I’ve had my Sanyo Katana for almost four months now, so I figure it’s time a little review, so I can let you know whether or not it’s awesome or Teh Suczk.
You may recall my short post a few months ago when I bought it and alerted the world that you could actually call me (the previous phone had been broken for a while). At the time, I was totally enamored with my new little flip-phone, and now that the initial puppy love has dissipated, it’s time to take a hard look at the pros and cons, yo.
Pros:
- It’s super-slim. Seriously, it’s like a half-inch thick. It would fit comfortably in the rear pocket of my jeans, even with my gigundous black girl booty, if I wasn’t afraid of sitting on it and crushing it with Teh Fatne$$.
- I can hear people on it, and they can hear me. This may seem like a basic thing, but after the problems I had with the last phone, this is a major improvement.
- HUGE screen. For websurfing it’s still a tad small, but I was able to download Google Maps’ free mobile client for it, and now I never get lost! Which is teh sweet.
Cons:
- You can use it as a wireless broadband device, which is pretty cool, but Sprint wants you to pay $40 a month for the service. With Sarah’s phone, which is a bit older, you can do it for free. What a gyp. $40 a month, which is about what I pay for 3Mb/s cable modem access, for something no faster than about a 38400-baud modem. No thanks, losers.
- The ringtones are too soft. All the ringers are too soft, in my opinion. Most of the time, that’s good, since I don’t need the thing playing the theme from “The Greatest American Hero” (Sarah’s personal ringtone) at 110 decibels while I’m at, say, the proctologist, but when I’m driving in my car and singing along with “My Sweet Escape” by Gwen Stefani, I usually can’t hear it. Which of course is when wives, when they are pregnant, go into labor. (Note: HW is NOT currently pregnant, for which she thanks Baby Jesus.)
- This is a biggie: the stupid side button keyguard is set up in the most ridiculous possible way. The phone, like many others, has little buttons on the side that perform a variety of tasks, like controlling volume, scrolling through the phonebook, and, while the phone is closed, activating the speaker phone and dialing the most recent number. Since I keep my phone in my pocket, and since I wear very, very tight pants, this is bad, because if I don’t turn on the keyguard the phone continually dials people, the end result of which is my father-in-law saying “hello? hello?” over and over again to my junk.
Not cool.
You’d think you could just set the keyguard and not have a problem, but get this: you can disable the keyguard by just holding the button down long enough. Which happens at least twice a week because, as I mentioned, I WEAR TIGHT PANTS. (Everything’s tight when you are 45% ass.) This is the major flaw in the phone, in my opinion; I’m hoping they issue a firmware patch that allows you to completely disable the side buttons when the phone is closed.
Final verdict? A solid B+, which is far better than any other phone I’ve had. (The last phone probably started out a B and ended up as an F———— because by the end it didn’t actually function as a phone; it was more like a $30 a month pocket watch.)
