Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had a flip phone for 5 years on Verizon. Wanted to pay less per month and get a better phone without spending a lot. Wanted the Nokia X2 but the salesperson talked me into the new Sparq. The call clarity is great. People on the other end though say that when I am not talking it sounds like I have hung up, there is complete silence. From my end though there is no distortion, no humming or buzzing, it's very clear. I have had only 1 dropped call in a week and that was in the basement. The front keypad is horrible. The buttons are spongy rubber and you have to press down with your nail right in the middle of the button, thankfully though most of my calls are to my contacts. The phone is small and slippery, I have almost dropped it or dropped it on my lap numerous times. The back of the phone is smooth plastic. The music sounds great from the phones speaker, much better than my girlfriends LG touchscreen. The music menus though are cumbersome and difficult to use. There are fewer options than both our last LG's for sorting and listening to music. The camera takes poor quality pictures that blur easily and is useless in low lighting. The menu's are not intuitive or easy to use. It's hard to find menu options you are looking for. There is no volume button anywhere to be found, you have to go into the "profiles" section to set your ringer volumes and then switch between these "profiles." You cannot manually turn the ringer up or down otherwise. Internet is about worthless. Trying to look up anything takes FOREVER, I mean slower than dial-up, don't know what dial-up is, ask your folks. Every page is a "loader." I even got a "memory full" error message when trying to load a google page. I was able to find a business phone number on google but it took about 5 minutes, calling information would have been easier and worth the $2. If you are going to use this phone for web, even once a month get a different phone. I do check email often on it though, it's easy to read emails, difficult to respond, delete, or sort. Texting is okay if you turn off the smart text. That's when it autofills in a word it thinks you are trying to type. It's awful and accidentally fills in words you didn't choose. My girlfriend has this feature on her LG touchscreen and it works well. The slider is okay but feels cheap and flimsy. I have small hands and small fingers for a 6' tall guy and it's still harder to txt on the slider than my old flip phone. I thought I'd love the qwerty keyboard, I don't. The function button that you have to use all the time is hard to hit, and doesn't always respond. The keys almost need to be pounded and not touched to work right. Battery life seems good, got about 100 texts, hours of talking, even some frustrating web usage and the battery needs only to be charged every other day. I did turn down the brightness on the screen, all the way up it's like a lighthouse beacon at night. I also changed the duration that the screen stays lit after you stop hitting keys. It's preset for 30 sec and I think I changed it to 10sec. That saves a lot of battery life when your phone is just sitting. Ringtones were surprisingly easy to change. My LG, still haven't figured out how to do it without paying verizon. This phone, I just loaded my music, went to profiles and selected a song from my library. You can do the same with each contact, they can all have different ring tones. There is definately a learning curve for this phone. My LG flip phone and my girlfriends LG touchscreen are both intuitive and easy to operate. Finding and changing settings on both our LGs was a snap and its fast and easy to navigate the menus. This phone is anything but easy. I will be returning this phone and trying the Nokia x2 or the Lg Optimus. I would not recommend this phone to anyone who plans to text a lot or use the web. It's a basic generic phone with extremely basic features. UPDATE: I decided to keep this phone as T-mobile was no longer carrying the phone I had wanted. The phone speaker stopped working about 2 weeks after I bought it and had to be swapped out. T-mobile rep at the store said they usual make you mail them in and you are without a phone for weeks, but since it had only been 2 weeks she swapped it in the store for me. Bonus points for customer service! UPDATE: Had this phone for about 7 months now and the speaker no longer turns off when I insert headphones. this makes it almost useless as an MP3 player. If I hook it up to my home stereo the music continues to blare from the phones speaker and kill the battery, if I plug it into my car aux jack, same thing, very annoying.