Sanyo M1

"When you try your best, but you don't succeed. When you get what you want but not what you need." As we listened to the opening lyrics of this Coldplay song play on the Sanyo M1, we couldn't help but think that they summed things up pretty well. Yes, the M1 comes with a whopping 1GB of flash memory built in, but you can't upgrade the capacity because there isn't a memory card slot. Still, there's a lot to like about this $199 clamshell-including surprisingly loud speakers, a two-megapixel camera, and stereo Bluetooth--almost enough to forget about its most glaring weakness.

 

Sporting an attractive black body with silver trim, the 0.9-inch-thick M1 won't be confused with the super-skinny RAZR or the even slimmer Samsung M610. On the other hand, the Sanyo is noticeably shorter than those two phones, making it pocket friendly. A circular external navigation control beneath the 1.3-inch external display makes accessing your tunes a cinch. One tradeoff for this phone's squat design: The D-pad on the inside is a little too tiny; on more than one occasion we pressed the center OK key when we meant to navigate up or down in a menu.

 

The M1's internal 1.9-inch display doesn't really measure up to the M610's 2.2-inch screen, making the latter a much better choice for Sprint TV ($20 to $25 per month, depending on the number of channels you want). We watched the same NBC Mobile News update on the Sanyo and Samsung, and the M610's larger viewing area and better color saturation made for a decidedly better viewing experience. However, the M1 compensates somewhat by offering a landscape view when watching video. It also delivered videos quickly, with only minor buffering delays.

 

Where the M1 pulls ahead of the competition is inits music capability. In addition to the external playback controls, the M1 boasts 1GB of internal memory, a first for the Sprint lineup. Assuming 4MB per MP3, that's about 250 songs, or more than 16 hours of music. You'll be able to squeeze even more songs onto the phone if you download the more compressed AAC tunes from The Sprint Music Store (at $2.49 a pop), which take up about 1MB each.

 

We were quite impressed with the dual stereo 15-mm stereo speakers, which were considerably louder than the Samsung M610's and even put some laptop speakers to shame. We also like the included stereo headset, which produced loud, crisp sound, even if the felt-covered earbuds weren't terribly comfortable. The good news: Since it's a two-piece design, you can plug your own earbuds into the microphone module's 3.5-mm jack. You could also use a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones.

 

To make transferring your own AAC or MP3 music files to the phone easy, the M1 mounts itself as a mass storage drive when you connect the included USB cable to your PC. Just drag and drop any albums or songs to the M1's Media Folder, and you'll be good to go. If you want to make an impulse buy on the spot, the Sprint Music Store isn't flashy but is simple to navigate, with categories like Songs You Know and Top 10s. You can continue shopping while listening, but other simultaneous tasks--like checking your calendar or surfing the Web--are limited to when you're listing to non-DRM-protected content.

 

The 2-MP camera with flash delivered mixed results. Some of the shots that we took outdoors looked sharp, but others appeared washed out. Pictures we captured indoors were not quite as vibrant as those taken by the Samsung M610. We're not fans of the autofocus feature, which adds about a second to the shutter delay. Turning this off helped, but we had to do so every time we launched the camera.

 

You can use the included USB cable or Bluetooth connection to transfer music and pictures. Compared with most other camera phones, the M1 captures pretty decent QVGA video, which looked smooth when we played it back on our PC using QuickTime.

 

Other noteworthy features include access to Sprint's excellent On Demand information service (news, weather, sports, and more without Web surfing or menu drilling), advanced voice recognition (e.g., saying "Go To Messaging" brings up the Messaging menu), and Ready Link walkie-talkie capability (assuming you can find someone else to talk to). You can also use the M1 as an EV-DO modem for your notebook, if you're willing to shell out $39.99 per month for a phone-as-modem plan.

 

Call quality with the M1 was good. Testers on the other end of the line said we sounded a bit tinny but no worse than other Sprint phones. Our signal strength stayed strong in several locations in New York and New Jersey. Battery life is rated at 3.8 hours of talk time. With periodic use of the Music Store and Sprint TV, the phone lasted about two days on a charge.

 

For music lovers looking to combine iPod-Shuffle-like memory with a cell phone, the M1 is a pretty good choice. But at $199, we would expect a memory card slot to help this handset's storage grow with your digital collection. If you can deal with weak speakers and a proprietary headphone jack, the less expensive M610 is a better bet because it offers a micoSD Card slot, bigger screen, and sharper 2-MP camera in a thinner design. But if you want external music controls and a better camcorder, then the M1 is the Power Vision phone to buy.