[docbrown88]

Too often phones today are pushed out the door crammed with the latest oh-so-cool features and glam but too little attention given to usability - the day to day experience of using a phone as a primary communication device. So it's refreshing when a phone seems to be obviously designed as a phone first. I believe that was Sprint's intention when it originally contracted Denso to produce the Touchpoint series. It's been a while since the TP 2200, arguably (ok, imo) the best effort put forth by Sprint in terms of usability as a phone. Sized just compact enough, with a large display and great tactile characteristics, it offered some high end features for the time, like speakerphone and good reception! (And let's not forget the record-your-own ringers. Has any phone since had that?). And the interface was tops. Sprint really nailed it with the navigation and feature access.

Does the new Audiovox/Curitel/Sprint VI600 follow in these footsteps? I believe it approaches, but falls short in a few areas.

Form factor:
Very nice. Just compact enough, with the right amount of rounded edges, shape feels natural in the hand. Indeed, it can fit in your pocket without the rather noticeable bulge projected by the venerable Sanyo 4900. However, unless you use keyguard, you probably won't want to shove it in tight spaces. The navigation pad sticks out abnormally far, making it too easy to accidentally press to your phone book, downloads, messages or sign on to Vision. And about those buttons, I like 'em overall. I have somewhat large, long fingers (not meaty) and find the keys very easy to press. Adequate spacing between numbers and varied elevation mean you'll very quickly get the feel for dialing without looking. The hard plastic (not rubbery) is okay, I just wish they didn't "click" for total stealth usage, something the 2200 offered. The front face is (drumroll...) black textured plastic - hooray! Unfortunately they stopped with the front face, and the silver outer/back casing is indeed that cheap scratchable LG-like silver coated plastic. At least there's no case flex. For such a lightweight phone, it seems very rigid.
There's only an up-down rocker button on the side, which may be a good thing if you often press the wrong button accidentally (i.e. Readylink, voice memo). A dedicated voice memo button might have been nice.

But the All-Star brownie points award for this phone, I have to say, goes to the fact it requires only ONE keypress to activate "Etiquette Mode" aka Vibrate. Hallelujah! I believe the Treos are the only other phones currently in Sprint's lineup to offer this technologically advanced feature.

Oh, the keys are the old green backlight, which I must say, I prefer. I know blue is sweet and all, but I find it too bright & distracting at night, when driving for instance. Same goes for the dimmer screen. STN ain't much for photos, but it sure is easier for your eyes to adjust in dark situations compared to TFT.



Interface
In short, very intuitive, with some quirks. Nothing you couldn't get used to, just some stuff that seems like they goofed. For instance, the text entry method option (i.e. Abc, 123, word..) appears on different sides depending if your entering a phonebook entry, sending an SMS, etc. Doh. I'm also not fond of the icon-at-a-time main menu style, a la Kyocera. There doesn't seem to be an option to change it to a text list. The colors and alerts seem a bit to Windows 3.1 to me, wish I could change it. Also the built-in standby clocks could be bigger/more legible.

The programmers took whimsy in some aspects. Gotta love the yellow VW beetle zooming into the sunset when you power down.

And I actually laughed for several minutes listening to some of these ringers. Most are cheezy, some are fun though, like "Disco" or "Funky" with actual voices mixed in singing "rock your body" etc. "Speed Man", a plausible ripoff of the Megaman Nintendo game themesong, lends some dorky dramatic fun. You'll likely want to download your own ringers and wallpaper.

All in all, they got the basics down good, things like entering new numbers is a breeze. Speed dial is pretty easy to figure out.

Other features
-Scheduler/calendar
-A real alarm clock.
-Calculator, but only to 2 decimal points
-A Stopwatch which is very intuitive and handy.
-World clock that looks pretty nice.
-SMS worked like a charm to & from my buddy on AT&T
-The Openwave browser!!!! Like a breath of fresh air after using the Netfront browser on Sanyos for so long. Faster, more reliable, and for reasons I can't explain, my mobile traffic maps look smoother and more legible on this 128x128 pixel screen than on an RL2500 (132x176?) screen.
-Voice dialing works, though it's just the normal kind where you pre-record the name. Not like the advanced VR in Samsungs which is quite amazing to be honest.
-Shame there's no photo caller ID.

Performance
I consider all the above to be worthless if reception isn't up to snuff. With antenna extended, I'd rate this on par with a Sanyo flip. Very good, approaching Sanyo 4900 levels. My house has several weak pockets and the VI600 handles them well, and also has a quick recovery time. With antenna retracted and stuffed in a pocket, reception can degrade considerably (as with most phones), so a belt clip will be a must.

The sound from the earpiece is better, less shrill, than most flips I've used, more warm sounding like the 4900. People on the other side said I sounded fine. Speakerphone seems to work very good for a half-duplex, though I haven't tried it in a truly noisy environment yet (my car).

Battery life has been, unfortunately, paltry. Granted I had a lot of initial usage/play, but it lasted just 24 hours. Hopefully this will be like the sony ericsson issue and this audiovox battery, which may have been sitting for a while, will come back to life after a week. Or else they may need to replace it. Rated at 980 mah, it should be lasting longer than this. Must be something about those phones with separate battery covers.

Conclusion
I rate the phone 8/10. It offers a very well designed form factor and interface which puts usability first, albeit with some quirks which may take getting used to. The reception is solid and the battery life, well that remains to be seen. Value for the money? Eh, I'd say $149 would be a more reasonable price among Sprint's lineup. This phone isn't, after all, crammed with the latest oh-so-cool features and glam