Home > Reviews > Manufacturer > Sanyo Katana DLX Cell Phone Review

Sanyo Katana DLX Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on August 06, 2007 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The Sanyo Katana DLX is an unremarkable handset that provides the usual set of features we see on modern mid-range phones: it can make calls, play music, browse the web and provides organizer functions to help run your life.  But it doesn't really excel at any of these; The 1.3 megapixel camera is unremarkable, the organizer is basic and the phone feels rather cheaply constructed.

We were pleased to see that unlike most phones, the Katana DLX allows you to view downloaded messages even when offline. Most other mid-range phones only offer a web-based email client that can't access your email when the phone is offline, but the Katana DLX would allow you to write a reply to an email on an airplane without getting thrown off. The Katana DLX's gold design is supposed to make it look like a stylish designer fashion phone, but the plastic construction makes it look more like the department store model that it is; adequately made, but without a real designer label. But it does lack the designer price: the Katana DLX is available exclusively from Sprint for a reasonable $129.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract.

The DLX also supports Sprint's Music Store, which allows you to purchase and download music over the cell phone network. Sprint currently charges 99 cents a song, pushing the songs into impulse buy territory; if you hear a new song on the radio you like, you can flip open your handset, buy it and download it to play on your phone.

Sprint also launched the new Katana II at the same time: this similar model is significantly cheaper at $29.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate, but lacks the Micro SD slot and music playback capabilities.

Tour & Design - The Katana DLX's gold paint and flip phone design may seem similar to fashion phones like the Dolce & Gabbana Razr at first glance, but actual wear-and-tear points to less expensive construction.

Audio Quality - The Katana DLX provides average audio quality, with only a little bit of trouble in the audio it sends.

Imaging - The Katana DLX's 1.3 megapixel camera shoots images with decent color, but without much detail.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Katan sDLX's keypad is easy to use for making calls, and provides the basic in-calling and contact management  features that most users will need.

Messaging - The Katana DLX has a true e-mail client that can compose messages off line, rather than depending on Web-based e-mail access.

Organizer - The Katana DLX won't replace a true PDA or Smart Phone, but it does provide the basic features to help organize your life, such as appointments and to-do lists.

Multimedia - Sprint's Music Store and playback software is slow to load, but it does a pretty decent job of managing music and allowing you to buy and download songs straight to the phone.

Software - The Katana DLX has a basic, but adequate software selection, including a web browser and a decent alarm clock. It can't read office documents, though.

Battery Life - The Katana DLX lasted for a decent amount of time in our talk time and music test, but fell a little short in our Web browsing test.

Connectivity - As a CDMA handset the Katana DLX can only be used on Sprint's network, but EVDO connectivity provides high data speeds for Web browsing, e-mail, and song downloads.

Hardware - Despite its plastic construction, we found the Katana DLX's controls were well designed. The QVGA display is a little small but sharp.

Other Features - The Katana DLX lacks GPS or Push To Talk functionality, but can be used as a Bluetooth modem.

Value & Comparisons - The Katana DLX compares well to most handsets in its range, and often at a lower price point.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
The front of the Katana DLX is dominated by reflective gold plastic. In the middle of the front is a small 1-inch display. Above and below the display are the Sprint and Sanyo logos, respectively. Above the Sprint logo is an LED indicator and the lens for the 1.3 megapixel camera.

Front Open
When the Katana DLX is opened the top of the phone is taken up by a 2-inch QVGA (240 x 320) display. Above the display is the Sanyo logo and above this is the speaker for the phone. Below the display is the Sprint logo. The lower part of the phone houses the control keys and keypad.

Left
The left side of the Katana DLX houses the volume rocker keys on the upper part of the flip and the data port on the lower part of the flip. The data port is protected by a rubber cover attached to the body of the phone. near the bottom of the left side is the lanyard loop.

Top
The top of the phone is devoid of any features except the hinge.

Bottom
There are no features on the bottom of the Katana DLX.

Right
The right side of the Katana DLX has a shortcut key for the camera on the upper part of the flip. On the lower part are two ports; the 2.5mm headset port and MicroSD slot. Both are protected with rubber covers attached to the body.

Back
The back of the phone houses a loudspeaker near the top and the plug for external antennas just below and to the right of it. The bottom half houses the battery, with a switch at the bottom to release it.

Battery Out
The Katana's 920 mAh battery comes out all in one piece, with no separate cover. When the battery is removed you see the FCC ID and other assorted bar codes. Because the Katana DLX is a CDMA phone there is no SIM card slot.

In the Box (2.0)
The Katana DLX doesn't ship with many accessories. In addition to the manuals there is a 128MB MicroSD card with adaptor and the charger. We have to say this doesn't seem very "deluxe" to us. We appreciate the memory card but wish headphones and a USB cable had been included as well.

Handling (5.0)
The Sanyo Katana DLX  fits comfortably into your hand when closed. The plastic is a little slick but there are enough protuberances and grippable items that you probably won't drop it. When you open the handset there is an uncomfortable "hump" at the hinge, somewhat similar to the Sanyo M1's hinge. The phone isn't too heavy at 3.5 ounces, so there are no worries about holding it up to your head for extended periods of time. Frankly, the Katana is just your run-of-the-mill flip phone in terms of handling.

Portability (7.5)
The Katana measures 3.7 x 1.9 x 0.6-inches when closed. It's a little smaller than the new LG Chocolate when closed, but also a little fatter. Still, it should fit comfortably into most pockets or bags, and its relatively light weight means you won't be weighed down.

Aesthetics (6.5)
Sanyo is definitely going for a "hot" look with the Katana's gold finish. Unfortunately, when you hold the phone in your hand the plastic construction becomes obvious. We hesitate to call it tacky (for that to happen Paris Hilton would have to carry it), but let's say it loses some of its luster. To be fair, the Katana DLX is definitely a nicer looking phone than the Sanyo M1, but falls short of the aesthetics of the Razr or Chocolate.

Durability (5.0)
As with any flip phone, we have concerns about the durability of the Katana DLX's hinge. We did not notice any major creaks, however, and it seems to be a well put together handset. We are concerned about the gold paint that covers the phone, as it seems like it may scratch off easily.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

The most important feature of any phone is the ability to make calls. To test the quality of calls made by the Katana DLX we use the same professional testing equipment many manufacturers use; a HATS (Head and Torso Simulator) that simulates the human head and ear, and an electro-acoustic analysis program called SoundCheck. This allows us to analyze the performance of phones in depth, analyzing the quality of the sound the phone sends and receives. For more details on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (5.46)
This test measures the frequency response for sound the phone receives . The graph above shows the phone's frequency response  (the blue line), with low frequencies on the left and high at the right. The red lines show the margins of the standards against which we test. Ideally the phone's frequency response would fall within these margins. As you can see the Katana DLX does not accomplish this, falling off too quickly at lower frequencies and peaking too high at the low- to mid-range of frequencies. In practical terms this means you won't hear much of the bass part of voice, and the mid range will be overly exaggerated, which may make some voices a little hard to understand. As you can see from the table below, the Katana DLX performed worse on this test than any of our comparison phones except the Sanyo M1.

Cell Phone	Sanyo Katana DLX (On Sprint)	Nokia N75 (on Cingular)	Sprint Upstage (on Sprint)
Score	5.46	8.73	8.34
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Motorola Krzr K1m (on Sprint)	Sanyo M1 (on Sprint)	LG Chocolate VX8550 (on Verizon)
Score	7.71	4.76	8.27
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (7.80)
The Katana DLX performed much better in this test, which measures the frequency response of sound sent from the phone, such as you talking into it. Unlike the sound receive test, in this case the Katana DLX's frequency response curve (blue line) generally stayed within our limits (red lines). It did fall off a bit sharply at the high end of the frequency curve, and in the low- to mid-range it was closer to the limits than we would have liked, but these are minor deviations. Your voice will generally sound natural and easy to understand to those on the other end of the call, although it may sound slightly clipped if you have a particularly high pitched, squeaky voice. So it's probably best to lay off the helium.

Cell Phone	Sanyo Katana DLX	Nokia N75(on CARRIER)	Sprint Upstage(on CARRIER)
Score	7.80	7.57	7.36
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Motorola Krzr K1m(on CARRIER)	Sanyo M1(on CARRIER)	LG Chocolate VX8550(on CARRIER)
Score	7.36	8.40	8.06
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (7.77)
Cell phone handsets inject a small amount of your captured voice back into the speaker so you can judge how loud your voice is; this is called Side Tone. This test measures how much of your own voice phone passes back. We measured the Katana DLX's side tone at -20.23 decibels. This is a bit below our ideal of -18 decibels, but not enough to pose a problem. You will generally be able to tell if you are speaking too loudly. As you can see from the table below, the Katana DLX did better on this test than any comparison phone except the Chocolate VX8550.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	-20.23	7.77
Nokia N75	-14.85	6.85
Sprint Upstage	-21.9	6.1
Motorola Krzr K1m	-21.1	6.9
Sanyo M1	-22.62	5.38
LG Chocolate VX8550	-17.85	9.85

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (0.45)
To test resolution we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run the photos through the Imatest software. Imatest produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), a measure of how many alternating white and black lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.
The Katana DLX scored 316.6 lw/ph horizontal and 249.4 lw/ph vertical. This is a poor score, even for a 1.3 megapixel camera. As you can see from the table below, just about every one of our comparison phones performed better than the Katana DLX, including the Chocolate XV8550, Sprint Upstage, and Krzr K1m, all of which also have 1.3 megapixel cameras. We score resolution slightly differently than our sister site Digital Camera Info because cameras on phones are much worse on average than stand alone cameras. If Digital Camera Info had scored the Katana DLX it would have an even more dismal resolution score of 0.13.

Cell Phone	Sanyo Katana DLX	Nokia N75	Sprint Upstage
Score	0.45	1.14	2.05
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	316.6 / 249.4	505.9 / 698.8	678.9 / 547.1
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Motorola Krzr K1m	Sanyo M1	LG Chocolate VX8550
Score	0.62	3.29	1.69
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	386.6 / 454.2	859.9 / 773.4	616.8 / 569.5
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (6.54)
To test how well the Katana DLX's camera reproduced colors we took a series of photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. We run these photos through the Imatest software, which compares the captured colors with the chart's original colors.
Imatest produces two charts. The one above shows the original colors in the small rectangles, the colors captured by the Katana DLX in the outer square and corrected colors in the inner square. The second chart Imatest produces is displayed below. On this chart ideal colors are indicated by a square, while the camera's captured colors are indicated by a circle. The longer the line between the two, the more inaccurate the phone's captured colors.
As you can see, the Katana DLX did a solid job of reproducing colors, with only a small amount of drift in most colors. It had the most trouble with yellows, which may indicate a white balance issue. The comparison chart below shows the Katana DLX is one of the better phones we've reviewed with regard to color fidelity. We were very happy with the Katana DLX's color capture.

Cell Phone	Sanyo Katana DLX	Nokia N75	Sprint Upstage
Score	6.54	3.47	3.85
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Motorola Krzr K1m	Sanyo M1	LG Chocolate VX8550
Score	3.59	5.66	4.69
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.83)
To test noise we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels, ranging from 60 lux (equivalent to a darkened room with just a single candle) to 3000 lux (a bright, sunny day). We run the resulting photos through Imatest and judge noise at each lighting level. Unfortunately the Katana DLX did not perform well in our noise test, producing higher than average noise at each lighting level and exhibiting a great deal of variance across lighting levels. Because our noise score not only judges total noise but also variance, the Katana DLX's overall score is very poor, although you'll see in the table below that several of our comparison phones also put up poor scores in this test; we gneerally don't expect cell phone cameras to do well in this test.

Cell Phone	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	0.83
Nokia N75	0.41
Sprint Upstage	1.45
Motorola Krzr K1m	0.76
Sanyo M1	0.67
LG Chocolate VX8550	1.27

Live Preview (6.0)
The Katana DLX's live preview takes advantage of the entire screen, which we appreciate. While the color reproduction provided by the screen is slightly washed out, it is an accurate reproduction of the final photo. The preview did not display artifacts or pixellation, however it did give us some trouble when moving the handset to pan across a scene, as the image quickly became flickery and hard to see. We felt the Katana DLX's live preview was better than the Samsung Upstage or Krzr K1m, but its issues with color reproduction make it just a bit worse than the Sanyo M1's live preview.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.45)
To test how quickly we can go from phone closed to taking a photo we time how long this process takes repeatedly until we get a consistently reproducible result. The Sanyo Katana DLX took 3.1 seconds to take a photo from phone closed. This isn't a particularly good time. You can see from the table below that the Sprint Upstage, Krzr K1m, and Chocolate XV8550 were faster than the Katana DLX. The Sanyo M1's poor score is the result of an auto focus lens, which takes longer to take a photo as it takes time to focus the frame. The Nokia N75 doesn't have an auto focus lens; it's just slow.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.10	6.45
Nokia N75	4.70	4.26
Sprint Upstage	2.70	7.41
Motorola Krzr K1m	2.50	8.00
Sanyo M1	4.90	4.08
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.36	8.47

Shot to Shot Time (6.3)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos with the camera. When possible we attempt to use Burst mode for this test. The Katana DLX does have a Burst mode, but like many cell phones with such modes, you should note the resolution of the resulting photos plummets. In the Katana DLX's case it goes all the way down to 320 x 240. Using the Burst mode on the Katana, which we set to fast, we were able to capture six photos in 2.8 seconds. This works out to 2.1 frames per seconds (fps), a good score. We must emphasize again, though, that photos captured like this are such low resolution they won't be useful for anything except MMS or showing off on your phone. When we captured six photos in a row manually at full resolution the Katana DLX plummeted to .2 fps.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	2.10	6.30
Nokia N75	0.43	1.29
Sprint Upstage	0.20	0.60
Motorola Krzr K1m	0.23	0.69
Sanyo M1	2.00	6.00
LG Chocolate VX8550	0.38	1.14

Shutter to Shot Time (5.26)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes to actually capture a photo once you have depressed the shutter button. We repeat this test until we get the lowest consistently repeatable time. The Katana DLX's shutter to shot time was .38 seconds. This is an average time, albeit a bit slower than the Chocolate XV8550, but much faster than the Nokia N75's terrible time. The Sanyo M1 also did poorly on this test, but like the standby to first shot time it is significantly slowed down by its auto focus lens.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	0.38	5.26
Nokia N75	0.73	2.74
Sprint Upstage	0.30	6.67
Motorola Krzr K1m	0.40	5.00
Sanyo M1	0.80	2.50
LG Chocolate VX8550	0.22	9.09

Interface (7.5)
The Katana DLX's camera interface is clean and well organized. As we've already mentioned, the entire screen is used as a viewfinder, with icons indicating the status of various settings superimposed and transparent. The left soft key is assigned to capture a photo, although we would have preferred another function since the center select key on the directional pad does the same thing. The right soft key opens the menu, where you have a rather extensive range of options. We found the menu system to be a little arcane, with sub menus containing items that weren't very intuitive. For example, you wouldn't normally expect Burst mode to be in a menu under "Fun Tools". We were happy to see there are hardware shortcuts. Up/down on the D-Pad turns the various on-screen indicators on/off, while left/right controls zoom. The key for 3 opens user settings, 7 sharpness, 8 contrast, 9 white balance, and # brightness settings. We appreciate quick access to these settings. We like the user interface of the Sanyo M1, and the Katana DLX's interface is similarly good. Our only real issues are the rather extensive and unintuitive menu options.

Photo Album Software Internal (4.0)
The photo album software on the Katana DLX is pretty basic. When you open the "My Albums" feature in the Pictures menu you are given the choice of viewing photos/videos on the phone, on your memory card, or in your online albums. Once you have selected a location you are shown a 3 x 3 grid of thumbnails of both videos and photos. We found the rendering of the thumbnails to be a little slow.

Each thumbnail has a small box in the bottom left corner, and highlighting an item and pressing the center select button on the D-Pad will put a check in the box. This allows you to easily select multiple items to move or delete, however it may be a little unintuitive to those who expect the center select key to open an item. The left soft key is assigned to "expand", which actually opens the currently selected item. The right soft key opens a menu where you can access various commands to move, copy, delete, send, and otherwise manipulate the files.

Once you have a photo opened it will be shown in the center of the screen with interface commands filling the top third and bottom quarter of the screen. Pressing up/down on the D-Pad will allow you to view the item full screen. Left/right will move to the previous or next photo. The left soft key will take you back to the thumbnail view, while the right soft key again opens a menu that gives access to various functions. One item we found was the ability to send a photo directly to a Bluetooth printer.

The slideshow will show you items in full screen, with new items appearing after a few seconds. There are no transitional effects or music, and no options available to control the slideshow. Overall we found the album software on the Katana to be fairly simple to use but without a lot of advanced features, especially in the slideshow.

Manual Control (4.0)
The Katana DLX has a decent selection of manual controls, including manual white balance and various Scene modes. You can also manually control sharpness and contrast, however we don't award points for these as they are not very useful on a low resolution camera phone. More advanced manual controls like Shutter Priority mode are not available.

Zoom (1.0)
The Katana DLX includes a digital zoom that is thankfully available at the highest resolution level. The zoom can be easily accessed by using left/right on the directional pad. There are 12 steps of zoom available, and we judge it to be about 2x or 3x at maximum zoom. As always, we are not very impressed by digital zooms that only crop and enlarge what you are seeing, but at least you can use it at the maximum resolution, unlike the Chocolate XV8550.

Focus (0.0)
The Katana DLX is a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. Some phones nowadays, such as the Sanyo M1, are including auto focus lenses, which produce better photos but slow down your capture speed.

Flash (0.0)
The Katana DLX does not have a flash.

Metering (2.0)
The Katana DLX does not include any metering controls, however it does include manual brightness settings. True metering controls allow you to control from which point or points light in the scene is judged.

White Balance (2.0)
The Katana DLX has four presets available for white balance, including Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Flourescent. You can also set white balance to Automatic. As we mentioned in the manual controls section manual white balance controls are also available.

Image Handling (3.0)
The image handling options available on the Katana DLX are not very extensive. You can add a caption to a photo, and we are very happy to see that you can resize photos, but that's it. More advanced features found on smart phones like the Nokia N75, such as Red-eye correction, cropping images, and contrast correction, are not available on the Katana DLX.

Video

Overall Video Score (1.0)
The video captured by the Katana DLX is not very high quality. In our sample video we saw serious pixellation, washed out colors, and very little detail captured. Given the maximum resolution of 176 x 144 this is not surprising, but it's poor even for this low resolution. The quality isn't a patch on the very good video captured by the Nokia N75. The video capture is barely MMS worthy, and we feel sorry for anyone who wants to watch the video on a computer screen, much less a television.

Video Resolution (3.63)
To test video resolution we take a video of the same resolution chart we use for still photos. We then pull frames from this video and run them through the Imatest software, which produces the same line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score we got for still resolution. The Katana DLX scored 200.5 lw/ph horizontal and 181.2 lw/ph vertical. This is a low score, but not terrible. It's better than the terrible score put up by the Sprint Upstage, and slightly better than the Krzr K1m, but as we mentioned above it's nowhere near as good as the Nokia N75 or the Sanyo M1.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	200.5 / 181.2	3.63
Nokia N75	315 / 348.1	10.97
Sprint Upstage	77.1 / 109.5	0.84
Motorola Krzr K1m	234.7 / 101.3	2.38
Sanyo M1	247.5 / 297.7	7.37
LG Chocolate VX8550	218.3 / 200.8	4.38

Video Compression (2.0)
The Katana DLX only captures video in a single format, 3GP. We would normally wish for more formats, but given that the quality of video captures isn't very good anyways we don't think people would need or want additional formats on the Katana DLX.

Interface (0.0)
The video capture interface on the Katana DLX is different from the still camera in that it doesn't use the whole screen as a viewfinder. Instead the viewfinder only takes up the center of the screen, with indicators above and below it. Even this small area is bigger than the actual video captures, and by using up/down on the directional pad you can toggle between using the larger view or viewing only the smaller capture window. There is a zoom available that can be accessed by using left/right, just as on the still camera interface.

The left soft key is assigned to record, while the right soft key opens a menu to access various options. As with the still camera we found the assignment of record to the left soft key to be redundant, as the center key of the directional pad fulfills the same function. We were also happy to see keypad shortcuts, with 3 opening user settings, 8 contrast, 9 white balance, and # brightness. We didn't like the camcorder interface as much as the camera interface due to the more constrained viewfinder, but otherwise it's very similar.

Manual Control (2.0)
As with the still camera you have access to manual white balance, but that's about it.

Zoom (1.0)
The Katana DLX's video camera has a digital zoom that's of limited utility given the low resolution videos it captures.

Editing (0.0)
The Katana DLX does not offer any video editing features.

Modes (2.0)
The Katana DLX has a few Scene modes available for video capture, but we were disappointed to see no specific capture settings for MMS or e-mail.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (5.32)
To test how easy it is to make calls on the Katana DLX we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have dialed each of five different phone numbers and hit the send key. We take the average time for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 3.76 seconds to dial a number. This is a solid time, better than than the Sanyo M1 or Krzr K1m. It is a little slower than the Nokia N75 or Sprint Upstage, however. We found the buttons on the Katana to be fairly comfortable to use, and the send key was comfortably placed just above and to the left of the number keys. Buttons that are pressed play a musical tone, moving up the "C" scale starting at 1. Some may find this annoying, which is why we're happy you can turn them off in the sound settings.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	3.76	5.32
Nokia N75	3.34	5.99
Sprint Upstage	3.38	5.92
Motorola Krzr K1m	4.40	4.55
Sanyo M1	4.28	4.67
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.96	6.76

Talk and End Buttons (5.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Katana DLX are located just above the keypad flanking a dedicated speaker button. Unlike other phones, the buttons are the same size as the number keys, which makes them a little more difficult to find by feel. They are well delineated from the surrounding buttons, however, and they feel slightly different than the number keys, which also helps. When pressed the buttons don't provide much play or tactile feedback, but do play a musical tone like the number keys. We found the keys to be a little too squishy for our taste, and we would have liked them to be more differentiated from the number keys, as well.

Call Management (5.0)
The Katana DLX's call management features are solid. From the home screen you can immediately go to a list of recent calls by hitting the send button. You can find a more complete call history by going into the main menu and selecting call history. Here you can view missed, incoming, or outgoing calls, as well as all recent calls. You can also erase your call history here. When viewing a list of calls you can choose to call the number back, send a message to the number, or save it to your contacts. Each item includes the time and date of the call and phone number. There is no information about call duration. Unfortunately, there were no data counters available.

During a call the left soft key is assigned to the mute function. The right soft key opens a menu where you can access functions like three-way calling, speaker, and various phone functions like call history and contacts. You can also activate the speaker at any time by using the dedicated speaker button between the send and end keys. The current phone number is listed at the bottom of the screen, while at the top is a timer showing how long the call has lasted. There was no way to record a call, but apart from this all the standard features are present.

Startup to Call (4.12)
To find out how quickly you can get your phone going and make a call we turn the handset off completely and time how long it takes for it to start up and dial a number. We use the same five phone numbers as we did for our dialing test and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 24.26 seconds to complete this process. This is an above average score, about the same as the Sanyo M1's 24.36 second time and significantly better than the Nokia N75 and Krzr K1m.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	24.26	4.12
Nokia N75	40.56	2.47
Sprint Upstage	28.90	3.46
Motorola Krzr K1m	32.72	3.06
Sanyo M1	24.36	4.11
LG Chocolate VX8550	22.37	4.47

Ring Volume (8.57)
To test ring volume we set the phone's volume to maximum and then find the loudest ringtone available. We measure the volume using a sound pressure meter from about four inches away. The Katana DLX's ring volume measured 85.8 decibels in our test. This is about average, with most phones ranging from 80 to 90 decibels, as you can see from the chart below.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	85.7	8.57
Nokia N75	85.3	8.53
Sprint Upstage	81	8.10
Motorola Krzr K1m	88	8.80
Sanyo M1	85.2	8.52
LG Chocolate VX8550	85.4	8.54

Ringtone Customizability (5.0)
Unfortunately, the Sanyo Katana DLX does not allow you to use your own music files as ringtones. It also does not allow you to use voice recordings as ringtones or edit ringtones on the device.

Non-Audio Alerts (10.0)
The Katana DLX's vibrate alert is pretty strong; you will easily feel it in your pants pocket and may even be able to feel it in a jacket pocket. When a call comes in the external screen lights up with a red background showing you the incoming number, and the LED light flashes. These are solid non-audio alerts, certainly better than the Sprint Upstage's or Krzr K1m's terrible vibrate alerts.

[page title="Messaging"]

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)
To test how easy it is to create a new e-mail message we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have a new message dialogue on screen. We repeat this test five times and take the average time for our score. The Katana took an average of 3.88 seconds to get to a new e-mail dialogue. The only comparison phone we chose to compare to the Katana DLX is the Nokia N75, which took significantly longer at 7.02 seconds. The Katana is significantly helped in this test by the fact that e-mail is included in the favorites menu you can access via the left soft key on the home screen. This meant we did not need to drill down through the applications menu to get the e-mail application open.

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)
As with most other Sprint phones the Katana DLX supports instant messaging via AIM, MSN, or Yahoo messengers. Unfortunately, just like other Sprint phones, the instant messaging services charge you for a text message for each message sent or received, which cna get very expensive very quickly if you are a serious messenger. As such, we do not award points for them.

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

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The Katana DLX does not support synchronization of PIM information between your PC and phone; there is no way to copy your list of phone numbers from one to the other.

Alerts (6.0)
The Katana DLX only allows you to create alerts for calendar appointments. When an alert goes off you see the title on the exterior display. Hitting any of the exterior keys will put the appointment into Snooze mode, where it will sound again in 10 minutes. We are pleased to see you can change the default snooze interval to five, 15, or 20 minutes, but we would prefer the ability to choose how long we want to snooze the item for when it goes off. We're also happy you can set an alert to go off at any time before the appointment goes off, which is better than phones that force you to choose from presets. You can also choose an individual sound for each appointment you create. We found the flexibility of alerts on the Katana DLX to be a step above most regular phones.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Katana does not support synchronization of PIM information over the air out of the box. Sprint does offer a service that will synchronize your contacts to an online service for a fee, however this is not the same as phones that support Exchange integration, where changes made on your device are automatically synchronized with your computer.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (4.28)
To test how easy it is to add contacts to the Katana DLX we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have added a contact name and phone number. We repeat this for five different test contacts and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 23.36 seconds to add a new contact. This is about average for a regular phone that lacks a QWERTY keypad. As you can see from the table below, it is just a smidge slower than most of the comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	23.36	4.28
Nokia N75	22.84	4.38
Sprint Upstage	21.30	4.69
Motorola Krzr K1m	21.74	4.60
Sanyo M1	20.60	4.85
LG Chocolate VX8550	20.50	4.88

Looking/Sorting/Search (2.5)
Contacts on the Katana DLX are automatically sorted by first name. You can filter your contacts by group, seeing all the contacts in each group or all unassigned contacts. The only way to search through your contacts is by using multi-tap. Predictive text search is not supported. We were pleased that you can search by first or last name, starting with the first letter of each name. You cannot search for portions of a name, for example someone with the name Jackson wouldn't come up if you searched for "cks". The sorting and search functions in the Katana DLX's address book are pretty run of the mill, with nothing too impressive to speak of.

Fields (3.2)
When you create a new contact on the Katana DLX you can fill in any of nine fields. You can add up to seven different phone numbers or two e-mail address, as well as name, group, ringer, and address. There is also a note field, where you can add whatever information you want, and an option to add a photo to the contact. The selections are pretty solid for a regular phone, however they're not a patch on the dozens of fields that smart phones like the Nokia N75 can hold.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (4.67)
The Katana DLX can set up to eight different speed dials, one for each number except 1. You can also record a voice tag to each contact, allowing you to use the phone's voice dialing feature with that contact. Recording a voice tag for each contact can get a little annoying, especially if you have hundreds of contacts, but it's also more accurate than most voice command features we've seen. The Katana DLX does not include a speaker independent voice command feature anyhow, so in this case it's voice tags or nothing.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (6.57)
To test how easy it is to add calendar items to the Katana DLX we time how long it takes to go from phone closed until we have added a test lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder 15 minutes before. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 15.22 seconds to add our sample calendar item. This is a solid time, about the same as the Sanyo M1 and faster than the Nokia N75 or Sprint Upstage. It is slower than the Krzr K1m or LG Chocolate VX8550, however. We found the Katana was relatively fast despite the fact we had to change the start time and reminder time manually. Using the keypad shortcuts for launching the calendar application helped us speed things up a bit.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	15.22	6.57
Nokia N75	19.20	5.21
Sprint Upstage	26.46	3.78
Motorola Krzr K1m	9.58	10.44
Sanyo M1	16.00	6.25
LG Chocolate VX8550	6.48	15.43

Calendar Views (4.3)
The Katana DLX provides four different calendar views. The default is the monthly view, which shows you the current month. You move amongst days using the directional pad. The current day is outlined by a box and any day that has an appointment is indicated by a small arrow. When you are highlighting a day with an appointment a list of that day's appointments appears at the bottom of the screen.
The weekly view shows a grid with the seven days of the week along the top and hours along the left. Appointments are shown in the block of time at which they are scheduled. Only five hours at a time are shown, so you will need to scroll up or down to view hours outside the current view. When you have highlighted an appointment, or portion of an appointment, details for it are shown at the bottom.
The daily view is a simple list of appointments for that day. The first item is a shortcut to create a new appointment. You move up or down the list using up/down on the directional pad, while left/right move you to the previous or following day. You can get to the daily view by selecting any day in the monthly view; you can't get there from the weekly view, which seems a little strange to us.
In any view you can choose the left soft key and select schedule list to get an agenda-like view that lists all appointments in chronological order. This view is very similar to the daily view, only it isn't limited to that day's appointments. This is one of three views provided for the different types of items you can create in the calendar. Moving left/right on the directional pad will allow you to view the other two lists: call alarms and to-dos.

We find the calendar views on the Katana DLX to be fairly good for a regular phone. We're a little annoyed there's no way to switch to the daily view from the weekly view, however. We also found the information provided by the "tips" at the bottom of the screen in the weekly and monthly views are very limited, with only the time and title of the appointment. Smart phones will provide indicators for things like recurrence or reminders. Still, some phones don't even offer this little bit of information, so we're glad to have it. We do, however, find it unfortunate there's no way to filter your view by categories, even though you can assign categories to appointments.

Fields (7.5)
When you create a new calendar appointment on the Katana DLX up to nine fields can be filled in. These include standard items like title, start, and end times, but we were very happy to see more advanced fields like recurrence, priority, and category. You cannot set all-day events or notes, but the presence of any advanced fields is a step above most phones. Recurrence can be set to one of four different preset patterns: Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly. We would have liked the option to have weekdays and weekends, as well. Categories aren't as flexible as you would like, as you have to choose from seven presets with no way to add your own. Still, despite these issues we find the fields on the Katana to be useful.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (5.57)
We are very pleased to see the Katana DLX supported the creation of tasks. This is a feature missing from many handsets, including the LG Chocolate XV8550 and Motorola Krzr K1m. To test how easy it is to add tasks to the Katana DLX we timed how long it took to go from phone closed to setting a task reminding us to pick up groceries. We repeat this five times and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 17.96 seconds to add a new task. This is an average time, just about the same as the Sanyo M1, which has a similar interface, and faster than the Sprint Upstage. It was just slightly slower than the Nokia N75. As with adding calendar appointments, we made great use of keypad shortcuts to speed up our time.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	17.96	5.57
Nokia N75	14.36	6.96
Sprint Upstage	28.28	3.54
Motorola Krzr K1m	n/a - no tasks program	0.0
Sanyo M1	18.00	5.56
LG Chocolate VX8550	n/a - no tasks program	0.0

To Do/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
Just like the Sanyo M1, the Katana DLX does not have a separate tasks program. Instead you can create to-dos in the calendar program. The to-dos are listed on dates they are active along with any calendar appointments. There is a separate To Do list view which organizes tasks chronologically by due date. You can filter this view by category and you can prioritize tasks, although you cannot organize them by priority.

Fields (5.0)
When you create a new task on the Katana DLX you only have a few basic fields available. In addition to title and due date you can assign the task one of the same preset categories available for calendar appointments. You can also set the tasks priority and status. Some smart phones provide you with more advanced fields like recurrence, notes, and the ability to set a reminder for tasks, all of which the Katana DLX lacks. For a regular phone, though, the fields are sufficient.

Notes

Adding Notes (0.0)
Just like the Sanyo M1, the Katana DLX does not have any type of text notes application. We wish Sanyo had taken the opportunity to develop such an application for its phones in the time since the M1 was released. The lack of such an application leads us to give it a zero for several of these scores.

Note Interface (0.0)
No notes application.

Note Formatting (0.0)
No notes application.

Voice Memo (6.0)
The Katana DLX supports voice memos. The only limitation on how long voice memos can be is the amount of storage available on the device. You can save voice memos to either the phone's internal memory or to a Micro SD card. None of the buttons will launch the voice memo application automatically, however if you hit the shortcut key on the side you will get a short list of multimedia applications, of which Voice Memo is third. Using this shortcut we were able to create a voice memo fairly quickly.

When in the voice memo application you can choose to record a voice memo, see a list of existing voice memos, or record a phone call using the screen call feature. This last option is not often found on phones, and we're very happy to see it. When viewing a list of voice memos you are given a good selection of options. The left soft key plays the selected item, while the right soft key opens a menu. From the menu you can choose to edit the voice memo's title, send it via Bluetooth, delete it, resort the notes, or filter them by type. We're very happy with the range of functionality available in the Katana DLX's voice memo application.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (0.0)
To test how easy it is to get music playing on the Katana DLX we timed how long it takes to go from phone closed to playing a song. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The Katana DLX took an average of 11.86 seconds to get a song playing. This is not a good time, and is related to the use of Sprint's music software, which takes a long time to load. We opened the phone and used the Music shortcut on the home screen to access the music software. You can also get a song playing without opening the phone by using the exterior shortcut and volume keys, however this method took a second or two longer than opening the phone.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Sanyo Katana DLX	11.86	1.69
Nokia N75	4.04	4.95
Sprint Upstage	6.54	3.06
Motorola Krzr K1m	9.94	2.01
Sanyo M1	5.50	3.64
LG Chocolate VX8550	2.04	9.80

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
When the Katana DLX is closed and playing music only two buttons control music playback. The shortcut key on the right side of the phone acts as a play/pause button while the volume keys on the left side of the phone control the volume (of course).

Music Software Functionality and Organization (4.6)
The Katana DLX uses Sprint's standard music software, which is used to access Sprint's music store as well as play back music. When the software is launched you are taken to the music store. You will notice there are two tabs, one for the store and another for the player. Left/right on the directional pad will easily switch between the two. Once you are in the player view you have two options. You can view all of your music or you can create a playlist. If you have playlists loaded on the device they will show up. We're pleased to see support for standard .pls playlists.

Sprint's music software recognized the tags for our MP3 and AAC test files. You can view your music by title, artist, or genre, with three tabs along the top when you choose to view all your music or a playlist. Album art is displayed during playback, however there were no visualizations or rating capabilities. All compatible music files that are located on the "music" folder on your MicroSD card are automatically added to the music player, however it does not search your device or memory card for additional compatible files. There is no equalizer, nor can you play music in the background while you access other phone functions.

As always, we found Sprint's music software provides decent basic functionality, but isn't as good as the music player found on Series 60 phones like the Nokia N75 or even the LG Chocolate XV8550. Both these phone's music players support advanced features like searchable music and equalizers, which the Katana DLX lacks.

Online Song Downloading (8.0)
The Katana DLX supports Sprint's Music Store. We like the store a lot better since Sprint decided to drop it's prices to a more reasonable 99 cents per song (from $2.49 previously). As we've mentioned before the Sprint music software is slow to load up, but fairly quick once it is loaded. The front page of the music store shows you a simple list, with featured music at the top and music categories below. At the bottom is the search function. We find this a little backward, and would have preferred to see the search function at the top of the page. You can search for artist, title, or both.
When you find the song you want you can preview it or purchase it easily. The cost of the song is charged to your Sprint account. The song is downloaded directly to your phone, but is unfortunately low quality and locked to that phone by Sprint's proprietary DRM. You can download a higher bitrate version directly to your desktop using Sprint's music desktop music software at no extra cost, though. Overall, we found the experience to be less elegant and more difficult to use than other digital music stores like Rhapsody or iTunes, although of course you can't download their music directly to your phone. We found the DRM restrictions to be particularly annoying.

Streaming (0.0)
Unfortunately the Katana DLX was unable to play back streaming MP3, Windows Media, or Real audio.