"Isaiah Beard" wrote in message
...
Doug Kanter wrote:

Thanks, Isaiah, for the specific phone model tips. The guy at the Sprint
store pointed out a Sanyo. Years ago, I was in the car audio business,
selling AND installing what I sold. Sanyos were hideous. Absolutely
atrocious. We used to warn customers 10 times to keep the knobs &
faceplate
very clean for the first week because they'd be back to exchange the
units
for something real. 9 out of 10 people came back.

So, my stomach turned when he mentioned Sanyo, but my experience goes
back
15 years. I'll take another look.

There seems to be an odd situation with asian electronics conglomerates,
where the quality of their consumer audio, video and appliance products
in NO way reflect the quality of their cell phones. Different divisions
within the same conglomerate apparently have different philosophies.

I agree with you that Sanyo A/V equipment is junk. However, their cell
phones are uncharacteristically excellent.

Conversely, I have a Samsung refrigerator in my kitchen and a Samsung 19
inch LCD display on my computer, and they are excellent products that I
have highly praised and recommended to other people. However Samsung's
cell phones, for lack of a better term, are total ****. Every Samsung
cell phone I've tried from 1999 all the way to the present are cheaply
constructed, have horrible audio quality, and couldn't hold calls even
when I was outside and in plain view of a Sprint cell tower.

The exception is NEC/Mitsubishi. All of their products have proven to
be mediocre.

If only Sanyo made a phone for Verizon, the runner-up in my quest for better
and/or new service.....

Talk about dumb, though: When I first got a cell phone, I signed a 1-year,
29.95 per month contract with Sprint. At the end of the contract, I did
nothing, they said nothing, and I just kept paying the bills for 2 more
years. I called the guy at the Sprint store this morning and mentioned the
Sanyo phone. He said that in order to get that phone, I'd have to upgrade to
39.95 per month. I asked how a monetary issue is connected to the particular
phone, and he sort of mumbled something about the purchase deal for the
phone. He's checking with his supervisor blah blah blah.