Sanyo VI-2300 review

LG VI-2300 is one of the latest devices currently offered from Sprint PCS – the third largest US carrier. The previous LG phone that I reviewed was the MM-7400 and I was very impressed with features and overall performance. The VI-2300 is slightly smaller compared to the MM-7400 and lacks external color screen and camera. Pretty much the VI-2300 is a feature rich entry level phone, excellent for every day use.

Design

 

The VI-2300 is all around plastic covers, colored in two different shades of silver. On the top of the shell is the small one line grayscale LCD which is backlight in orange color. Because of its size, it (88 x 12 pixels) it only shows very basic information such as battery life, signal strength, time and ready link availability. In a event of a incoming phone call, the outer display shows the name/number of the party calling.
Just below the external display is an oval LED which lights up in different colors depending on the if it is being charged, or if there is incoming call.
Above the LCD is the loudspeaker opening. The latch mechanism is just perfect – very easy to open and close, featuring distinctive click when the shell is fully open. Then if you even abruptly shake the phone, the shell will not close – you will have to slightly push it.
There are only two outside keys and headset connector, located on the left side of the phone. The rocker volume control is easy to press with good click response, but I would prefer if it was placed on the right side of the phone and not so low for an easier access. The key above it is for activating Ready Link PPT feature. The top connector is the 2.5mm headset jack.
Being an entry lever unit, the VI-2300 features a small 128 x 128 pixels STN display with very strong ghosting effect (slow redraws of the screen, which cause you to see shadow-like effects from what was previously on the screen). The contrast and color saturation/representation are what you can expect of similar STN display – good, but not as good as TFT ones.
The internal keypad starts with two soft / selection keys, below which is the round, 5-way navigation key, after which are the WEB and BACK dedicated keys. The whole keypad lights in green when a key is pressed. All keys are very well positioned, easy to press with good click response.

User Interface

The VI-2300 features LIST like menu with animated icons. The UI is easy to understand and navigate. The phone is overall very fast when directed to enter a specific menu or execute a command. The only problem is the ghosting effect which I mentioned earlier.

Information Management

Phonebook

 

The VI-2300's phonebook can store up to 500 separate phone numbers in up to 300 contact entries. For every contact you can store multiple phone numbers such as mobile, home, work, page, fax as well as e-mail address and webpage. Picture ID and distinctive ring (different ring tone can be set for every contact) are also supported. The only awkward situation was when I wanted to setup voice dial for a particular contact – you can not do it from the phonebook, but you will have to go into Tools/Voice Services/Voice Dial/ Program to set it up.

PIM

The VI-2300's Personal Information management consists of Calendar, To-do list, Alarm, Calculator and World clock. The Calendar feature allows to up to 99 events, 20 To-do list or 15 alarms. Multiple events can be setup for a particular day.
The alarm clock can be setup with only one alarm, but you can make it repeat the same alarm every day.

Messaging

 

The VI-2300 allows the user to send text, picture messages plus access to Sprint's Instant Messaging application. Up to 10 contacts can be selected to receive the same text message. The recipients can be selected from the Phone Book entries, Personal/Group List entries, manually inputted phone number or email address.
The Instant Messaging application is actually a web-based and supports AOL, Yahoo and MSN. Unfortunately, since it is web-based, it is slow and not very intuitive.

Connectivity

Being an entry-level phone, the VI-2300 does not feature Bluetooth or even Infrared connections. Your only window to the world is the embedded Web browser. Using it, you can access external website (like wap.phonearena.com) or you can go to the Sprint's portal where you can read access your e-mail, chat or watch TV. I will not go in depth here again with the MobiTv or RealTv, but I'll say again that MobiTV is especially entertaining and if you have $10 extra to burn a month, go for it.

Performance

The incoming sound quality was overall good, with the exemption that the speaker cuts off some of the higher frequencies and the voices sound very deep. On the other hand, both the speakerphone and the ear-speaker are exceptionally loud and most of the time I had to turn them down to about 30%. This of course is not a bad thing – I just hate to be on a busy street and not be able to turn my volume a little bit higher.

The phone is rated for about 3.25 hours of talk time and it easily meats that, but I only did about 7 days of stand-by instead of the rated 13 days.

Conclusion

Currently priced at only 29.99 ($189.99 - $160 instant savings with 2year contact), the phone is an excellent bargain for the casual user. It is not an advanced device with gazillion features, but offers all the necessary means to keep you connected. The user interface and menus are easy to learn and navigate. The phonebook is fully featured and offers Picture ID, voice dialing, and up to 500 contacts with multiple numbers per contact.

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As always, if you are interested in becoming part of our review team, drop me an email at: kidoborg@phonearena.com