Tough enough
Anyone who's dropped a mobile phone on the pavement and watched it fly to pieces, or taken a dunking with their phone in a pocket, only to discover it has drowned instantly, knows how sensitive these sophisticated gadgets are.
Ted Gibbons | Tuesday, November 27 2007If you work in the trades, things get rapidly worse. I know builders who practically kill a phone a week. What this means, of course, is that there’s an obvious niche in the market for phones that can take some real punishment and Sanyo’s new SCP-7050 is just such a phone.
Still, it’s streets ahead of most phones in the rugged stakes and that status is also a clue to the overall character of this phone. Forget multimedia and memory expansion for extra applications, the Sanyo SCP-7050 is a straight-ahead tool designed for voice calls, text and email, and a bit of surfing on Telecom’s 3G network if you really must. Network reception is top-notch, built-in ringtones are good and loud, the vibrate mode is a real party in your pants, the phone speaker and speakerphone are high-volume, and battery life is excellent – providing considerably more than the stated 4 hours of talk time. Callers also reported strong, if a little scratchy, voice quality at their end.
Opening the phone, you’re presented with one rather unexpected surprise for a phone with no camera or other multimedia capability. The internal screen has a top 240 x 320 pixel resolution. This makes the odd bit of web browsing with the very-quick NetFront browser a rather pleasant experience and PXT images certainly look good. Apart from that, the screen seems a little bit wasted but it does make the excellent menu system look attractive.
On the left side of the phone you find a volume rocker and a big button to activate the built-in Push 2 Talk function – another feature that makes this phone great for workers who, for instance, need to communicate on large outdoor sites.
On the right side of the phone is a button that brings up all your recent calls and another that activates voice command. The Sanyo responds very well to voice command and will also record voice memos.
Rounding out the 7050’s capabilities is Bluetooth connectivity for wireless headsets and file transfer. Setting up a headset was a no-fuss operation and file transfer also worked well.
Finally, the Sanyo also has a flight mode if you fancy playing a game to kill an hour or two.
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