Sanyo Katana DLX Cell Phone Review - Software
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Alfredo Padilla Published on August 06, 2007 Comment on this |
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OS (3.0)
Home Screen Score (4.0)
The Katana DLX home screen provides good functionality. As we mentioned above, the left soft key is assigned to a favorites list that can be edited by the user for easy access to their favorite applications. In addition, the home screen itself lists four shortcuts which are not user configurable; Main Menu, On Demand, Music, and New Text Message. The home screen can change significantly depending upon the theme you are using. The Sanyo theme lacks the four shortcuts and instead uses user definable shortcuts for each of the four directions of the D-Pad, while an e-mail theme replaces the music shortcut with an e-mail one that gives you basic information about your e-mail accounts. In addition to these shortcuts the home screen displays the time, date, and the current ringer setting. Along the top are indicators for various items like signal strength, battery, Bluetooth status, and a variety of other indicators that become active when they are necessary. The left soft key is assigned to contacts, and neither soft key assignment can be changed by the user. The background on the home screen can be changed, however this can only occur in the "Sanyo" theme. The other theme's home screen backgrounds cannot be changed. We found the home screen on the Katana provides useful functions, and we like the ability to change the look and feel via themes. We didn't like that the indicators along the top can get rather crowded at times, and that except for the "Sanyo" theme we can't change the shortcuts or background picture on the home screen.
Extensibility (3.0)
The Sanyo Katana DLX does not support native third party applications, you can only extend the phone's capabilities by using Java applications. Although there is a growing selection of such applications, like Google Mail or Opera Mini, they can be slow to load and don't have access to all the phone's capabilities. However, the Sanyo Katana is not a smart phone, and most people interested in the phone probably aren't considering extensibility.
Customizability (4.0)
The Sanyo Katana offers a pretty extensive selection of customization options, maybe too extensive. In addition to the home screen customizations and themes we mentioned above, you can also change font size on the exterior screen or in the messaging and browser applications. You also have a variety of small modifications you can make, for example changing the background shown for incoming calls. These small changes are peppered throughout the Settings menu, which we found confusing. We would have preferred a single customization section where you can access all these options.
OS Responsivness (3.0)
As we mentioned above, we found the Katana DLX's interface could slow down significantly when launching programs. Moving around menus is generally zippy however, and once an application is launched it also responds fairly well. Still, it's annoying to sit around and wait while the music application or Web browser launches.
Browser Features (5.0)
Browsing Interface (4.0)
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| Katana DLX Bookmarks | Katana DLX Browsing History |
Web pages are automatically reformatted by the Katana DLX's browser to fit on your small screen and minimize left/right scrolling. The directional pad moves from link to link, which means on link heavy pages you won't be able to move around very quickly. You can easily create favorites, however favorites are organized into a simple list in the order they are created. There is no support for folders, but you can edit existing bookmarks. We were happy to see browsing history is saved between sessions, but you won't get anything more than a simple chronological list of pages here. While browsing, the left soft key allows you to select a highlighted link or edit a highlighted field. This is redundant because the center select button performs the same function. The right soft key opens a menu where you can access a variety of functions. If all you're going to do is visit a few mobile sites, the Katana DLX's browser will do you fine, but if you want to actually experience the Internet on your phone we recommend you install Opera Mini.
Browser Access (5.0)
To test how easy it is to access the Web browser on the Katana DLX, we count how many steps it takes to go from phone closed until we have browsed to our Web site. We use steps instead of a timed test in order to take network issues out of the equation. Typing out the URL is counted as a single step. The Katana DLX took eight steps to complete this process. As you can see from the table below, this is faster than most phones and as good as the Nokia N75, a smart phone you would expect to quickly be able to access the Internet.
| Cell Phone | Steps | Score |
| Sanyo Katana DLX | 8 | 5.0 |
| Nokia N75 | 8 | 5.0 |
| Sprint Upstage | 13 | 3.08 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 14 | 2.86 |
| Sanyo M1 | 13 | 3.08 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 12 | 3.33 |
Gaming (3.33)
Calculator (5.0)
Alarm (7.0)
Document Software (0.0)
The Katana DLX does not include any document viewing or editing software.
Other Software (1.0)
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