The Sanyo SCP-5300’s biggest claim to fame is that it’s the first phone to have a built-in VGA-quality digital camera rather than space for an attachment—and we were sure impressed. While in the past we’ve described most wireless handsets with picture-taking capabilities as frivolous, the SCP-5300 made us change our tune. The integration of the camera into the phone combined with an intuitive user interface (UI) made shooting photos so easy, it got us taking way more photos (with good resolution, too) than we ever imagined. If you even suspect you may use the camera feature once, we recommend this phone to you. Like us, you’ll find yourself the camera invaluable for purposes you never thought of before.

After charging this phone, we got right into checking out the camera features using the excellent user interface. All we had to do was open the flip top, aim the viewfinder (embedded in the flip top) at our subject, and shoot our picture by pressing the obviously located camera button on the upper right of the keypad. The 2.1-inch 65,000-color TFT LCD display makes an amazing color palette for viewing or altering photos. We took several photos of stationary objects, pets, and children and found the medium resolution quality (320 x 240) to be good, while high resolution (640 x 480) was even more impressive. Pre-shoot settings let you adjust brightness; white balance; quality (fine or normal, although fine will eat up memory a lot faster); zoom (4X or 16X); and set color tone to color, black and white, or even sepia tone for antique-looking photos. Additionally, a self-timer lets you get into the photo. The high-luminence LED flash never produced any red-eye in our pictures of people and photos were never overexposed. However, we did notice that moving objects, such as in our photos of a running child, often came out blurry. While the camera offers a few online enhancement tools, they are only for rotating the photo view and don’t allow you to do any heavy-duty cropping or color brightening.

Once a photo was taken, it was just as simple to save it to our picture wallet, upload it as our screen saver, assign it to a name in our phone book, or email it to a friend. Photos saved to the picture wallet definitely slowed the phone down, but the online photo album seemed to hold a limitless number of albums or photos without affecting the phone’s battery. The SCP-5300 also comes with an extended battery, however, so you can give it a little boost if you must store a large quantity of photos for a while. In our email tests, photos sent from the SCP-5300 arrived in our inbox seconds later and boasted the same high-quality resolution as the smaller screen on the phone. One drawback while using the camera is that the ringer doesn’t operate and incoming phone calls go straight to voice mail. While not a major offense to some, this could be a problem for business users.

Besides the camera, Sanyo’s SCP-5300 has a few other features worth mentioning. Web access is zippy on this phone and we spent little down time waiting to get to sites. Emails and SMS messages transferred just as rapidly via the USB interface. As one of the Sprint PCS fleet of phones, this handheld takes advantage of all the multimedia features that Sprint offers. We enjoyed the rich polyphonic ring tones (some with animation, such as the bull-riding cowboy that appears on both the main and external LCD screen when set to the "Rodeo" ring tone) can be personalized for each caller, although we didn’t care for the underlying disco beat that accompanies all the classical ring tones. Java 2 capabilities also allow for fairly sophisticated game-playing considering the size of this wireless device.

The phone features on the SCP-5300 round out the asset list. Business users will find this mobile phone’s large phone book valuable for a large contact list. It holds up to 300 entries, 500 phone numbers, 300 email addresses, and 300 Web addresses and allows voice-activated dialing for up to 30 most-dialed contacts. A built-in answering machine and voice memo, a calendar, and the ability to synch up information with a desktop PC also sweeten the deal on this phone. Navigation is effortless with the intuitive UI and four-way navigation button on the top of the keypad. Our only complaint is in dialing: the keypad numbers are flush with the keypad—almost recessed—making accurate dialing more of a challenge. We also found the backlighting wasn’t adequate for locating numbers on the keypad when we tried dialing from a dark room.

We think this phone’s camera feature would be a huge boon to plenty of cell phone users. During our tests in public, we ran into some professionals (a fashion stylist and a real estate agent) who thought this camera phone would be extremely helpful to business. Other folks just thought it would be darn cool to snap and email pictures on the fly, such as scenic shots during road trips or pictures of a blind date right from the restaurant. Overall, for the first try on incorporating a new feature into a wireless device, Sanyo does a great job in creating a camera that’s easy to use and not at all clunky.

--Cristina Vaamonde

Pros:

• Integrated digital camera
• Produces high-quality 640 x 480 digital photos for storage or e-mailing
• Fast mobile Internet and messaging connection
• Intuitive user interface
• Large 300-entry phone book

Cons:

• Ringer doesn’t operate while in camera mode
• Flat keypad buttons can cause misdialing

How We Tested Battery Talk/Standby Time

When reading our reviews, you should view the test results of mobile-phone battery talk time and standby time as relative information only. Many variables, including carrier signal strength at your location, signal consistency (including incoming and outgoing calls), display and ringer settings, and battery charging methods and history, will affect performance. When handset manufacturers and mobile phone carriers list talk-time and standby-time ratings, they usually include disclaimers about variable performance and often refer to the times they publish as maximum times. Some quote expected battery life ranges, and in this case you're probably safe to assume you'll experience at least the minimum rated range. Note that manufacturers of dual-mode digital and analog handsets publish battery-life rates for both digital and analog modes, as analog mode consumes much more power than digital mode.

Our Tests: We tested digital-mode talk and standby times with each phone. Prior to each test, we fully charged the phone's battery according to the manufacturer's directions. To test digital-phone talk time, we turned the phone on, established a digital carrier signal, dialed a number in our test lab, and, when the call rang through, took the receiving phone's handset off the hook. When all went well, we didn't do anything else except record the time when the phone died. In a couple of cases, the phones lost the signal and dropped the calls. If we were right there and could redial, we did so immediately and continued running the test. Otherwise, we halted the test, recharged the battery, and started the test over. Assuming consistent carrier-signal strength, this test should represent best-case talk time. And it's worth noting that several phones' talk-time performance significantly exceeded the manufacturers' ratings.

To test digital-phone standby time, we turned the phone on, established a carrier signal, and left the phone in standby mode. We checked the phone every few hours (for what was often days on end) until the phone finally cut out. Since no outgoing or incoming calls occurred during testing and because the phone was not moved, this method should represent best-case standby time, again assuming consistent carrier signal strength.