Platinumtel has switched to GSM phones on a T-Mobile network. Therefore, they no longer offer this CDMA phone. If you are a current PTel customer with this phone, they will continue to support calls with this phone on their plan until about the middle of 2013.
The refurbished Platinumtel Sanyo SCP-3810 is offered as a bundle with $50 of airtime for just $39.99 when you use a promo code. Since you’re getting a phone and $50 of airtime for just $40, I thought it would be worth taking a closer look at this phone. (Note: The video below shows the Sprint version of the phone.)
This flip phone is also known as the Sanyo Mirro for it’s mirrored external surface. This surface disguises the presence of an external LED screen. This fact is only visible when the LED’s light up. This feature makes the phone look pretty cool, however, it does show fingerprints and grease mark pretty quickly, so you do have to keep it clean!
The Sanyo SCP-3810 has a pretty good-sized main screen for a flip phone. The screen is bright and easy to read. The official stats for the screen are: 2.4" Diagonal LCD (Color TFT/TFD) with a resolution of 240 x 300 pixels with a 16-bitcolor range (65,536 colors).
The keypad is also well-spaced and large enough to be easy to use. One of the nice and unusual feature is a separate speaker phone button. On most phones, you have to wait until you’re in a call to turn on the speaker phone, but not here.
The phone has a 1.3 megapixel camera which should get you some reasonably good photos. I wasn’t able to test the camera myself, but I found this picture on Flickr taken by a photography teacher no less. The photo was apparently taken sometime in 2011. You can get some nice photos with the camera if you know what you’re doing.
There is a mobile web browser. I don’t think it’s a full HTML browser, but it does work pretty well on the phone. The data speed is only 1xRTT so it’s just as well.
Yes, this phone has Bluetooth 2.0 so you can pair it with a headset, and (I think) transfer your photos.
OK, it's not a smart phone, but it's still pretty good. The only things that would have been nice to have are an MP3 music player and the ability to add a memory card to store more photos and the wished for music.
The phone is supposed to get 5.8 hours of talk time from its 1000mAh battery.
The phone felt solid in my hand at about 4 ounces. The 2.4 inch screen does contribute to its weight, so while it’s not as heavy as the latest smartphones, it’s also not as light as some of the older flip phones which had smaller screens.
You can find more detailed list of Sanyo Mirro features here.
Here's a link to the pdf of the SCP-3810 Manual written for the Sprint version of the phone. Click through to read in your browser or right-click and select Save As It should be pretty much the same except for the airtime related stuff.
This is a pretty good and attractive flip phone. If you’re interested in a prepaid phone mainly for talking and don’t mind texting with a numeric style keyboard, then you should check out the Platinumtel airtime bundle with this phone.