Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 Review

Introduction:

Over the past few years Casio has been one of the major providers of push-to-talk devices for Verizon Wireless with their rugged G’zOne series; from the Type-V and Type-S to the Boulder and Rock. Now the company is looking to raise the bar even more with the new Casio G’zOne Brigade C741, as it is the first PTT device for Verizon to incorporate a full QWERTY keyboard. This is clearly marketed for individuals who want a messaging device, such as the LG enV3, but also the ability to use Verizon’s PTT service, as well as being built to MIL-STD-810F for resistance to dust, shock, vibration, salt fog, humidity, solar radiation, altitude, temperature extremes, and water submersion.

Included in the retail package are the Casio G’zOne C741 phone, 1440mAh battery, wall charger, desktop cradle, and user guide.

Design:

The Brigade still retains the Casio G’zOne look and feel throughout, with a circular display on the front that is similar to the one used by the Rock. The Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 feels quite durable with its hardened-plastic and rubber construction, and the orange colored o-rings around the battery, charging port and headset jack should do a good job of keeping water out. However, the phone’s large rectangle-shaped design can be a bit uncomfortable to hold at the ear for long periods of time, as the bottom hinge has the tendency of pressing into the palm of your hand. Furthermore, when the Brigade is placed in your pants pocket, it looks like you are carrying around a small brick.



You can compare the Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The external PMOLED display is only 1.2” and has a resolution of 128x96 pixels, but is easily visible in sunlight and can be used for most basic features, such as viewing the date & time, phone numbers, contacts, messages, etc. The d-pad has a silver ring around it, but in fact is illuminated white from underneath, which makes it easy to see in low-light conditions. It’s not the largest d-pad that we’ve used, but still works well for navigating through the external menus. Around it are 4 individual buttons that directly access the text messaging, camera, favorite contacts, and speakerphone/flashlight. It is nice to have these functions available at the touch of a button instead of having to dig through menus. Below it is the standard white-backlit numeric keypad, but the buttons being uniquely shaped and the rows slightly offset from one another, though we didn’t have any problems using them. At the bottom are the stereo speakers, which are used for music playback, speakerphone, and while using the PTT mode. On the left side of the Brigade are the volume rocker, music button, and large orange-colored PTT button.



Opening up the Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 works similar to the LG enV3, except that the hinge doesn’t open a full 180 degrees. The internal display is 2.9” with a resolution of 400x240 pixels, which allows for easy viewing of images, text, and menus. On the bottom is a 4-row QWERTY keyboard with d-pad. The keys are large and are slightly raised from the surrounding plastic, which makes it one of the best designed keyboards we’ve seen on a Verizon device, as we were able to type messages relatively fast and without any errors. Located on the back of the Brigade is the 3.2MP autofocus camera with flash and two metal connectors that are used with the desktop charging cradle. There is a small slider that will lock and unlock the battery cover, which you’ll have to open and remove the battery to access the microSDHC memory card slot that supports cards up to 16GB.

Software and Features:

The Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 doesn’t really bring anything new to the table in terms of the included software. The Main Menu is typical for a Verizon feature-phone with categories for Media Center, Contacts, Messaging, Recent Calls, and Settings & Tools. You do have the choice of four Themes (white, punching metal, paint, and checker plate), as well as being able to display them in Tab, List, and Grid view, where you can even replace and move menu items around the grid. This, along with wallpapers and clock formats does allow for basic customization by the user. Storing up to 500 contacts is also standard, as you can enter in their name, 4 phone numbers, 2 emails, group, picture, ringtone, IM screen name, and street address. There is still a separate phonebook just for storing PTT contact names and numbers, though we wish these were integrated into the main phonebook.






Most other features remain the same that we’ve seen for other Verizon devices, such as the appointment calendar, text/picture/video messaging, MP3 music playback, VCast video streaming, and VZ Navigator for GPS guided driving directions. A few features we miss on the Brigade, which are found on the Rock, are the compass, walking counter and tide levels.




The Casio G’zOne Brigade does come with an HTML browser, though we found it to be quite limited. When going to large sites, such as PhoneArnea.com, it breaks the site up into smaller pages called Optimized View, which to us is not true HTML. You can choose to turn the Optimized View off, however in doing so most large site will not fully load and it becomes difficult to navigate. Because of these browser limitations, we can only see using it on occasion; not on a daily basis.



The 3.2MP autofocus camera can be used with the internal or external display, through we’d recommend opening up the Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 so you can use the color TFT display as the viewfinder. We were fairly pleased with images taken outside on a sunny Florida day, as colors were pretty accurate and the autofocus worked well, through images weren’t quite as sharp as we would like, there was a bit of purple fringing, and bright areas were somewhat overexposed. But it is still the best we’ve seen from a Verizon PTT device. Images taken indoors only came out well if there was plenty of light; as they got grainy and blurry as light-levels decreased. Even though the LED flash is bright, it doesn’t have much of an effect on taking pictures in the dark. Turning on the Best Shot mode did make flash images brighter, but the slower shutter speeds make it too blurry. Videos can also be recorded up to 320x240 resolution and for up to 1 hour at a time, which is decent for watching on the phone or posting to YouTube, though the quality isn’t going to be stellar.





Push-To-Talk:

The Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 uses the Verizon EVDO Rev A. network for PTT connectivity. This allows the connection time between the devices to only be about 1 second, with voices also taking about 1 second to transmit. Using the PTT on the Brigade works quite well, as the orange PTT button is easy to find, and the stereo speakers produce loud and clear voices. We also like the fact that it can be used with the phone open or closed.



Performance:

Call quality through the earpiece speaker on the Brigade was better than what we’ve experienced with past Casio G’zOne models, as voices were louder and clearer, instead of sounding thin and distant. Though there was a small amount of distortion if the volume was turned up all the way. People that we called said that we sounded clear and natural on their end, without any background noise. Signal reception was also good, as we didn’t drop any calls and had 4 bars of 3G and 3 bars of 1X showing in high-coverage areas.

The included 1440mAh battery is rated to provide up to 6 hours of talk time or 3.75 days of standby time on a full charge. During our testing we were able to get up to 5.5 hours of talk time with standard calls or 4.5 hours of continuous PTT use on a full charge.

Conclusion:

Out of all the PTT phones that have been released by Verizon, the Casio G’zOne Brigade C741 is by far the best device overall. It has a lot of features going for it, including good call quality and reception, excellent build quality with military specs, large internal display with full QWERTY keyboard, and a 3.2MP autofocus camera. Plus don’t forget about the loud stereo speakers on the front that are used for PTT calls, as well as for music playback and speakerphone. We just wish the device wasn’t as bulky. At almost 1” thick and 4.5” tall; it’s currently the largest PTT phone available for Verizon.

Casio G'zOne Brigade C741 Video Review: