All killer, no filler, the Sanyo SCP-8400 is a top-notch, voice-focused phone for Sprint. Although it's missing a few features that would make it the perfect handset, its excellent reception and voice quality make it my favorite feature phone for the Sprint network.
Sanyo is best known in the States for making reliable yet hideously ugly phones with great voice quality. The 8400 moderates that main flaw. It won't win any beauty contests, but it's not embarrassingly unattractive. It's a chubby (3.4 by 1.8 by 1 inches, 3.6 ounces) flip phone that comes in blue, black, and white glossy finishes. An entirely ornamental black, white, or blue "facemask" can clip over the flip, too, if you like that look.
On the outside of the phone, you see the 1.3-megapixel camera, which has a flash and macro switch. There is also a single, powerful speaker and a 1-inch, 96-by-64, external color screen. Buttons on the outside of the phone let you trigger the camera (you can use the exterior screen as a viewfinder), voice dialing, or Sprint's little-used Ready Link push-to-talk service, but there are no external music-player controls. Flip open the 8400 to find a downright beautiful, if slightly small, 2-inch, 320-by-240 color screen and a keypad of small but well-separated little oval buttons.
Sanyo phones are well regarded for excellent reception and loud speakers, and the 8400 is no exception. In fact, reception is impeccable (though as with all EV-DO phones, there's no analog band), and the earpiece and speakerphone both get blaringly loud without noticeable clipping or distortion. Transmission quality is good, though perfectionists coming from Samsung phones may think the earpiece sound is a touch muddy. The phone paired with my Plantronics 510 Bluetooth headset without a problem, and I could launch voice dialing from the headset. Keep in mind that voice dialing relies on recorded tags and can handle only 30 names. Talk time, at just over four hours, was fine for a Sprint phone.
A powerful speaker also makes the 8400 a dandy music player. The phone plays MP3 or M4A files ripped at any quality up to 320 kilobits per seconds and stored on a MicroSD card (a 64MB card is included, but you can use cards of up to 2GB). You can build playlists on the phone or with any PC program that creates standard M3U playlists. It's also possible to use a PC-based card reader or hook the 8400 up to a PC with the included USB cable in mass-storage mode. Music through the mono speaker on the outside of the flip (especially with the flip closed) is unusually loud for a phone, and sound through Plantronics MHS-213 earbuds connected to the 2.5mm headset jack wasn't bad either, though the included stereo earbuds are pretty lousy. Alas, you can't play music over Bluetooth, unlike on the Fusic, and the lack of music-player controls when the flip is closed is frustrating.
Sprint''s various Power Vision media services and applications run well on the phone too. Sprint TV sounds great and looks sharp, though video doesn't fill up the whole screen. The built-in NetFront 3.3 Web browser displays full, honest-to-goodness Web pages, and if you don't like it, you're free to download Opera Mini. An included default theme shows Handmark On Demand news headlines and weather directly on the home screen. In addition, the phone handled itself well on my JBenchmark Java benchmark tests.
As with most Sprint phones, there's no built-in IM or e-mail client, but you can buy downloadable AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Mail clients. The Bluetooth 1.1 profiles here include two-way file transfer and dial-up networking.
The 8400's 1.3MP camera takes somewhat soft, underexposed, but well saturated shots that you store in the 61MB of internal memory or on a MicroSD card. Video mode takes quite good videos, at 176-by-144 and 15 frames per second, and you can film up to the capacity of the card. You can offload your photos via Bluetooth to your PC, by using a card reader, or by printing them directly to a PictBridge-compatible printer.
The Sanyo 8400's best competitors are the Fusic by LG and the Samsung MM-A900. As it stacks up, the 8400's expandable memory and superior battery life put it firmly ahead of the MM-A900 on everything but design. The Fusic has a better music player, with stereo Bluetooth and external music control buttons, but the 8400 comes out ahead on voice quality, thanks to its powerful speakerphone. I think that voice quality comes first in most people's cell-phone use, which is why I hand the Editors' Choice for a Sprint phone to the Sanyo SCP-8400.
Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 4 hours 3 minutes
Jbenchmark 1: 4968
Jbenchmark 2: 205
Jbenchmark 3D HQ: 67
JBenchmark HD Gaming: 45 (1.5 fps)
Compare the Sanyo SCP-8400 with several other mobile phones, side by side.
More cell phone reviews:
Like What You're Reading?
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
