Sanyo SCP-8400
Average Ratings
Great compact phone
Everyone has their favorite qualities in a phone and things they must have or don't really care about. For me I rank sound quality/loudness first and then size/display second. This phone has done the best so far at putting these things together. My previous phones included the Sanyo 7400, 7500, 9000, and Samsung a900. This is what I liked about these phones and why I now have the 8400:
7400- awsome speaker quality with easy to download homemade ringers that are very loud. Ok display and very limited memory.
7500- same great speaker quality, nicer display but small for internet use, more memory
9000- same great speaker quality, sd card slot, and beautiful screen but very large phone
a900- the best display, poor,quiet, speaker but clear, ok memory, terrible battery life
and now the 8400.....
Pros:
-The most compact of the above phones, very light, can't hardly tell it's in your pocket.
-Display is very nice, bigger than the 7500, slightly smaller than 9000 but still acceptable for internet use.(internet extremely fast).
-The best and easiest UI for text messageing yet, very nice t9. All other features are pretty much there from previous Sanyo's. (yes it does have a flashlight). Reception top quality as previous Sanyo's and very sturdy operating system.
-On demand updates throughout the day automatically giving you weather, sports and news headlines, with option to have them present on your screensaver.
Cons:
-The main con is the speaker. I use speaker phone a lot (no it is not full duplex). The speaker is softer, ringtones are not as loud and the quality is not as good as previous sanyos listed above. It is still acceptable though. The earpiece is a little clearer but you have to turn it down lower or it has a rattle/hum. Not as loud.
This is my only complaint and I think it is faily easy to overlook as it is still loud enough and definately louder than the a900. Over all the nice compact size make's it a winner.
Best phone to date
Over the last eight years I have owned three different cell phones from three different manufacturers. This has, by far, been the best phone yet. This phone is feature-rich, fairly-rugged, and quite capable. The battery life seems to be excellent, but my other-half reports a dying battery, so YMMV. The only thing I miss, which was standard on Samsung phones, was the phonetic-lookup feature. If you aren't looking for a PDA-phone, this is by far the best model you could choose.
Pros: Reception and sound quality are excellent, the display is bright and vibrant, the buttons are resistant to wear, the bluetooth support is good, WAP support is well above standard, having a "favorites" menu is quite nice, the camera is as good as any other phone camera I've seen, having text messages NOT get stored/erased on interrupt (phone call, incoming text) is wonderful, and the phone comes with more programs built in than I am used to seeing.
Cons: You cannot use MP3s from an SD card as ringtones and you have to program voice-dial yourself (cannot use phonetic lookup ala Samsung phones).
Sanyo SCP-8400
Hello everyone. I have read a couple of the reviews on here, and I agree with most of what everyone is saying. This phone is one of the greatest that Sprint has came out with in some time now. Also it is a horrible thing that the selling life only last the short time that it did. I also think that it was alittle over priced, and def had NO advertisement! That one thing that I disagree with some of the people is about the advanced voice calling. I understand that it may not be an option of the phones, but neither is the support for 4MB micro SD card(Which I think it much more important!). If you really think about it, Sprint offers what is called Voice Command(Press and hold *, just like you would 1 for voice-mail). Having said that, I don't really think that having non-advanced voice dialing is really a con, when there are much bigger things to think of as cons. The phone can't do EVERYTHING! But enough on that subject. I think the one problem that I have with my 8400, maybe 1-2 a month, the screen will go a gray color. Now I'm not just talking about the Main LCD, the sub also will go gray and I won't be able to get any incoming calls and of-course can't make any outgoing calls either. I take the battery out for about 20 secs, and then power back on and everything is up and running like normal.
Perfect "Mom" Phone
I work for sprint...there that's out of the way...so I have had many devices and this phone is terrific!! It's powervision (which is a must for me), it's durable (my adorable 3yr old has a fascination with heaving my fon across the room), it's has an external antenna (great signal strength everywhere so when everyone else's fons have no service mine is kicking high bars), and it's a nice design and color. Even easy menus. But even this amazing fon has one downfall that even drives me (the girl who just wants to text and make fon calls easily) absolutely crazy!!!! I swear I feel like heaving my fon across the room (or just hand to my daughter and let her do it!) everytime almost everytime I am sending a message I hit the stupid end button as opposed to back and panic and hit the stupid thing again. That back button should be moved for my sanity alone.
awesome
This is the best phone I've ever had. I got it yesterday as a replacement for my broken MM-8300. Everything about this phone is awesome. I love the blue one. The microSD card is so useful. I love the media player. This is definately(sp?) the perfect phone.
I definately(sp?) recomend it!
Terrific phone
My first cell phone, absolutely love it. MicroSD is terrific to have, voice quality is great, external speaker is nice and loud for the speaker (nice for mono listening to music too).
Camera is very usable, I have been taking a lot of pictures with it, you can get some very interesting effects with the built in camera.
Examples:
http://www.baublecentral.com/pics/v/max/840A5655.jpg.html
http://www.baublecentral.com/pics/v/max/840A5522.jpg.html
http://www.baublecentral.com/pics/v/max/840A5493.jpg.html
All the pictures on that site were taken with the SCP's camera.
Battery life is very good, charges up in 2 hours.
Incredible screen quality, very well designed user interface.
Love the USB connectivity.
Cannot say enough nice things about this phone.
Only CON: Unable to get 1 GB MicroSD to work, 512 MB works without a problem.
AWESOME PHONE
This phone is awesome. If you dont actually own the phone you shouldnt be commenting/rating the phone. Also dont rate phones based on what you need as an individual. If a phone does not have something you need dont get it. PEACE & LOVE
Pretty satisfied
I picked up this phone in blue/silver, along with a shiny new 2-year Sprint contract, about a month ago for $99. I've always owned super-cheap phones in the past so this one's like a breath of fresh air, especially compared to the mostly awful Moto V265 (all 3 of them) I had before.
Pros:
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* Excellent voice quality
* Very good reception, even in spotty areas
* Loud, clear speakerphone
* Good battery life - lasts a full two days or more under moderate-to-heavy use
* Enough features and multimedia capability to satisfy even the biggest phone-nerds
* Full-featured Bluetooth, thankfully not crippled like in Verizon's offerings
* Great-looking screens both inside and out
* Very durable, survived a few hard drops already
Cons:
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* Keypad basically sucks if you do a lot of text messaging and don't use the predictive input - if you type even remotely fast, the phone seems to "miss" some of your key-presses for no apparent reason so if you don't pay attention you'll have a bunch of misspelled words
* Also related to the texting, many common symbols (such as apostrophe, dash, parenthesis) are buried under the Symbol menu rather than being readily accessible by pressing "1" a few times... pretty annoying
* Camera is pretty lousy in low-light conditions, even set on night mode with the flash enabled
* Low-battery warning is the polar opposite of the one my V265 had, which isn't completely a bad thing (the V265 would beep annoyingly for HOURS and you couldn't silence it) but the 8400's basically shows up when the phone has about 5 minutes worth of life left
* Can't seem to assign sender-specific ringers/alerts for text messaging and the like
* Wish it had a vibrate-then-ring function rather than vibrate, ring, or both at the same time
* Not the best looking phone, although it has grown on me a bit
All in all, I still have to give this phone a 4.5 of 5. Messaging annoyances aside, it's a whole lot of phone for the money.
whats up with sanyo?!
I was very excited when the 8400 came out.. but I must say that I was very disappointed in this phone.
the pros are that it technically has every feature that can be used on sprints network, it has power vision, ready link, music store, sprint tv, and bluetooth.
the cons are
this phone was very buggy. I had 3 different ones and experienced problems with the screen. the screen would just go in and out. it was almost as if the phone had powercycled on its own.
sometimes the time and date would pull up incorrectly when you turned the phone on
the voice tags on this phone are terrible when you try to use it with a bluetooth headset. it only recognizes your voice and you have to repeat the name at the exact same inflection and pitch etc that it is recorded or it can not recongnize it.
the music player only plays mp3 files so if you have wma files etc it wont recognize it
katana vs 8400
Back in June of 2006 i started to look at new phones, because in November i would get a nice credit from Sprint towards a new one.
I didn't want to loose the money i had already spent accories for my old phone, and i was very pleased that Sanyo kept the design the same and the accories i had would still work with the new phone.
When i saw the Katana, i loved the design of the phone, i read a few reviews and over all, it seamed like a good phone. I had made up my mind that was going to be my new phone. All i had to do was wait for November. Thank god the 8400 came out before then!!
A few days before i got the credit for the new phone, i looked again on Sanyo's website and saw the 8400. It had all the features of the Katana, and MORE ! So much more! I loved the fact that i could download mp3's and from my understanding with the Katana, you can't. Also the camera quality was amazeing! I could go on and on about the features, but there are already some good lists on the reviews.
I was worried that the 8400 would be way out of my price range. I was amazed to discover it was the Same Price!!
I went to the Sprint store and asked the sales clerk when comparing the 8400 to the Katana, why anyone would go with the Katana. She said most likely anyone who wanted the Katana wanted a "slim phone" style.
I wanted more for my money, and so i bought the 8400. I couldent be happier. Also, something i hadent thought about before, the slim style of the Katana, if you have kids, isn't as sturdy as the 8400. An added bonus.
I haven't had my phone long ( only a few weeks ) but already my son has dropped it down the stairs onto marble tile, and the phone held up nicely. I worry with the slim design of the Katana, it may have cracked the hinge.
I also love the fact that i can get my weather on my phone in the morning, with out having to boot up the computer.
To sum up. Awesome Phone, Great Price,wonderfull durability!
