- 3G-enabled mobile phone with unique concealed external touch key pad and flip-open full QWERTY keyboard
- Sprint Mobile Broadband Network via EV-DO connectivity; GPS turn-by-turn directions via Sprint Navigation; Sprint TV and Sprint Music Store enabled
- 2-megapixel camera/camcorder; Bluetooth stereo music; MicroSD memory expansion to 16 GB; access to personal email and instant messaging services
- Up to 5.1 hours of talk time
- What’s in the Box: handset, rechargeable battery, charger, 1 GB microSD card, quick start guide, user manual
Amazon.com Product Description
Featuring a unique external glow-thru keypad that disappears when not in use, the Sanyo Incognito mobile phone for Sprint also flips open to reveal a large 2.6-inch display and full QWERTY keyboard easy composition of longer messages and updating your favorite social network like Facebook or MySpace. You’ll enjoy high-speed connectivity via Sprint’s dependable 3G network (EV-DO Rev. 0.) as well as such optional services as Sprint Navigation for GPS turn-by-turn directions and Sprint TV’s video-on-demand with full-motion video and vivid sound. See more details on optional services below.
The SANYO Incognito features a concealed external, touch key pad with vibration feedback that glows through the phone’s mirrored finish and then disappears when not in use. |
Flip it open sideways to expose a large 2.6-inch display and full QWERTY keyboard for quick texts or status updates on your favorite social networking sites. |
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With the intuitive Sprint One Click interface, you can customize the Incognito with the things you use most like, including e-mail, TV, music, GPS navigation, and Web with Google Search. Other features include a 2-megapixel camera/camcorder, Bluetooth for hands-free devices and stereo music streaming, microSD memory expansion with included 1 GB card, threaded SMS text messaging, digital audio player, access to mobile e-mail, synchronization with Outlook on your PC, and up to 5.1 hours of talk time.
The full QWERTY keyboard of the Sanyo Incognito (see larger image). |
Key Features
- Fast 3G connectivity thanks to Sprint’s EV–DO, Rev 0 network
- GPS using Sprint Navigation for turn by turn directions, and points of interest searches
- Fully customizable home screen with Sprint One Click for quick access to your favorite features. You can add, remove, and rearrange tiles in the Carousel. Choose up to 15 from up to 46 available tiles, including social networking (Facebook), sports, entertainment, weather, finance and more. (Learn more)
- Sleek design with unique external glow-thru keypad and OLED screen that disappears behind the mirrored finish when not in use. The external full, glow-through keypad offers haptic vibrating feedback as keys are pressed to help reduce extra or accidental taps.
- Flip-open full QWERTY keyboard
- Internal 2.6-inch display (320 x 240 pixels)
- 2-megapixel camera with video capture capabilities.
- Digital audio player allows you to transfer music files from a PC or download from the Sprint Music Store and listen to your songs via the speakerphone or a stereo headset accessory.
- Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity with stereo music streaming (A2DP) capabilities as well as hands-free headsets and car kits.
- Memory expansion via microSD card slot with support for optional cards up to 16 GB. A 1 GB card is included with the phone.
- Threaded SMS text messaging enables you to see the full conversation for each contact in a chat-like interface. Never send a reply to the wrong person again–organized conversations make it easy to go back and see the history of any conversation.
- Sprint Mobile E-Mail supports push e-mail from popular sites such as Yahoo!, Google, AOL, MSN as well as IMAP/POP3 accounts. Also stay up-to-speed with work e-mail if you have either a Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino corporate e-mail server. Supports Outlook calendar sync and some attachment viewing.
- Instant messaging via popular services including Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger
- Voice activated dialing capabilities
- Organizer tools including alarm clock, calendar, to-do list, calculator, stopwatch, countdown timer, world clock, and voice memo recording.
- Airplane mode allows you to listen to music while the cellular connectivity is turned off
- Micro USB connector
- 2.5 mm headset jack
- Speakerphone with dedicated access key
- Hearing aid compatible (M4/T4 rating)
Vital Statistics
The Sanyo Incognito weighs 4.3 ounces and measures 4.2 x 2.2 x 0.7 inches. Its 840 mAh lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 5.1 hours of talk time. It runs on the 800/1900 CDMA/EV-DO Rev. 0 frequencies.
What’s in the Box
Sanyo Incognito handset, rechargeable battery, charger, 1 GB microSD card, quick start guide, user manual
Sprint Services
- Broadband-like 3G network: Supporting the EV-DO Rev. A high-speed data standard, this phone enables you to download and stream high-quality video, straight onto your phone. Where coverage is available, EV-DO Rev. A connectivity provides average download speeds ranging from 400 to 700 Kbps, with peak rates up to 2 Mbps.
- Sprint TV enabled: With Sprint TV, you can make your cell phone your always-on source for news, weather, sports and more. This comprehensive video service combines high-quality streaming audio and video from channels including ABC, The Weather Channel, Fox Sports, E!, CNN, The Discovery Channel, and more.
- Sprint Music Store enabled: The Sprint Music Store enables you to buy, download, and then jam out wherever you are with new songs or old favorites. Offering a growing selection of more than 1.6 million songs, the store provides you two copies of each song–one for the phone and another for the PC, as well as the ability to burn songs to a CD using Windows Media Player. Save your songs to a memory card with a capacity that’s right for you.
- GPS capable with Sprint Navigation: This GPS-enabled phone provides optional access to Sprint Navigation for driving directions on your mobile phone–by voice and onscreen. Along the way, turn-by-turn directions will be announced in a clear voice and displayed on your phone. For example, Sprint Navigation will say, “Go 1.2 miles and turn right on Elm Street.” As you approach the turn, you will hear, “Turn right on Elm Street.” Sprint Navigation also provides proactive traffic alerts with one click re-routing. And it’s easy to find restaurants, banks, cafes, hotels and more from over 10 million points of interest across the U.S.
- Stay Sporty with Sprint: With NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, instantly connect to the NASCAR information you want, when you want it. Follow NASCAR action from practice to race day with real-time leaderboard and alerts. Get exclusive access to your favorite NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver with real-time driver stats, breaking news and more. Live in-car audio, race radio, NASCAR on SPEED and other audio/video only available on select phones. Visit sprint.com/speed for details.
To access, just text “NASCAR” to 7777 on your Sprint phone or visit the Sprint Digital Lounge to download NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile (standard text messaging and data rates apply).
This phone also provides access to Sprint Football Live–free for any phone with a data plan. You’ll be able to follow all the live play-by-play action with the Live Game Center for both pro and college football games, as well as stay on top of the pro football draft with a Live Draft Tracker and in-depth analysis and bios on nearly 500 top prospects. Access by texting “FOOTBALL” to 7777 on the handset to download Sprint Football Live from Sprint Digital Lounge (standard text messaging and data rates apply).
Learn More
Sprint’s Award-Winning One Click Interface
The Sprint One Click interface. |
This phone features Sprint’s One Click navigation interface, which places eight shortcut tiles along the bottom of the home screen. Instead of navigating through endless phone menus, you can put the things you use the most–features like call logs, texting, Web access and GPS navigation–right up front with instant information related to each feature. For example, when you scroll to text messaging, you’ll see the number of new messages received and a single click takes take you to the newest messages. Here’s how it works:
- Add your favorite items to the carousel, which is a row of tiles along the bottom of your phone’s home screen.
- The carousel can hold up to 15 tiles, which you can add, remove and rearrange to suit your needs.
- Highlight a tile to reveal its menu on your home screen.
- Add up to 8 “bubbles”–at-a-glance items that display on your home screen, like the weather or your daily horoscope.
- Browse and download new tiles from your phone’s “Personalize Home Screen” tile. New tiles are available every two weeks.
- Press your navigation left or right key to select a tile; up or down to select a bubble or menu item.
- The “Home” tile always stays put, so you can easily get back to your default display.
Sanyo Incognito SCP-6760 Phone, Black
I got this along with a new 2 year contract with Sprint in Austin Texas. So all my observations are based on that network.
When i was looking for a phone there were several key features. I wanted a full keyboard for Texting. I wanted a real number pad on the front so I didn’t have to hunt and peck on sub sized keys to use my cell phone for actually making a call. I didn’t want it to be too big because I always carry it in my pocket. I wanted a good keygaurd to prevent accidental calls from my pocket (previously I had used flip phones). Beyond that reception and battery life were important.
The Sanyo Incognito seems like the perfect combination of what I wanted.
Overview
The Icognito is a slick looking phone, when not active the key face is totally slick black with beveled edges. When you activate the front face they “keys” light up. The Front keys are touch sensitive spots on the face, you don’t really press them so much as tapping them on a keyboard. The keys are electostatically activated which means that you can’t peck them out using a pencil or a glove, it takes a bare finger or other body part (or special devices).
The screen can be locked or unlocked with a slider switch on the left hand side (you flick it and it returns to position automatically). I find the switch to be a little on the small side but your unlikely to flick it by accident. If you have keygaurd on you have to flick this switch to answer or make a call and at the end of the call (because the keygaurd goes back on after a number of seconds) you have to flick the switch again if you want to hit end call. Slightly annoying.
Pressing the keys takes a little getting used to, they are VERY sensitive. Each time you tap a key it activivates the vibrate mechanism so that you get some type of tactile feedback (the whole phone vibrates) when you tap a key.
After a few days use you begin to get used to the whole thing (hitting the right keys, using the keygaurd, not hitting keys by accident). Its not as good as a real keypad with real buttons but its slick.
One downside I found is that if you are in a very, very high moisture environment (I just got out of the shower in steamy bathroom) the front keypad will not work. The condensation on the unit prevented it from detecting the bodys electrostic signals. I took it out of the room and wiped it off and it worked fine.
Another issue I have with the front keypad is it doesn’t have full functionality. You can’t T9 Text, assign functions to the arrows and some other stuff I could do with a conventional sanyo keypad. Also the “glow” goes away after a few seconds of not using it (saves power) but if your tapping in PIN numbers or navigating a phone menu this key be annoying (hit 2 to leave a message, ahhh, where is 2?) as you have to do something to activiate the light, then hit your buttons.
Looking at the right side of the phone (the left side has nothing other than keygaurd) there are several buttons. One seems to call up most recent history, there is the volume control, the Micro SD card slot (comes with a 1Gig card) and the charging/data port. Uses the Micro USB format charger.
Flipping it open revels the real beauty of the phone. A generously sized QWERTY keyboard (be cell phone standards) and a nice 320×240 screen. They keys on the keyboard have a nice tactile response. There are keys dedicated to common IM/Texting things (smiley face, @, ? and period. For less common symbols there is a FN key that lets you use the marked symbols on the key. Clicking FN will make your next key click the symbol, you don’t have to hold it down uless you want multiple symbols. There is a 4 way navigator pad with central OK button. One touch buttons for camera, text messaging and speakerphone.
The screen and UI are nice. Its not an Iphone but nice. There is a floating strip (called the carosel) across the bottom that lets you have shortcuts to items like the web, facebook, any of the phone tools, settings, other websites etc. Really nice if your doing facebook or twitter updates. It can be personalized. The screen is sharp and crisp. In BRIGHT sunlight it is still a little dim as are the keys on the front keypad. Still usable but not vibrant.
The back of the phone contains the camera and the speaker. The camera is a 2mp CMOS unit and doesn’t take especially great pictures. The speaker is pretty good. No flash or mirror for self portraits. Also the placement of the camera is such that when you activate it (By opening the keyboard and pressing buttons) your finger is usually covering it. You have to remember to move your finger. The placement of the camera button while using it is a little awkward as well. If taking really great camera phone pictures is your thing this isn’t your best choice.
Functionality
So it’s a cool phone but how well does it work. The answer is pretty good.
As a cell phone it has decent reception and battery life. My previous Sanyo (a basic flip model and a earlier version of the Katana) had slightly better reception but this one is pretty good. No real complains in the Austin area. The volume and clarity of the speaker are average, it could certainly be louder and clearer. It is comfortable enough in the hand and thick enough to clamp between the check and shoulder. T
Battery life is good, seems to run about 3.5 days of normal use (at least 5-10 calls and 10 texts a day). Recharge time is a few hours.
Texting is great. The full keyboard with generously sized keys makes typing a breeze (for a cell phone). The screen is nice and easy to read. Texts are threaded by contact and date. Adding attachments to a text would be fairly easy but they do consume KB and are not covered under just the text plan.
As far as web surfing, GPS and internet use, I don’t know. I didn’t subscribe to the data package because its not worth it right now. Looks like status updates and uploading pictures from the phone would be a breeze and I’m sure email would be nice.
So to Recap
Pro’s
Slick design, very clean lines
Full QWERTY Keyboard with great keys and a few extras
Decent reception and battery life
Good UI
Excellent Texter
Cons
Front touch panel has issues and lacks some functionality it could have.
Keyguard is a bit annoying
Camera is poorly placed and pictures are not top quality (even for a cellphone).
(All relate to compromises for the slick design).
Conclusion
If you are looking for a cool slick phone and you do a lot of texting and/or email this phone is an excellent choice. It’s a texters dream. Its got a rich feature set, good UI, decent reception and battery life and the best cell phone keyboard I’ve ever pecked on. Its not a one trick wonder either, it handles all of its tasks well and doesn’t leave you wanting for much.
If your not doing significant texting or email there are better choices for phones unless your just in love with the style. It’s a capable web browser but other phones with a larger touch sensitive screen would work better.
But for what I wanted and what I use it for this phone was one of the best phones out there.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is a great midrange phone. It does more than what most people probably use and almost as much as a smartphone. Unless you are in the market for a smartphone this is a great overall product.I wont go over everything it does.(read the descrition on that) It does most of it very well and there is an update coming to make it(the boost version)better and programs like operamini 5 that makes the web browsing almost like computer browsing. Battery life is great with normal usuage. Like ANY cell phone out there if you use it all day long to text,talk and browse its probably not going to last the 5.1 hours of talk time.LOL
I know some have an issue with the placement for the lock button. Im left handed so it works well for me. When locking or turning the phone on just hold in in your left hand use your thumb than switch hands. Not a big del really.
As for the other gripes from comments here (namely the 2 and 1 star reviews)they are nitpicky and very unfair. Especially the one star review by 2ONfpr5r. He cant even open the phone because he doesnt know the orientation.LOLOLOLOLOL simple. The phone is opened from the right side. You will know if the phone is upside down it the reciever/speaker hole is on the top and the sprint/boost logo is on the bottom. If you are reading sprint or boost mobile upside down you know you are holding the phone wrong.lol Why 2ONfpr5n had a problem with this is beyond me. Not a good thing(and stupid) to complain about. Oh and these types of phones arent engineeered to be opened with one hand as our 1 star reviewer seems to feel.(another complaint he had) A side clamshell has to be opened with two, if not you run the risk of dropping it. This is not as small as a flip phone and shouldnt be treated as such.
Rating: 5 / 5
I got this phone yesterday and I really like it. The menu navigation is simple to use. I just wish the front screen had more features. This phone is perfect for extreme texters.
Rating: 4 / 5
Pros: Comfortable keyboard for email/texting. Nice sized screen and pretty good web browser for mobile web. Decent build quality and nice look/feel.
Cons: Cover keypad auto-locks too quickly during a phone conversation – can be quite annoying when you need to enter numbers. No advanced productivity features. Very poor app support.
Bottom line: A good phone if you just use it for browsing/texting/email. The browser is good, and the email interface (with common mail servers such as Google and Yahoo!) is easy to use. This phone is clearly designed for a younger group of customers who mainly text, browse, use Facebook and Tweeter. It is not designed for professionals at all. If you want a smartphone that loads Google Maps with full features, runs various productivity softwares and is great for voice calling and multimedia, look elsewhere.
I purchased this phone not from Spring but from Boost Mobile for its pay as you go plan with wireless 3G data service at a very, very reasonable price. If you are like me, someone who spends a lot of time in front of computers at work and at home, mostly make internet voice calls on computers, doesn’t need so many minutes as on regular monthly cell phone plans and doesn’t want to pay for the over-priced data plan for mobile web… then for you this would be a good little extra device for mobile web browsing when you don’t have a computer or WIFI connection on you main cell phone.
If you need a monthly calling plan with data service and are willing to pay for it, many other phones are much, much better.
Rating: 3 / 5
I have this phone with Sprint and their network is great so simply as a talk-phone, no problems and a good review. But this review is about this phone as a whole and I have to say this phone is quite disappointing. My phone just prior was a Palm Centro and I also have an iPhone.
I put in a *summary* at the bottom if you want to skip the details.
A couple pros…The phone is smaller, looks good and has good battery life. Hence my title ‘Good Form’
The cons, pretty much everything ‘Function’
This has to be one of the most clunky interfaces I have worked with in a while. It has a side scrolling / linear interface, which they misname as the Carousel. This is horrible and I have had multiple people comment on how much of a pain it seems. It often violates the ’3-click’ rule, which is a common interface design rule that anyone should be able to reach any functionality within three or less clicks.
The front screen touch system takes getting used to and even then it is bad. You can access contacts and call history but here is how bad it is.
If you look at the picture of this device, you will often see the time displayed near the top. That is the entirety of the ‘info’ window, and it can display three names at a time. I need to get the tech specs but it is around an inch wide and 3/4 an inch tall, very difficult to read and it is a blocky display at that. It seems very cheap and hard to read with just white blocks alternating for a black/white display.
The buttons on the exposed qwerty keypad have a poor quality feel but spacing and function work well. They did put some of the more frequently used buttons as main buttons like question mark and the @ symbol, which is nice and the Fn key, tapped twice, enables quick number entry, so other than feeling like I broke a key every now and then, the keypad is mediocre.
The camera is poorly placed indeed. I would very much pose a single question to the designer.. Why? Here is my problem with this. If you hold the phone with the display open in text entry mode or landscape mode. You usually use both hands, with your thumbs typing and the remainder of your fingers held behind the phone. (Go ahead and do this in the air) Your right middle finger, or so, will completely cover the lens. This leaves you with a few options…hold the phone with your left hand only and use the button on the left, but because you remove your right hand the right side, still in landscape, fall toward the ground, tilting the camera. Fix-exert more counter clockwise torque with your left hand and you are ok, but why?. Or you can fiddle around with your right hand in a position, such as when someone picks up a string with your index and thumb, to hold the right side up, or hold the bottom as if there was a bird on your finger; I’m sure there are other positions but I wanted to illustrate how very bad of a location this was in, this has to be one of the worst I have seen.
The pictures are of a quality that I will not use it for anything I want to keep, like pictures of friends or family. I would use it for those odd moments where I see a funny sign, or bumper sticker, or something in a store I wanted to give someone an idea about.
The outside of the phone has Keyguard slider on the left bottom side. Other reviews mention it, it is in bad place. You will pocket dial if it is not locked. You have to make an awkward movement to slide it down each time you want to dial. Again I’d ask the designer what they were thinking.
*Summary*
I am still under my 30 day ‘cool-off’ period Sprint offers and I am very very thankful, because this phone is going back as soon as possible. I don’t want to get stuck with it at all.
I can honestly say I would not recommend this phone to anyone with options for a different phone…anyone.
I very much feel stupid for being swayed by the look when at the store, I think this phone is not worth it at all and this phone makes me feel like I got sold something by a door-to-door salesperson or bought something from those old-time panacea carts. “Dr. Sanyo’s Incognito Potion”
I gave this phone two stars because I have seen other phones that are much worse, but at two stars I feel I might be a tad generous.
End review = Thumbs down, No, much better phones out there.
Rating: 2 / 5