Review: Kyocera Verve for Sprint
Menus
The Verve runs Sprint's ancient and long-neglected feature phone platform. This user interface has been around the block and then some. It's basic and straight-forward. First-time phone owners will find it easy to master in just a few minutes.
The home screen provides access to the messaging and contacts apps via the soft keys. The d-pad offers customizable shortcuts to four apps - one for each direction - if you so wish. These can be handy if you want to jump to the browser or other apps quickly. Pressing the button in the center of the d-pad takes you to the main menu. The main menu is a 12-icon grid that can also be viewed in list form, or with large fonts. Rather than make you jump through hoops to change the way the main menu looks, the right soft key does the trick.
The 12 icons don't offer any surprises and are composed of the requisite mixture of phone tools and Sprint service offerings. Similar to other Sprint phones, it uses the My Stuff folder to centralize all your media and apps and games. The "Shopping" icon doesn't take you to an on-board app store. Instead, it fires up the browser and loads Sprint's horrendous content portal. Once you move deeper into the menu system, the default view of the menus switches to an endless array of lists.
In terms of customization, the Verve covers the basics with wallpapers, ringtones, and alert sounds. It's a shame that adjusting the font size doesn't affect all screens. It only improves visibility on the top-level menus, the dialing font, and the messages font.
Calls
The Verve is a simple device with which to make calls. There is no support for Sprint's Direct Connect (PTT / walkie-talkie) service, so you're limited to regular old phone calls. Press the green send key to summon a list of your recent calls. The in-call options range from the typical phone book access to 3-way calls. You can also set up to 98 speed dials if you wish. I recall with fondness just how simple it is to make phone calls from a device that has physical buttons. (It's something you had to grow up with, I suppose.)
Contacts
The contacts application opens with a press of the right soft key when on the home screen. The app is basic in that it doesn't connect to social networks or anything fancy like that. It's just a list of names and numbers. The left soft key automatically initiates a text message to whatever number is highlighted. The phone holds up to 600 contacts, and each can carry several phone numbers, email addresses, and other data.
Messaging
For a messaging phone, the Verve sure doesn't offer a lot of messaging features. Simple texting and picture messaging are the lot of it. You can compose messages with the numeric dialpad (triple-tapping, anyone?), or with the QWERTY keyboard. The Verve not only predicts the word you want to type as you go, but offers a handful of suggestions when it cannot. There are 20 pre-loaded messages, as well as an easy way to insert web shortcuts, which are standard Internet letter groupings, such as "http://", "www", or ".com". It's easy to stick an image or voice note into a text message, but there is no video messaging. Thankfully the Verve offers threaded text conversations and something called long-message assembly. This takes messages are are longer than 160 characters and pastes them together in a single message in your inbox.
There are no email nor IM clients pre-loaded on the Verve. In fact, the only way to access email, IM, or social media is through the browser. The Sprint portal offers links to Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo, and other sites. Interacting with any of these online messaging services is a serious pain in the rear and forces you to jump through endless screen refreshes to do anything. The Verve is a fine texting machine, but even mid-tier messaging features are noticeably absent.
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Kyocera Verve / Contact
