 12 item main menu. Users are able to change the font size for the main menu, but this does not apply throughout the phone (including submenus) like with the Sanyo 3810 and Vero. The interface runs quite quickly.



For a feature phone the Taho has a pretty beefy phonebook. Users can store up to 600 contacts, and in addition to several numbers and emails you can store personal information like IM names, URL, address, birthday, company, job title and notes. Nuance provides world-class voice dialing on the Sanyo Taho.



Messaging is pretty standard for a Sprint phone. SMS/MMS is threaded and the Sprint Mobile Email client allows for access to popular web providers, Exchange and other providers via manual setup. The client also integrates with an Exchange or Google calendar, which is a more robust offering than we’ve seen on feature phones for other providers.



Camera and Multimedia:

The Sanyo Taho by Kyocera takes fairly good pictures with its 2 megapixel camera. Details were crisp for the most part, but as the distance got greater the details got a bit fuzzy. Color reproduction was good under proper lighting, but it’s no surprise that images became grainy and less crisp as lighting conditions deteriorated. The LED flash doesn’t offer much help unless you’re close to your subject. The video performance is fairly poor, only recording a max of QCIF resolution which is well below even YouTube quality.




The Taho does not have the Sprint Music Store, nor does it have a real music player. From the file manager you can play songs on the memory card, so it does actually have a player, but there is no other way to access it from the menu. This also means that the Taho does not support Sprint TV, and neither Sprint Football Live nor NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile are preloaded, though those two can be downloaded. It’s odd that a 3G phone does not have some of these apps, but we saw the same thing with the Sanyo Pro-700 so this is not unprecedented.



Ruggedness and Enterprise:

The Sanyo Taho by Kyocera withstood every test we put it through with flying colors. As a device certified to military 810G specifications, the Taho can withstand dust, shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, blowing rain and submersion in up to 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. We threw the Taho off a second story roof onto concrete in the snow. We ran the Taho over with our car. We submerged it in a bowl of water then called it. The Taho kept on ticking. Everything went swimmingly well; in fact, the Taho even survived a dip in our fish tank!

UPDATE: Well, it actually looks like the Sanyo Taho couldn't withstand our harsh tests for ruggedness in the long run, as we found it dead in a couple of days later. It would neither turn on, nor charge. Since the device ran just fine at first after we finished with our tests, we would attribute this unfortunate event to moisture getting into the phone, as we rаn it over with a car, while it was lying in the snow. Our theory is that the increased pressure has caused its water resistance to fail, thus letting moisture reach the internal parts. We presume that the Sanyo Taho would safely come out on top of all such ruggedness tests, if they are conducted individually, but combining them would apparently have a deadly impact on the handset.



The Sanyo Taho supports some interesting enterprise features as well. For starters, incoming and outgoing calls can be restricted via password. This is a fairly standard feature on Sprint non-smartphones that is usually labeled as parental controls. These controls go a step further by restricting camera and web use. The Taho has a few other cool tricks up its sleeve as well, like the ability to lock the GPS so that the device’s location can always be tracked. Sanyo knows that this is likely to be a fleet phone for companies transitioning away from Nextel and have provided companies some tools to give them piece of mind.

Performance and Conclusion:

Callers were overall impressed with the Sanyo Taho, but said that we were a bit hollow. Otherwise voice reproduction was good and they rated us an 8/10. Callers were a bit harsh to us, but in general they were good as well and easy to hear. The Taho is rated at 6.1 hours of talk time, more than enough to get even heavy users through at least a full day.

The Sanyo Taho by Kyocera is one tough phone, but it gets the job done in other ways as well. Good call quality and battery life make the Taho attractive to the average user, while some nifty enterprise tools make the Taho a good choice for businesses. This phone isn’t going to sell a ton, but if you’re in the market for a good, durable phone and don’t care too much about messaging, web and similar features, the Taho is certainly worth a serious look.

Software version of the reviewed unit: 1.000SP

Sanyo Taho Video Review: