Sanyo SCP-8100
Average Ratings
The BEST Phone I've Ever Seen - For the Price!
I recently decided to leave Verizon and move over to Sprint, with their new Free & Clear America plan. I travel a lot into analog coverage, and this plan won me over big time.
I had my heart set of a Sanyo 4900, with its great reviews and all. But the rep told me to wait a day ot two, since they would be getting in a great new phone, the Sanyo 8100.
I came back on Friday and they had the 8100 in stock, with a working demo. I was truly impressed. The resolution and color on the display was awesome. The features were nice, typical of Sanyo. The camera, although not as nice as the 5300, was still very adequate for my needs. Then the price....$99 after rebates!! I was glad I waited.
After using it all weekend, I've even more impressed! The data cables and software I bought for the 4900 still work on the 8100, so I can access the web from my laptop with no problems.
The battery life was great, and the reception is just plain awesome for Sprint!
The only downside for me was the lack of an alarm clock or stopwatch. I know you can use the calendar and set an alarm there, but that is too much work for a simple alarm need.
This is the best phone I've ever had, and for the price (even at $199 if you are a current Sprint customer), it is a must if you are looking for a new phone!
Get it
Certainly I have the record for most drops. PHONE STILL WORKS AFTER FALLING FROM CARNIVAL RIDE AND BEING SUBMERGED IN SODA .....(don't ask). Anyway the internet has great functionality and the phone is overall. Have had a few random drops (probably sprint's fault not sanyo)
Old favorite
Ive had this phone for 2 yrs now. Its like having a land line. I live in two different parts of my state and I use this as my main number.
Pro: Best reception, tought little guy
Con: Camera is weak, internet is slow
One of the finest phones available
By now this phone should be VERY cheap to get, being completely replaced by the 8200. I sell cell phones for a living and I have to say this is one of the finest from it's era. I've dropped it more times than I can recall and it barely has a scratch. The reception is REMARKABLE, you will barely ever have to pull out the antenna. It's very easy to hear, almost too loud, something Sanyo is pretty well known for. The GUI is very easy to learn and responsive.
The main downsides are the camera, which is very poor by today's standards, and the fact that it doesn't support SMS text messaging natively. Also some extra functionality in the calander would have been nice, but that's being pretty pickey.
Its the Best!!!
I currently owned a samsung a500, but it was breaking on me and it wasnt really what I wanted, even though it looked good. When the sanyo 8100 came out, it was a different story. $100 for a camera phone!?! Thats nuts. I bought it not so long ago and the pictures come out great. Its smaller then the sanyo 5300, but not slimmer and smaller then the samsung a500. Its really a fun phone with an alien screensaver that pops up in your screen. The color is awesome and the speaker is working just fine. If you were to have a choice between the a500 and the 8100, get the sanyo 8100. The sanyo 8100 has a camera, 65,000 somewhat color screen, external color display, 32 polyphonic ringtones, etc... When samsung gets their built in camera phone for sprint, it will blow everyone away. But for now this phone is the best for its price. >>> o yea internet works great >>> good luck
Great phone for a terrific price
I've used the 8100 extensively over the weekend and I'm very impressed.
I need a phone that provides good, reliable signal reception, call clarity, talk and standby time... and I've got all that with the 8100.
Yes, there are cell phone camera combos that take larger images, but even at 640x480, none are of a printable quality, so the smaller image capture of the 8100 is of little importance (to me)... but the camera does take decent snapshots and doesn't seem to suffer for the lack of a "flash". I've taken some images inside and it seems to be able to still turn out a pretty good picture.
At 3.3" long by 1.8"wide by 1.1" deep, this phone is hardly "big" or "bulky".
The 8100 does have a bit of an earpiece "sweet spot" but it takes very little time to "learn" where it is and in very short order, placing the receiver for optimum clarity becomes an subconscious action.
The supplied battery appears to be approximately one quarter of an inch thick... I'm fine with this as well.
Now, is the phone perfect?
Of course not.
There will never be a "perfect cell phone", as every user will have varying needs to be met, but it's faults are few, and minor, when compared to it's performance and value.
I would have preferred rubberized, slightly elevated buttons. My major complaint, if one could call it that, is that the dialpad is very poorly illuminated.
The illumination works fairly well in near/total darkness but it's tough to read the buttons in a moderately lit room. My "work around" for this is to simply turn off the backlit keys and use the screen to illuminate the keys. The screen can double as a flashlight, it's so bright. Or have a techie friend replace the LEDs with more powerful ones and pay the cost in decreased battery life, to a degree, (but Sanyo should take a look at Samsung keypad illumination).
I'm a "tough sale"... and I'm very satisfied with my 8100.
Hope this helps the undecided.
Excellent Phone
I just got this phone yesterday and it is awesome. Pro's are the battery life, the ringer tones are the clearest I've heard(even midi tones are clearer,)display is bright inside, camera is a cool touch too. Con's Display is hard to see in sunlight and the camera needs a flash. Overall the phone is a bargain for $200 at RadioShack. It is smaller than the Sanyo 5300 in size at half the price. Awesome phone highly recommended.
AMAZING PHONE!!!!!!!
I just purchased The Sanyo 8100 and let me be the first to say that this is truly an amazing phone. I previously had the Sanyo 4900 and constantly bragged that how it got the best reception of any other vision phone but the 8100 not only has a built in camera excellent color screen but it gets amazing reception which was my primary concern. On top of all of the great features that come with the phone the best part is that it is half the price of the 5300 thich takes a huge load of my pocket. So if you are looking into getting sprint service this is the phone to start off with.
Ed. note: contact info removed
Sanyo 8100
The phone totally rocks. The screen display is absolutely brilliant and the user interface is pretty easy to handle since I previously owned a 4900. The signal strength is also as it is in a sanyo 4900. I must say I am very pleased with the phone.
User-hostile interface makes for a lousy phone
This is clearly the worst cell phone i've ever owned. I'd prefer to have my old Motorola Startec or Nokia 2170 brick to this horrific beast.
The Camera is cute, but it's low resolution (non-VGA), makes it pretty worthless.
The worst thing about this handset is that it is a lousy phone. The sound quality on both ends SUCKS! The user interface sucks. It takes you at least 6-10 keystrokes and navigating menus and submenus to do anything; and many of the very simple things i want to do aren't even possible. Here are some examples:
*want a simple one tone beep to tell you when you get a voicemail message, forget it. All of the voicemail and txt msging alerts are no shorter then 10 seconds, and it won't shut up until you respond.
*want to have your phone both vibrate and ring softly at the same time, forget it. The vibrator is extremely weak and hard to feel.
*ascending volume for your ringtones? nope
*want to set an alarm clock? well you can set a "call alarm", after going into your calendar and setting a reminder to call yourself, which takes about 5 times as many keystrokes as withdrawing money from an ATM.
*want to use a bodyglove with your phone while looking at the caller ID display to see who's calling? Forget it. As soon as you give the phone a slightest touch it answers the call, even if you don't open the phone fully.
*want to use the back button to delete text messages after viewing their associated pics? Forget about it. It's going to take you no less then 12 keystrokes to delete your text messages after viewing them.
I can rant for many pages about how horrible this phone is. All of the bells and whistles are just smoke and mirrors. Sanyo probably saved money by outsourcing the engineering of this phone to Zimbabwe or something. I find it highly doubtful that any engineer who developed this phone actually used this phone, or that Sanyo did any Q&A for this product of any kind.
