Picked up the Sanyo 5300 today....

After playing with the Sanyo 5300 for the past few days, let me share my thoughts on this new phone:

I enjoy the phone and I have to admit it neat to be able to take pictures anytime I want.

The phone comes with a travel charger, a manual, a CD, and two batteries, normal and extended. The normal battery is rated at 2.7 hours talk time, and the extended battery is rated at 4 hours talk time. The CD is nothing more than a over glorified commercial that almosts helps if you don't know about sprint and what they offer.

I have to agree with PONG the keypad it is almost impossible to see in the dark, no speakerphone, and the manual is little more than warranty info, service descriptions, and a quick start in Spanish and English.

It has small flash not really useful past 3'. The pictures taken with the camera part are okay. I think it is a .5 megapixel camera. It can be used in either the open or closed state in three modes high, medium, and low quality, each step just shrinks the end size of the photo. High being 640x480, medium being 320x240, and low being 160x120. In high you can get store 17 pictures in the cameras cache and can't use the digital zoom features. As you go down in quality you get more photos in the cache and can use more digital zoom. The phone itself has 500 kb storage for ringers, games, animated screensavers, and photos. It is easy to move a photo from the camera cache to the "photo album," but once it is in there you can only use it in the phone as a caller ID photo or a background and can't upload it to your picture vault on the sprint web site.

The main menu has background pictures for each choice. I.e. Call History is a lake; Phone book is the Sphinx... kinda impressive. This offsets the fact that when the phone goes into sleep mode the outside display is nearly impossible to see under normal lighting conditions and you have to push one of the side button to wake the phone back up, showing you your background as if the phone was open.

So far the reception has been better than my older Samsung A460. The feel of construction also seams more solid, the clam shell opens and closes with a solid snap.

All of the games that came with the phone are just demos and you have to pay money to get more than the first level or more than 1 minute play time.

I am a little displeased with the volume buttons they are small and flush with the phone, slightly difficult to push for my fat fingers. They are also on the same side as the headset jack as well as one of the two camera buttons, (this button allows you to take pictures with the clam shell closed.) The headset jack is also at the bottom of the button array, I am not sure if I dislike this positioning or I am just not use to the jack being anywhere other than the top of the phone.

Liteguy

 

Sounds good so far - why couldn't they just save us $100 and leave the camera out? More importantly - has anyone seen or found the data cable for 5300 yet??

 

Yes you can upload pictures after placing them in the cache in the phone. It took me awhile to figure out how, though. Go to camera mode, then click "review" and page through the pictures in the cache to find the one you want to upload. Click "options" and you get the same options as when you originally took the pictures.

Carl

 

How do you only have 500 kbs? I have around 700.

What do you think about the ringer? If I have it too high, some of the ringers sound a tad 'rattly', like a speaker on a stereo that's a little too loud.

 

To clarify,
You can not upload a picture from the photo wallet. So, if you move the photo from the camera cache to the wallet and delete the original from the camera cache you can no longer upload it. I just wanted to point out that it is two sperate memeroy storage areas and each have different options. I think this stops someone from downloading a image as a background and then sending it to the photo vault.

This is true you do get 700kbs with the phone, but 200+ kbs come filled or at least mine did. Leaving you with 500kbs

Yea if you turn up the volume to High it does have tinny or rattling to it. I almost always have mine on vibrate so I did not notice it until you pointed it out.

Liteguy

 

I get what you're saying about the memory thing now.

This sounds stupid, and I'm sorry... but, the rattling thing, could that be damaging to the phone if one leaves it on high? You know, kind of like a speaker actually blowing. The speaker on the phone won't 'blow' will it?

 

I am not sure. It is likely it is too loud for the speaker and you could push the speaker too hard at the high setting and blow it. Although I was playing with the different levels and it the rattling noise is still there, just less pronounced. I have been using Scotland the Brave from MatrixM. This might just mean it is a poor quality speaker or I am too picky

 

I wanted to post a what the camera can do. The shot on the left is with the flash built into the camera, the shot on the right is desk flourescent light about 4' away. The one on the bottom is a 1 megapixel camera.
Camera Pictures

Liteguy

 

Hey guys, I wanted to ask you something, is it just me or when you are in camera mode and about to take a picture, do you lose your service, I always see a no service icon when I'm fiddling around with the camera, also where is the setting where you can turn off that sound effect that plays everytime you confirm a setting change? Can't seem to find how to turn that off anywhere, I hope Sanyo comes out with a decent manual soon, sure would have cleared up some of my questions.

 

Yea the phone loses service when you go into the camera mode. I can only asume it is make sure the phone does not go off when you are about to take a picture. The only way I have found to shut off the confirm noise is to shut off the Key Beep in the Ringer/Key Vol. You lose key beep also when you do this though.

Liteguy

 

Anybody have any ideas on how to keep the camera lens from getting scratched when it's in your pocket?

 

Question for the 5300 owners: How easy is it (or is it even possible) to take a picture and quickly send that to an email address? The main reason I want this phone is to have the ability to take a quick'n'dirty picture and fire it off to my (non-Sprint) email address.

Can be done? Easy?

--kurt

 

I wanted to comment on the pictures taken with the 5300. They look a whole heck of a lot better that the ones taken with the Sprint pcs Vision camera. I could never seem to take a good picture. Where did everyone get their phone from?

 

It is a pretty quick process. Take picture, let it save to phone,push menu, select Share with phone book, Select email. Add a message if you want. The picture will be uploaded to your sprint photo vault and a email will be sent to the email with a link to the picture in the vault, and the message you sent.

I bought mine from a sprint store in Irvine, CA. They did not have many, I felt lucky that I got mine when I did.

Liteguy

 

Um...what do you mean "sprint photo vault"? How easy is it to get the photo, in it's original form, to somewhere on the 'net other than sprint's photo vault.?

Can I email the entire photo (yes, I know it's large) to an email address or can I only send a link?

--kurt

 

no you are sending a link. you cant send the photo as an attachment. it is a link that only that person would get and no one else; and it is to your own private vault. if you didnt send it to anyone else there would be no way for anyone else to see it unless they guessed the url of the link. they would have to be really bored to do that.

 

Thanks for the reply. I guess I'm more concerned with how difficult Sprint makes it to get the photos out of its (proprietary) vault and into something else where I can have more control over it.

Basically, I'd like the ability to take photos and then somehow (easily) transfer those, via the web connection, to some server/email address/SOMETHING on the internet.

But it sounds like Sprint is sticking with the traditional Walled Garden approach?

--kurt

 

Once you click on the link, you can always right click on the picture and select "save picture as". It isn't a big deal, really. The whole process is quite easy, and the pictures are surprisingly good.

As for where I got the phone, I bought it at the Sprint store, and they said they had originally gotten 6 an hour earlier. The next guy after me inquired about one and was told they had only their demo left.

Carl

 

You know, its funny that you mention the rattling sound when you have the volume on full because my phone is so quiet that I can barely hear it. I missed 3 calls before I put the phone on vibrate. I have LG 5350 that I'm trying out and its soooo much louder. I just don't understand why its so quiet. Anyone else has that problem? And I find the earpiece volume very quiet too.

 

Yeah, when using the phone in my car its really hard to hear, but it I use the hands-free set its not bad.
I also got a solution to those terribly lit keys. I carry a small pocker flash light for those times I need to make a call in the dark. hehe JK