Audiovox CDM-8600
Average Ratings
this phone is junk
I personally do not own one, but I work in the wireless industry and personally know several people who do, the phone is not worth the contract term in my opinion
So far, I've seen these things wrong with the phone:
screen craps out
mic. does not work
speakerphone does not work
horrible battery life
outside display broken
when the owner pressed "search" the screen became unreadable
if you want a phone that is small, this is good, as long as you dont use it too much, otherwise think about spending a little money and getting a phone that actually works
AudioVox 8600 Is Not The Phone You Should Consider Buying
I have owned this phone for about 15 months now, and I cannot wait to get a new one in September. This phone is the first and only cell phone I've ever owned, but compared to the cell phones of my family and friends, it is not a good phone.
I can't think of very many Pros to this phone, but I can sure list lots of Cons
Pros: It's small and cute, and has Get It Now and Web capabilities.
Cons: Horrible Service, short battery life, you can't get a tone for receiving a text message, only a short beep. My Antenna broke really easily, and there's a button for speaker phone, but it hasn't worked on my phone since the day I bought it. This phone has nothing special about it,it's just a plain boring phone. There are many other cons to this phone, but I feel the aforementioned were a good indication that this phone is not a good phone to buy. Sure it may be cheap but you get what you pay for.
All in all, I don't believe this is a good phone to buy, espically compared to the quality of other phones. If you want the opinion of someone who has owned this phone for over a year, DONT BUY THIS PHONE.
This phone sucks
Why it sucks:
Buttons small, speakerphone very weak, address book VERY unfriendly to look up names, "Verizon Wireless" logo constantly on front LCD instead of time and date, you can't get rid of "Verizon Wireless" logo on outer LCD or inside screen.
I'm currently looking to buy a cheaper phone until my contract runs out and I can upgrade to a better phone.
CDM- 8600
Ive had this phone for about 6 months and my parents say i cant upgrade it or get a new one because its a pretty good phone.
Because they don't have to use it
Pros: Small
okay signal
Cons: Speaker phone
Phone book navigation
Verizon banner
(u can fix it but as soon as u loose your signal or turn your phone off it comes right back)
Cant see screen in light
have to pay for everything
in messages inbox can hold like 50
and outbox like 30 and u delete it one by one
looking at that circle on the front gets annoying
face plates only for the front and u cant really find them anywhere
Worst phone
This is the worst phone I have ever had.
Pros: nice size, speaker phone is a plus, nice color screen.
Cons- Poor battery life. The phone will be fully charged and i will get a text message and it will knock one bar off the battery. Verizon wireless flashes on outer LCD screen and is extremely annoying. The phone has very poor signal strength in most places. Sometimes it takes me a 5 minutes to make a call because the screen will say calling and calling until it finally connects. Constantly switches from no service to service. The phone gets many drop calls. There is a delayed response when I answer the phone. I usually have to say hello 2 or 3 times before the other person can hear me. The ringer is very low on the phone and has a very low beep when receiving text messages and you cannot change the sound for receiving text messages. The phone has nothing to it..you have to purchase everything on get it now. There is only like 4 wallpapers for the main screen to choose from and they are all horrible. The manual for the phone is horrible...it doesn't explain much about the phone at all.
Conclusion: If you are looking for a phone I wouldn't recommend this phone at all. I have done 3 handset exchanges with verizon and the phone still has the same problems. My contract isn't up for another year and a half and I am purchasing another phone because I can't take this phone.
Overall, great phone with a few negatives.
I upgraded to this phone from a Kyocera 2135 "candy bar" phone from Verizon. Buy one get one free...what a deal! Anyways, Ive been using it for about 2 months now and overall, I'm very satisfied with it. I only have a few issues with the phone but I can overlook most of them.
Pros: small size, one-touch dialing, voice dialing, text messaging capable, bright legible display and keypad, easy to access etiquette mode (silent mode), speakerphone albeit a bit quiet, and good sinal strength.
Cons: battery life is 2-3 days for me compared with 5-6 days with my Kyocera and Nokia, poor phonebook navigation (not very intuitive), but most of all, I can't stand the greeting and farewell animations and the stupid melodies that go with them. So I keep it on ALL the time. No biggie I guess.
There are things that really don't matter to me too and didn't factor in to my buying decision. The 30 polyphonic ringtones while nice, really doesn't matter to me. I just want it to ring with a distinctive ringtone. Who cares if it plays Salsa Marimba or not. But hey, if your into that, it's got plenty of them. It doesn't have games or nice wallpapers (well, it does have a couple silly looking ones) but again, I really couldn't care less. I want it to have a simple and legible display, which it has one, good signal strength, which so far it does and things that make talking/calling easier. I use the alarm feature though it's not the easiest to set but not bad once you get used to it. I may have used the stopwatch a couple times and the calculator is quite handy. I like the secondary display and use the phone as my watch and don't like to have to wait 5 seconds for the time to cycle around. Keeping the phone on ALL the time and enabling AutoNAM helps a lot.
Overall, I'm quite satisfied with this little phone. My wife loves it too. She, like me, doesn't like all the "fluff" that comes with a cell phone these days. We just want it to work well and have basic features & usable extras.
almost as good as the star-tac
I've only had the phone for a couple of days, but already I am enjoying it. The small package reminds me of the old Motorola Vader series, which a good thing. I've been looking for a tri-mode phone in a small package and I believe I've found it. The color screen is not necessary for me, but it's a bonus. Here's my pros and cons:
pros: good call quality, excellent battery life (so far 2 full days with ~60 minutes of talking), speakerphone is nice feature, size of phone, easy navigation, somewhat normal ringers and the ability to have blank wallpaper (not readily available on most color phones)
cons: speakerphone could be louder, rubber nub that protects charging port on bottom of phone is not attached well, so one could lose it, finding a number stored in phonebook can be a time consuming, although not too bad
Overall, nice phone so far.
Brian
the real unoffical review of the audiovox 8600
I joined with Verizon wireless back on October 25 of 2003. Using this phone for over 6 months i have a couple of complaints but not enough for me to hate the phone. The outside caller id at first was a pain but thanks to another user review left by "littleone1" i fixed the outside LCD problem. The problem for those who don't know what it is, is that it would flash the time and verizon wireless banner 5 seconds for each one and it took a while for the time to come on. not a big problem just a pain in the neck. I bought the phone due to the attractive small size color screen and speaker phone. the size is great and the color screen is one of the best on the market, just the speaker phone is not to loud. the user interface is not the most welcoming, and the phonebook is hard to navigate, although after reading other reviews it seems that you cant shortcut to a letter further into the phonebook, which is false. thing that attracted me to the phone was supposedly you can change faceplate's. according to verizon stores and phonescoop, you can, although after 5 months of searching and do not find one. the Battery life on the phone is great. the lighted keypad can be seen in the darkest of places... A major plus. The optional headset jack is great which you don't see on most phones with a speaker. the "stock" wallpapers are all ugly pretty much making you buy one are choose not to have one. the screen is little small but doable. After reading other reviews it seems that the volume of the ringers and during the call are low, which is false again. i think the 8600 has the loudest ringers of any verizon phone. and again after reading other reviews since this is the complete review of pros and cons of the 8600, the user manual really does tell you nothing, its a waste of paper.
Pros: Small,color screen, speakerphone, faceplate, great battery life, loud ringer, headset jack.
Cons: Low Speakerphone, user interface not welcoming, Wallpapers, small screen.
Not the 9500 but close...
After enough Motorola and Nokida units to open my own store, I switched to Verizon and got the Kyocera 2235. Did I miss my Moto! The 2235 was the only phone at the time that could do express network, but I really wanted a flip-style phone back.
Time came for a renewal, and I briefly had the 9500 -- I loved it, and I'd have kept it if VZW didn't ask that I switch (long long story -- they made it worth my while though.) I ended up with the 8600. It's not the 9500, but its close....
Pros:
I'm back to a comfortable flip phone. Bar phones just don't seem to stay off when you want them to.
Battery life is as good as any CDMA phone I've had and far better than the 9500, but, of course, the screen is much smaller.
I like the phonebook navagation better than the 9500 -- it reminds me of the old 61xx series Nokia.
Cons:
Lower volume on the voice and speakerphone than the 9500. Not bad, but I miss the 9500 -- I could use it for confernece calls.
Poor third-party support. Audiovox is no LG.
Notes:
If one needs data, get the Mobile Office Kit from Audiovox, not from Verizon. It's the same price and you get software to synch your phone. It's a lot easier moving entries straight from Outlook than poking them in by hand.
not what I expected
I bought this phone after my two previous phones (both Kyocera) died just out of contract. I was actually looking around at other carriers but decided to stick with Verizon because of the service area. I was attracted to the phone because of its size, color LCD, speakerphone, and calender. The size and LCD are great, the speakerphone is a fun toy, and the calender is nice but the actual phone is not what I was expecting. The first day I noticed huge discrepancies in call quality- one minute the call would be clear, then the next it sounded like the other person was fading out. This happened all the time. Then, this morning, I tried to turn the phone on after charging it and the screen had gotten stuck and I had to take the battery out and put it back in before it would even turn on. It hasn't even been two weeks and I feel like it's falling apart! Also, I can rarely hear the ringer when my phone is in my purse, which is annoying. The phone is cute and all and has some nice things to play with, but for those people out there that are looking for a PHONE and not a toy I wouldn't recommend it. I'm switching phones tomorrow.
