Sanyo RL-4920
Average Ratings
Lasted 6 days
I have purchased this phone before 6 days based on the superb reviews. I was thrilled by it at first. The reviews seem to be right. All functions are working perfectly. Till today. Maybe it was malfunctioning slightly before and I didn't notice it at that time because the symptoms are similar like the ones you would get by weak signal. Today all the phone calls are breaking up and echoing. The conversations are unbearable. I can't understand a single sentence/word without exhausting my hearing and my imagination.
Then I found the real problem: It is the speaker phone. The speaker phone is broken. It echos without end. If the other party says "Can you hear me?", the speaker phone on my cell will echo "me me e e e e e e..." till another word is spoken. The voice sounds really scary.
At least my roommate and I had a great laugh testing it out. Tomorrow I am going to exchange it. Yes, I am giving it another chance. I really hope that my current phone is only a rare sample of a good model.
my experience
After reading stellar reviews on this site, I decided to try this phone out. My previous experience has been with Cingular and ATT Wireless. ATT Wireless has probably the best phone selection but easily the worst customer service I've ever experienced. Sprint's customer service is average based on about 4-5 calls into them while I had this phone. The coverage area with this phone compared to a Cingular Nokia 6340i is definitely not as good despite the apparent small advantages on their coverage maps. I liked that the antenna is extendable but in one case, when I showed one bar, the phone didn't ring when my girlfriend sitting beside me dialed me from her Cingular (GSM only) phone which had 3 of 5 bars (east of San Antonio about 50 miles). The battery life is exceptional and the speakerphone speaker is VERY loud. It's not a full duplex speakerphone which makes it difficult for the other party to hear you at times while on the speaker phone and the voice quality is nowhere near as good to the person on the other end as when off speaker phone. Another occasion in north central Ark last week, I was getting either to 1 bars and a buddy there with a Nokia 6340 had 6 of 7 bars. Two other bad things are that if the screen is not lit up, it's nearly impossible to see what's on the screen. When it is lit up, the color screen was fair although that's not of importance to me. The cost of Sprint's plan was also at least $10 more per month for only about 50 more minutes per mo. (I have a grandfathered plan with Cingular which I've gone back to). The phone's silver finish will probably do just like my buddy's Sanyo silver phone where the paint wore off after about 6 mos. of heavy use and exposed the real cheap light yellow plastic underneath. The internet access seemed very good albeit this is the first time I've ever used that capability from a cell phone. If coverage area is key, snag a 6340i from a Cingular store before they run out (it's being discontinued).
