Digital Trends

Sanyo M1 April 3rd, 2007 | by Stewart Wolpin

Performance

As noted, the M1 is a superior cell phone. Reception on the dual Band (1.9 GHz, 800MHz) phone via Sprint's EV-DO network is strong and clear, and the M1 delivers plenty of earpiece volume, even at medium settings, with plenty of headroom to compensate for noisy environments. Thanks to the twin 15mm speakers, ringtones were equally loud and the vibrate alert equally violent. We faintly heard and definitely felt the phone ringing through jeans pockets while walking down a reasonably noisy city street.

M1's 2 MP camera is also a surprise. Its shutter snaps quickly and loudly and produces crisp and clean sunlight-bathed images. Indoor shots in normal light are still unblurred, but are bleached, even with the flash on. However, that's par for the course with cell cams. Batch transferring pictures to a PC via Bluetooth was relatively easy and painless.

Web access via Sprint's EV-DO network was speedy and efficient, with access in less than 10 seconds and nearly instantaneous WAP web page filling.

This phone is Exhibit A for why there's been a hue and cry for Apple to create an iPod cell phone, and why beauties and geeks are drooling for the iPhone. M1's bungled music application (sometimes we wonder if the designers actually ever use these phones before they send them out to an unsuspecting world) will try your patience and fortitute.

Without a swappable external memory card, you are forced to use the endlessly frustrating Windows Media Player software and the included USB connecting cable to load music on the phone. Once you manage to survive this track transfer trauma (the trials and tribulations of which are too lengthy and painful to relate here), nothing works the way it should.

As noted, you can't boot the music app using the external controls on the front flap. You have to open the flip and locate the main menu "music" icon to start the app (for some reason, the "Media Player," which is the Sprint PowerVision TV app, doesn't work as a music player), which initiates the Sprint online music store. That's correct — the music player is tied directly to the music store. Subtle. It takes 10-15 seconds for the system to establish the EV-DO connection; if you're in a tunnel or don't have access to Sprint's network, the phone continues to try to connect to the store until you tell it to stop, or it gives up before you can get to the player itself. Then, the phone takes around 30 seconds to load the player app to load all the tracks. It takes more than a minute total before you'll actually hear any music.

Once you get the music playing, Sanyo says the music can play in the background while checking e-mail or messages or browsing the web. We could not figure out how to do this. The center "menu" button becomes the play/pause button, and there isn't a dedicated web access key. Pressing the "1" key with the familiar envelope messaging icon did nothing. There are nine EQ settings, but these are behind the separate "Media Player" menu icon, which you can't get at unless you quit out of the music player.

Once music is playing, you can close the lid and track title, artist, song progress bar, shuffle status (you get random play and repeat options) and the time are displayed in the bright 1.3-inch external LCD above the control array on the phone's front flap. When a call comes in, the ringer halts the music. After you hang up, the phone takes the same minute-plus to start playing again, but starting with the next track in the queue rather than whatever song you happened to be listening to.

Like many music phones, the M1 plays MP3 and non-protected AAC files, but not WMA or PlaysForSure tracks bought online. You get the convenient belt-and-suspenders combination of stereo Bluetooth and a 2.5mm stereo headphone jack, except the M1 segregates the Bluetooth app. Turning Bluetooth on and off is in the "Settings" menu, but the Bluetooth discovery and device operations are in the "Tools" menu.

Battery life for music is excellent: 18 hours if you use a wired headset. Obviously, you'll get much less music using power-draining Bluetooth stereo headphones. Surprisingly, talk time is a miserly 3.8 hours, far below average.

Conclusion

Great phone section, nice camera, quick web access, bright screen, loud ringing — almost everything you'd want in a cell phone. If only Sanyo had paid just a bit more attention to the user experience for music, this would have been a top-notch multimedia cell phone. But they didn't.


Pros:

• Quick broadband network access
• Built-in 1 GB memory
• Pocket-sized and lightweight
• MP3/AAC music player
• Long music play time
• Loud and clear conversations
• Decent 2 MP pictures
• Loud ring/violent vibrate

Cons:

• Bad music player application
• No external music slot
• Short talk time