Sanyo PRO-700 Review

Introduction:

In every company’s history there are a few special dates. Sprint is banking that June 15, 2008 is one of those dates. On that day QChat went live nationwide, the first tangible step in bridging the deteriorating gap between CDMA and iDEN customers. The Sanyo PRO-700 is an important part of this; its rugged exterior and no-frills appearance will no doubt be the choice of many iDEN customers looking to reap the benefits of CDMA while keeping their beloved PTT. This isn’t a hybrid device like we’ve seen in the past, the PRO-700 and the other QChat phones offer CDMA PTT that is interoperable with iDEN. The PRO-700 is certified to Military 810F specifications for dust, shock and vibration. It, along with the other phones launching that day, will be the first non-Motorola phones to offer Nextel Direct Connect (NDC.) Other features include a QVGA display, GPS and EVDO Rev. A data.

Included in the box you’ll find:

• Lithium Ion battery
• AC Adapter
• Holster with swivel clip
• Users guides

Design:

The PRO-700 is a no-frills, rugged device and that is apparent from the first time you lay eyes on it. Most of the phone is coated in black rubber, and the front display is housed in bright milled aluminum. The sharp contrast between the two materials, as well as the black (probably fake) hex nuts that holds the housing on only enhances the phones ruggedness. The rubbery finish, combined with a narrow design, give the phone a much better feeling than anything iDEN has ever had to offer. In fact, in-hand the 700 really feels like a rugged KRZR.


You can compare the Sanyo PRO-700 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The display and its milled housing dominate the front of the flip when closed. The external display is a high contrast black and white that is perfect for the outdoors. There are several different style options, but by default the numbers are large and black, set on a white background. Even your grandma could read this without glasses in direct sunlight. Above and below the displays, screen printed on the aluminum, sit the Sprint and Sanyo logos, and at the four corners are hex screws that at least give the appearance of holding the trim on. At the top of the flip the speakerphone microphone sits above an embossed “GPS,” both in a trapezoidal recess of the black housing. The flip is shorter than the overall length of the phone, and the large speaker sits on the RAZR-like hump. It is a very industrial-looking 3x8 grid of small square holes, and centered above it is a hidden LED that to indicate NDC call status.


Along the left side, from top to bottom, is the volume rocker, NDC button and a covered microUSB port. The right side features a covered 2.5mm headset jack, speakerphone toggle and side end key. The keys are all rubbery which makes them a bit sticky and easy to use, they have good travel so you know they’ve been pressed. Like we’ve seen from some PowerSource hybrid phones, the NDC key on the 700 features a blue backlight when in use. It also blinks to alert the user of a missed NDC call. It’s a very cool small detail.

The back of the 700 is very plain and comprised almost entirely of the battery door. The only feature that sticks out is the “Nextel Direct Connect” sticker that points to the NDC button. The fact that this is a sticker, and not printed directly onto the door, is quite odd. It’s a very low-quality move in an otherwise highest of quality phone . Near the bottom of the door is a sliding lock that keeps the cover in place. At the top, as part of the phone, are two recesses for screws. The recess on the left does double duty as a lanyard loop.

The flip opens securely, but thankfully that familiar Sanyo click is gone. Reminiscent of a slider, the flip offers some resistance when being opened or closed, but past a certain point finishes the process nearly on its own. The hinge feels great, and we don’t see it loosening over time. When opened the user is treated to a 1.9” QVGA display. It is bright and crisp, and even at only 65k colors it has some visual pop to it. The display’s small size probably plays a factor in this, but even still it’s not quite as deep as similar, 262k color screens we’ve seen from Samsung.



The keypad below has more buttons than most yet remains plenty usable. The five way directional pad is surrounded by a ring of keys. Starting at 12 o’clock and moving clockwise are Text, Right Soft Key, Back, End, Speaker, Talk, Web and the Left Soft Key. Shortcuts can also be assigned to each of the d-pad directions, giving the user four hard-coded shortcuts and four soft-coded ones. At the center of it all is the Menu/OK button, and below is a standard 12 key dialpad. Everything is backlight in a cool blue, which looks even better against the black backing. The buttons themselves are on the small side, especially Text and Speaker. They are a bit shallow, though do offer a reassuring click when pressed. Given the narrowness of the 700 we can’t fault Sanyo for the small keys, but those with fat fingers may have a slightly harder time pressing them.

The PRO-700 is a well designed phone. It’s not going to win any awards for beauty, but it will win the respect of Nextel users and that is what Sprint is going for. Even with the rugged design the phone is still relatively small, and it feels well weighted in the hand. The rubber finish makes it easy to grip, and the Military spec construction means it can be tossed around without worry. The success of QChat relies heavily on Nextel users feeling comfortable with their new phones, and the 700’s design makes a great first impression.

Interface:

The PRO-700 features a familiar Sanyo interface, though there are a few differences. The top level menu has nine subcategories: History, Messaging, Tools, Web, Missed Alerts, Contacts, Navigation, My Content and Settings. This is identical to previous models, like our recently-reviewed Katana LX, except that Pictures has been replaced with Navigation. It can be viewed either in list or grid view, and the subcategories can be accessed via keypad shortcuts in each. There are three style options; Plaster offers white icons on a black stylized background with blue highlight, Calm Tone is black on white with yellow highlight and Carbon offers white on carbon fiber, with a green highlight. All three choices are visually pleasing.

The menu structure is nearly identical to the Katana LX, which unfortunately means we still have a plethora of subfolders under the Settings menu. In fact, with the addition of a Direct Connect option we are up one to 22 in all. Like we noted in that review, many of these could be better grouped, moved elsewhere or completely done away with. It makes the phone appear more complex than it really is, which is not a good thing when trying to ease in the Nextel users. To be fair, iDEN units are just as unorganized and the Sanyo is by far the lesser of two evils.

The phone is very customizable too, 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. More on how those work later.

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 700, and some other QChat phones, are the first EVDO devices not to offer Sprint’s multimedia suite of applications. We’re sure Sprint TV and the Music Store will show up on later, high-end QChat phones, but since the hardware is there it’s a curious decision for Sprint to leave these out. We understand the lower-end devices are meant to be simpler, but if you want to entice Nextel users to switch offering more rarely hurts.

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 700 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 a new program launching with these devices, and will also be found in the Instinct. Similar to Sprint’s previous offering, Wireless Backup, Mobile Sync offers real-time OTA sync with an online contact management tool. Users can enter contacts either into the phone or via the web tool, and the two will mirror each other. Unlike Wireless Backup, Mobile Sync is a free program.

Mobile Sync offers some significant advantages over Wireless Backup. From the web tool, users can mark numbers so they do not show up on the phone, and in total you can store up to 5000 contacts online even if the phone wont’ hold that many. More importantly, this means that if a phone is lost or stolen the user can remotely wipe the contact list by marking all contacts as web only. The online tool also can synchronize with Outlook and can be used to create and manage groups for the NCD Group Talk feature. Mobile Sync Admin is a more power version for enterprise users which lets administrators sync information across multiple phones. All-in-all it looks to be a very powerful feature at a perfect price !

Nextel Direct Connect:

With the move to CDMA NDC has been improved a bit, and we’ll see more upgrades in the future. QChat works over Sprint’s Rev. A network, so unlike iDEN there will be places where voice works but PTT doesn’t. The QChat devices are initially launching it in 46 markets where Rev. A closely mirrors iDEN coverage, and will be available in more markets by the end of the year. Though it will not be sold in all markets, the service will work wherever Rev. A is available.

The main thing, namely Direct Connect between two users, works just as well as it does on iDEN. We experienced no difference in call setup and latency when talking to other QChat users compared with iDEN users. Alerts came through instantaneously, and users even have the option of sending a canned text message with the alert.

The service wasn’t perfect though, and when using the PRO-700 and PRO-200 side by side we sometimes found that one of the phones wasn’t available for DC (as indicated by a status icon) while the other phone was. Usually the issue resolved itself after a few minutes, but this meant the data connection was dead and we could not access the web either. Needless to say, this may be frustrating for users. We’ve actually seen some internal Sprint documentation that references this, and advises that a power-cycle will fix the issue. That fix didn’t seem to work for us, more often than not the issue was still there when the phone booted back up. Nextel struggles from network and capacity issues, so in some ways this will be business as usual for Nextel customers, but it’s an issue that Sprint needs to fix ASAP if they’re going to win over users.

There are still some things that NDC on Nextel offers that NDC on Sprint still doesn’t. Direct Talk (off network DC) is only available on certain Nextel phones and CDMA phones cannot make international DC calls. CDMA users also cannot talk to iDEN users via Group Connect, but that will be interoperable by the end of the year. Push-to-x features, such as NextMail and Direct Send are also not supported, though future push-to-x enhancements have been mentioned by Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. Lastly, Talkgroup, which allows up to 200 local users in the same fleet (first 3 digits of the DC number) to be on a call, appears to be being replaced with TeamDC, which only offers 35 contacts but can be used with any number nationwide.

NDC on Sprint has some advantages, not the least of which is the single number option. No longer will users need to have a separate DC and phone number, though users may opt to retain separate numbers if they wish. Nextel users who switch will automatically have DC calls to their old number forwarded. The one glitch to a single number is that if the seventh digit of a phone number is 0 then the user cannot use it as a DC number and must have separate numbers. Other features include missed DC call notification and OTA provisioning. Users now have the ability to block or allow DC calls from specified numbers. As we mentioned earlier, Mobile Sync can be used to manage contacts and groups online.

There is no doubt that Sprint is making the right move in moving to QChat. No matter how much testing you put a product through there will always be hiccups at launch, but in our experience they have been generally minor. DC performance is undoubtedly just as good as on iDEN, and that’s the most important thing. Another large benefit is that PTT users will now have the expanded voice coverage of the CDMA network, a huge benefit over iDEN. Sprint has done a good job to ensure that iDEN users will get the PTT performance they count on with QChat, they just need to make sure it’s available when it ought to be.

Performance:

The PRO-700 displayed the common Sanyo strengths and weaknesses. The reception was top notch and the speakerphone was great. Callers said we sounded “good, but not great,” nothing that we sounded a bit thin or distant. While plenty loud, we had the same result on our end and have seen this from Sanyos for years. Sanyo does very well in important areas like reception and volume, it’s time for them to focus on sound quality. The speakerphone was on par with Motorola iDEN speakerphones, which in our opinion are the best in the business.

Bluetooth performance was surprisingly good. Users on the other end actually couldn’t tell that we were using a headset, which is rare. On our end callers actually sounded better because there was some depth to their voice, which makes us think Sanyo’s earpiece is the cause for thin audio. Audio routed through Bluetooth for DC calls as well, but the NDC button still needs to be used to talk to the caller.

Battery life is rated at 5 hours of talk time, though we fell short by about 40 minutes. Still, 4.2 hours of talk time is on the high end for CDMA devices. It should be noted that once the phone is provisioned for PTT the standby time drops significantly, down to about 75 hours. Despite a solid talk time, this will probably be a phone you’ll need to charge at least every other night, if not daily.

Conclusion:

The Sanyo PRO-700 does what it sets out to do, and does it well. Some Nextel customers will opt for the prettier LX400, but for those users accustomed to beating up their phones we think the 700 will be the device of choice. It strikes a great balance between form and function, offering a much better in-hand feel than any iDEN phone yet still being reassuringly rugged. We didn’t have any issues with the phone itself, the loss of DC service is a network thing, and we think that Sanyo has done a wonderful job recreating the iDEN phone experience with a CDMA unit.