Sanyo Katana II met by the FCC's warm embrace

by Chris Ziegler, posted May 24th 2007 at 3:22PM

The Katana II has been a rumored device on Sprint for quite some time, but what we haven't been able to find out is whether it makes good on the original Katana's critical failure to include 3G. The device was originally billed as a low-cost alternative to the RAZR, but let's be honest: the RAZR ain't the king of the hill anymore, and EV-DO is finally a commodity feature in even entry-level CDMA handsets. Sadly, the Katana II's FCC filing doesn't shed any light on the sitch -- all we know is that it's a CDMA handset with Bluetooth -- but we do get a handful of sketches in the ID label documentation (think of it as a sort of color-by-number Katana II, minus the numbers). If the original rumors hold true, expect the phone to hit as soon as June.

Filed under: Handsets, Sanyo, Sprint, 1xRTT, CDMA

Tags: breaking news, BreakingNews, clamshell, fcc, flip, katana, katana ii, KatanaIi, sanyo, sprint, sprint nextel, sprint-nextel, SprintNextel

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Elias C. @ May 24th 2007 9:00PM

I was surprised how well this phone sold for being only semi good-looking and a complete ripoff of the RAZR. We have a lot of them in Canada (on Bell).

Neutral

Kichigai Mentat @ May 25th 2007 11:02AM

I have a friend with a Katana, and I have to say that it really didn't impress me. The keypad was your average flat plastic with some lighting piped in. The camera wasn't anything to speak of, and the user interface was a little klunky. The thing that I found most egregious was how crippled the BlueTooth transceiver was. As far as we could tell, OBEX was stripped out (so forget sending pictures or even just an address book entry) leaving the phone with only wireless headset capabilities. I understand that phone companies make money by forcing people to send their pictures through MMS, but honestly, how many people out of the entire cellphone using population know how to work BlueTooth? And how does the company benefit from not letting people send and receive contact entries?

Neutral

Reno @ Jun 8th 2007 11:21PM

The Katana II shouldn't be much of an upgrade on the original, maybe just an update and should hit by the middle of July. Look for a higher end Katana around Q4, just in time for the holidays.

Neutral

Shay @ Oct 22nd 2007 1:58PM

I just got three of the Katana II phones. I love it, and so does my husband and daughter...The are slim and take wonderful pictures...I have no complaints on the Katana...and I would definatly recommend it...I looked at the Razor and several of my friends have a Razor and I hate them...but these phones are definatly worth giving a try

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.