Ordered Pantech C820 - anyone want a review?

[Andhrimnir]

Hey everyone,

Just ordered a new Pantech Matrix Pro (aka C820) from AT&T. Is anyone interested in a full review? I'll post one if there are people who will read it, but I don't want to waste two hours if nobody's interested.

It should be here Wednesday, so I could have a review up by next weekend if anyone wants.

 

[Andhrimnir]

Nobody? Okay. I received the phone - it's excellent, with very few flaws and nice build quality. screen isn't nearly as finger-printable as I expected, and the OS is snappy - most programs load in less than a second (barring limitations like internet access speed). CV looked good and so did Hulu, Youtube, and others (running Skyfire beta instead of IE). QWERTY keyboard is very good - nice clicky keys, not rubberized/gummy junk. Call quality was good - I don't have anything to compare it to except a couple older flip phones and an older media phone, but I had no problem understanding people. Camera quality was decent - 2MP camera, only complaint about it was the grain in dark pictures - but that's to-be-expected with no flash. I got good reception all over my town, and got 3G in places my old phone didn't. Hot-swappable SD slot (in base, not behind battery) was nice. Overall very nice phone, lots of great features, runs WM 6.1 well. Would recommend to anyone looking for an entry-level non-touch smartphone.

If you want a more detailed review, drop a post here. Otherwise, I'll leave it at that.

-Andhrimnir

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your review. I am receiving one (by default) insurance claim. My Treo 680 died. I haven't seen this phone; and not too impressed by what I have read so far. My phone of choice right now is the HTC pure or Imagio; but I will give this a chance while I consider the UPGRADE. Are you still impressed with this phone?

 

[Andhrimnir]

Yes, I'm still quite happy with it. By now, newer smartphones have been released with more impressive feature sets, of course, but I am very pleased with the phone. I have gotten very used to the keyboard, and my typing speed on it is about 2/3 of my speed on a full-size keyboard (which is about 80 or 90 WPM - so perhaps 55 or 60 on the phone). The browser that comes with it (IE) is trash, but I switched to SkyFire and I consider the internet experience to be only maybe half a step down from the iPhone, mainly due to the smaller screen. The call quality is good, and it gets the best reception in my area of any phone I've owned. The camera doesn't rival my Canon A530, but it's perfectly acceptable for quick shots and easily trumps most camera phones or webcams.

One final note: the phone's battery does get quite hot after heavy use - even ten minutes of streaming video make it quite hot. But nothing has come of it so far and as far as I can tell the battery has not been damaged by this, so I assume it's okay.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the phone. I'd say 4.5 out of 5 - the few weaker points and missing features are remedied by a quality design, great keyboard, and surprisingly useable web experience.