The Sanyo Zio is one of the least expensive Android cell phones in America. But you're getting what you pay for here, with an old version of the OS that's missing key features, plenty of bugs, and a slow processor that has trouble dragging along some of the phone's higher-end elements.Still, I don't want to minimize its main strength: The phone itself will run you between $229 and $249, but Cricket's plan means you'll only pay $55 per month for service with unlimited voice calls, text messages and 2GB of data—that even includes tax. That's at least $20 less per month than any other 3G Android phone out there. Over two years, that adds up to a lot of savings.
Physical Features
The 3.7-ounce Zio is a slim, rounded slab-style phone; it measures 4.6 by 2.3 by .5 inches (HWD), and is made of black and silver plastic with a soft-touch back. It feels fine except for the slick, almost-greasy-feeling 3.5-inch, 800-by-480-pixel plastic touch screen, which is responsive but just feels less pleasant to the touch than more expensive screens. The thick plastic covering over the screen also makes it appear dim.
Specifications
Service Provider
Cricket
Operating System
Android OS
Screen Size
3.5 inches
Screen Details
800-by-480, 262k-color TFT LCD capacitive touch screen
Camera
Yes
Network
CDMA
Bands
850, 1900, 1700
High-Speed Data
1xRTT, EVDO Rev A
Processor Speed
600 MHz
More
In my tests, the Zio's reception wasn't great, matching the Cricket MSGM8 II in a weak-signal area, but unable to complete a call where the excellent BlackBerry Curve 8530 had no problems. It also isn't a great voice phone. The earpiece and speakerphone are both loud enough, but calls in the earpiece had a wobbly, thready quality and the speakerphone sounded harsh in my tests. Transmissions did a good job of muting background noise, although they were a bit muddy and scratchy. My calls were also plagued by a proximity sensor bug which prevented the screen from lighting up when I pulled the phone away from my face. The relatively accurate Nuance voice dialing worked with a Bluetooth headset, which is very unusual for an Android phone. Battery life, at 4 hours 5 minutes of talk time, is acceptable but on the low side.
Apps, Software and Multimedia Features
The Zio's stock Android 1.6 OS feels, nowadays, like something that's been pulled out of the dollar bin at a thrift store. It's inexcusable. While other manufacturers are also doing older versions of Android, they try to smooth them over a bit with social-networking widgets or Microsoft Exchange clients. Not here—there's no Microsoft Exchange support at all, no pinch-to-zoom, some annoying issues with keyboard accuracy and several bugs, including one which asked me to enter my Google ID over and over again. Cricket has added its own app store as an option beyond the Android Market, but it's a mess: poorly populated and with tiny little thumbnail previews of apps. Furthermore, a growing number of Android Market apps won't be compatible with Android 1.6 as time goes on. On the bright side, Kyocera says it will upgrade this phone to Android 2.1 soon.
I was encouraged by the inclusion of FutureDial's PC software for syncing the phone's contacts, calendar, and media with Microsoft Outlook, but that's also buggy. I couldn't get the software to successfully connect to the phone on a Windows 7 PC.
The combination of a 600-Mhz Qualcomm MSM7627, ARM11 processor and an 800-by-480 screen makes for sluggish performance. The Zio performed similarly to other lower-end Android phones like the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide ($179.99-$429.99, ) and Motorola Devour (Free-$79.99 with contract, ) on most benchmarks. But graphics performance, in terms of time it took to draw the screen, was the worst I've ever seen on any Android phone. That resulted in jerky game play in apps like the included Midnight Bowling demo.
Music and video playback are limited but manageable. There's 131 MB of free on-board memory, and the phone comes with a 1GB MicroSD card tucked into a slot in the side; our 16GB Kingston card worked just fine. The phone plays many different music formats including AAC, MP3, WMA, and OGG, but had trouble filing the artists of some of my music properly. The free syncing app doubleTwist () can fix that, though. MPEG4 video playback was smooth at 320x240 resolution but looked a bit compressed at 640 by 480.
The flashless 2-megapixel camera took very sharp photos both indoor and out in my tests. In low light, images had deep shadows but didn't show blur. Those images took a while to snap, though, with a 1.8-second shutter delay. The video camera ambitiously tries to shoot 640-by-480 footage, but the processor can only handle 2Mbps, one quarter of what I've seen on other phones. Outdoors that makes for slightly compressed-looking 24 frame-per-second videos, but indoors, videos are blurry, jerky, and useless.
Conclusions
The Sanyo Zio just isn't a very good Android phone. But it does many things that no other phone in Cricket's lineup can do. No other phone from the carrier has a browser this good, runs anywhere near this number of apps, or plugs so easily into Google's services.
The only other Android phone on a similar service plan right now is the Motorola i1 ($399.99, ) for Boost, which has its own problems. For one thing, it costs up to $170 more than the Zio up front. The i1 also runs on a much slower 2G network with an even-slower Android 1.5. If you're looking for a smartphone with an inexpensive monthly plan, I'd suggest considering the BlackBerry Curve 8530, which is available on MetroPCS, Cricket, and Virgin Mobile. I'm also keeping my eyes out for Cricket's upcoming Huawei M860 Android phone, which will ship with Android 2.1.
For now, I can't recommend the Zio. The upcoming Android 2.1 update may change that, as it will add everything from pinch-to-zoom and Facebook integration to better overall performance.
Compare the Sanyo Zio by Kyocera (Cricket Wireless) with several other mobile phones side by side.
