Sanyo SCP-2700 Review

Introduction

Long is the rumor that Sanyo was bringing a QWERTY device to Sprint. Be it smartphone or featurephone, we’ve heard rumblings since at least 2006. Well 2009 finally sees the rumor come to fruition, albeit in a slightly lower class fashion. The Sanyo SCP-2700 is a basic, candybar QWERTY phone with the spec sheet to match that will be offered by Sprint for $29.99. Features include a 1.3 megapixel camera, 2.2” QVGA display, full QWERTY keyboard…and not much else. Included in the box you’ll find a standard Li-Ion battery and microUSB charger.

Design

The candybar 2700 is actually very comfortable to hold, both with one hand and two. The materials are less than high quality, and despite the comfortable feel the feel is as low end as the price. The keyboard keys are rubber nibs, which are a bit cramped and feel cheap. Still, the keyboard performs quite well and we were tapping out accurate messages rather quickly.




You can compare the Sanyo SCP-2700 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The 2.2” display is QVGA, which wins points, but only 65k colors, which quickly loses those points back. In the menus the display looks good enough, but then looking at pictures it quickly becomes clear that the color saturation just isn’t good enough. The display is easy enough to see however, even in high lighting conditions which make it usable.



There are simple buttons on the left side, one for volume and the other for the camera. Near the bottom is the microUSB charger, and across from it on the right is the 2.5mm headphone jack.



The Sanyo SCP-2700 comes in two colors: Impulsive Pink and Deep Blue. The pink has a floral pattern that runs around the top left, and both have a textured checkerboard pattern on the back. We feel that the design limits the target audience, and the build quality only furthers this limitation. While the Sanyo SCP-2700 will be just fine for teenagers, we just don’t see many users choosing this over, say, the Samsung Rant or LG Lotus. The build quality is what gets us most, all we can say is it is very noticeable that Kyocera has taken control of Sanyo’s handset division.

Software and Phonebook

The menu system mirrors what we recently saw on the Rumor2, which is a twelve icon menu. While it doesn’t have the One Click home screen, it does have everything else including threaded text messages. They layout is a bit different, for instance Entertainment has been replaced by Shopping (Entertainment brings you to Sprint TV and the Music Store, which the Sanyo SCP-2700 doesn’t have) and My Account has been added in place of Get Stuff. The menu runs snappily, and context menus now slide up instead of simply open. It is very polished all around. Everything we’d expect to find is present: alarm clock, calculator, notepad, unit converter, etc.



Like we’ve seen from most Sanyo phones the SCP-2700 allows the user to restrict calls. Incoming and/or outgoing calls can be limited only to special numbers or your contact list only. It also lets you lock your pictures, set contacts as secret and subsequently hide these secret contacts. To some extent this just indulges in paranoia, but they are useful tools nonetheless, especially for parents restricting their children’s cell use.

The phonebook itself is pretty standard and holds up to 600 entries. The user can store all the information you’d expect, including an address. The Sanyo SCP-2700 marks the return of a feature we’ve sorely missed: customized text ringtones. Not only that, but also custom picture messages and voice SMS as well. Nuance powers the always excellent voice command.

Camera and Messaging

As you might expect, we got less than stellar results with the camera. Color reproduction was good, but lines were ragged and the edge of the picture produced blurry results. With no microSD expansion it only holds a paltry 24 images on maximum resolution, and there is no video camera. The Social Zone application is supposed to give you one click uploads to popular (and not-so-popular) sites such as MySpace, Photobucket and others, but interestingly no Facebook.



Of course the main focus of the Sanyo SCP-2700 is messaging, and for the most part it does well. Conversations are threaded which is always great, but it’s a bit backwards since the newest message is at the top and not at the bottom as is customary. This is in line with other devices running this operating system though, not unique to the Sanyo. Like the Rumor 2 the keyboard features an emoticon button, though most other phones won’t display the smiley images. Sprint Mobile Email allows the user to check both personal and corporate email, and Sprint Instant Messaging gives the user access to AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger.

Performance and Conclusion

Call quality was decent, and battery life is rated at a respectable 4.8 hours.  Callers said we sounded a bit distant, rating us at a 7 out of 10.  On our end they sounded pretty loud and clear, and while it wasn’t perfect we had no real gripes.

Overall we feel the Sanyo SCP-2700 is a solid, basic phone.  The call quality is good, the keyboard is better than it feels and the price could be lower, but not much.  Still, we think Sanyo could have done a few things, such as add a microSD slot, to win some market share.  With the Rumor 2 currently priced at the same price as the better spec’d Rant we can’t help but feel that price will soon drop, and when compared to the SCP-2700 we just don’t see why someone would pick up the Sanyo SCP-2700.  It’s a decent offering, but doesn’t offer anything in the way of differentiation and its cheap materials don’t give a good first impression.

Sanyo SCP 2700 Video Review: