This week, Dan takes a look at the Kyocera Lingo on the Cricket network.
Kyocera Lingo Offers Unusual Features
by Dan Radin
Kyocera’s Lingo is unlike most modern cell phones. It has some unique features that are very useful, but they are offset by a fair amount of things that need to be improved. Compared to other keyboard phones available today, the Lingo still has some catching up to do.
There are a few design characteristics that make the Lingo unique from other phones. The thick phone has a standard numerical front, rubbery back surface so it won't slide off of a table, and opens like a book to expose a full QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard, however, is split into two sections by large navigating arrows and a bulky space bar. Besides the arrows, everything about the Lingo seems to be small: the numeric and keyboard buttons, the inner display screen (which is roughly the size of the outer one), and the stereo speakers next to it. I was disappointed by the weak volume of the speakerphone, although the ringer was loud and the sound quality was good. I couldn’t find full songs to download, but there were a wide variety of ringtones available on the Cricket homepage.
The Lingo’s interface is where I had the most trouble because it isn’t like most other phones. For instance, in order to save a phone number that wasn’t stored in the phone from a text message, it took me a few minutes to figure out that you have to navigate through a series of screens using the soft keys. This is a complicated process that could be drastically simplified. All of the shortcuts are pre-programmed into the phone, and as far as I know can’t be modified. For example, if you hold the “up” navigation arrow for a few seconds, the messaging menu will open. There are also external shortcuts for the ringer volume and camera.
The camera is one of the things I wasn't very impressed with. You can get a pretty good shot from a distance using the zoom, but no matter what the picture isn't defined. It might just be the digital capabilities of the screen, but you can see all of the little individual boxes that make up the picture as a whole. One thing that was really practical was the built in light. It enables you to take night photos that look just as good as daytime shots. There is also a "flashlight" feature that turns the bright light on for easy visibility. However, the light quickly depletes the already weak battery power. The internet also uses a lot of battery. I found it to be on the slow side, as it took up to a minute to load some web pages, and it was delayed even longer when there were pictures. It's possible that this is only a result of Cricket's inconsistent network, which said I was roaming when I was in the attic of my house. Roaming or not, the phone calls were always pretty audible, and only a few of them were dropped.
The Lingo's main operations are talking and texting, which it does with mastery. Other features of the phone aren't very well developed. This phone isn't anything particularly fancy, but it gets the job done.
