Sanyo Katana DLX Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on August 06, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported E-mail Services (8.0)
We are very pleased to see the Sanyo Katana DLX includes a real e-mail application that allows you to access your downloaded messages and write e-mails even when you are not connected to the network. This is a step above most regular phones that use Web-based e-mail only. The Katana DLX's e-mail program supports standard IMAP4 and POP3 e-mail accounts, as well as popular services like Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and Gmail. Push E-mail (0.0)
The Katana DLX does not support any type of push e-mail services like BlackBerry or Exchange Activesync. This would make it less suitable for a business user who needs to get and respond to email immediately.
Multiple E-mail Accounts (10.0)
We are very pleased to see the Katana DLX's e-mail program supports multiple e-mail accounts, up to the five we test for. You can even check e-mail for multiple accounts from the same service; we set up two different Gmail accounts, for example.
HTML and Attachments (0.0)
The e-mail program does not support HTML e-mail or the viewing of attachments. This is probably too much to ask for in a non smart phone, especially when you consider that even many smart phones don't support HTML e-mail.
E-mail Customizations (0.0)
The Katana DLX's e-mail program does not offer users any e-mail customization options like changing the font used for viewing or composing. In fact, there are no settings whatsoever in the program, and as the saying goes in my family: you get what you get.
Time to a New Message (5.15)
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sanyo Katana DLX | 3.88 | 5.15 |
| Nokia N75 | 7.02 | 2.85 |
| Sprint Upstage | n/a - no email client |
0.0 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | n/a - no email client | 0.0 |
| Sanyo M1 | n/a - no email client | 0.0 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | n/a - no email client | 0.0 |
E-mail Usability (3.0)
The Katana DLX's e-mail program is different from the e-mail programs we find in other phones. To be clear, most built-in e-mail programs are included in smart phones of various varieties. This includes Symbian Series 60 phones like the N75 or BlackBerry devices like the Pearl. These e-mail programs have gone through several years of development and are generally fairly polished pieces of software. The e-mail program on the Katana lacks the polish you see from these platforms. We want to be clear that we wouldn't expect as much polish as we see from these other platforms on the Katana DLX, so any power e-mail users shouldn't expect this phone to replace a BlackBerry.
The Katana DLX's e-mail interface is a little busy and difficult to get around. Basically, every item on the screen can be highlighted, with the directional pad used to get around. The interface is tabbed, but to get to a different tab you will need to move up to it and then select it. The three tabs include an account tab that shows you all existing accounts and lets you manage them; a mailbox tab that shows you the inbox for the currently selected tab and allows you to access other mailboxes for that account; and a contacts tab. When in an accounts inbox you move up and down amongst messages using the directional pad's up/down functions. Hitting select when an e-mail is highlighted will open the message. If you want to switch to a different account you can do so via the accounts tab or select a new account from the drop down menu in the mailbox interface. Overall we found e-mail usability on the Katana DLX to be limited, with too many steps to get to the item you want.
Supported IM Services (0.0)
MMS Support (7.0)
Multimedia messages on the Katana DLX are called Picture Mail, which encompasses messages with pictures and video. MMS has its own folder structure in the messaging menu, separate from regular text messages. This is a shame, we much prefer an integrated messaging inbox such as on the Nokia N75 and other Series 60 devices. We are pleased to see when composing a new message you can choose to take a photo or video as well as choose from existing photos and videos. Integration is also present with the album programs and the camera itself, although for some reason the language "send to contacts" is used, which we found a little confusing. Still, this is a small issue, and overall we found MMS support on the Katana DLX to be good.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Everyone likes smiley faces, and most like to view the smileys as actual graphical representations rather than plain text. We test how well phones handle the graphical interpretation of smileys by sending a test text message with four common smileys to the phone.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (5.0)
Both SMS and MMS messages can be accessed on the Katana DLX via the Messaging menu. As we mentioned above, each has their own inbox and set of folders. When you open the inbox messages are organized chronologically, with no option to sort them differently. Of course, you will need to back out to the Messaging menu to get to MMS messages if you are viewing text messages, or vice versa. In both text and MMS messages the left soft key is assigned to compose a new message. In text messages you can create and manage your folders via the right soft key menu. When creating a message you are first asked for the contact(s) to send the message to. You can select individuals or groups from the phone's contacts, or manually enter phone numbers and/or e-mail addresses. You can send messages to multiple recipients. We found the interface to be pretty standard, with nothing particularly distinctive.
Time to a New SMS Message (10.64)
To test how easy it is to create a new text message we time how long it takes to go from phone closed to a new text message dialogue. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took less than one second to get a new dialogue up with an average of 0.94 seconds. As you can see from the table below, this is faster than any of the phones we are comparing the Katana DLX to. It is helped on this test by the fact that there is a shortcut to a new text message on the home screen and the dialogue comes up almost instantly when this shortcut is activated. We are very pleased with the Katana DLX's performance on this test. | Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Sanyo Katana DLX | 0.94 | 10.64 |
| Nokia N75 | 1.84 | 5.43 |
| Sprint Upstage | 1.70 | 5.88 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 3.28 | 3.05 |
| Sanyo M1 | 2.67 | 3.75 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.61 | 3.83 |
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