Review: Kyocera Verve for Sprint
Media
The Verve does not have a media player or video player. There is no FM radio, nor support for any sort of streaming music/video service. It's a voice and texting phone, plain and simple. It's not stuffed with extras.
Camera
The Verve has a 2-megapixel, fixed-focus camera. Press the dedicated camera key once to open a short list of camera-related options, or press it twice quickly to open the camera itself. The camera launches in about 2 seconds, and it takes a second or so to shoot an image, and another second to process an image. The camera app performs on par with other devices in this class in terms of speed and features.
You can adjust brightness, white balance, sharpness, and contrast before shooting. I'd guess most users won't bother with these controls, however, especially since they are buried a few layers deep in the camera's user interface. There are some fun frames, some image tools, such as making photos black, white or sepia, adding frames, or taking bursts. The Verve can take up to 9 shots in a burst, but there's nothing "bursty" about them; the process takes about 10 seconds and only captures images at 0.1-megapixels.
The Verve cannot record video.
Photos
A phone like the Verve is not meant to compete with today's high-end smartphones, let alone point-and-shoot cameras. The camera is on board as a courtesy so people have at least some way to capture those random, fleeting moments that cross our paths unannounced. Even with that disclaimer in mind, the Verve's 2-megapixel shooter is not all that much to write about. Focus is soft at best, white balance is typically off, and the amount of grain is ridiculous. Exposure is often pretty good, though. You might technically be able to use the Verve to capture that beautiful sunset, but when you look at the picture the next day you'll wonder why you bothered.
Gallery
The Verve's gallery is a basic set of thumbnails that can be viewed in either a list or a grid. The d-pad works fine for navigating through the photo album. You have to double-click on pictures to open them. The gallery is really slow when it comes to scrolling through.
The gallery's editing functions are limited to adding text captions, as well as adding special effects, resizing, or cropping images.
The only way to share photos from the Verve is via picture messages.
Browser
The Verve is not a phone for browsing the web. Sure, it includes ACCESS' NetFront browser, and easily loads the Sprint content portal, but you're not going to be enjoying full desktop web sites with this phone. The browser takes its time rendering mobile web pages. Most sites are devoid of imagery and are instead limited to text-only layouts. Most web sites takes between 8 and 15 seconds to load over Sprint's 3G network. It's functional, but that's about it.
Apps
The Verve ships with only the most basic apps and services. There are some available from Sprint's online portal, but they are all pretty much junk. The Verve is not meant to run advanced apps.
Bluetooth
The Verve supports mono Bluetooth headsets. Pairing was no problem, but call quality via mono headsets and my car's hands-free system was spotty. As noted earlier, quality was decent, but the volume just isn't there. I couldn't pair the Verve with anything other headsets and my car.
Clock
The clock that appears on the home screen can be customized in a number of different ways, including large/small digital, large/small analog, world clock, and several different calendar views. Visibility outside under the sun is limited, though.
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Kyocera Verve / Contact
