by Curtis Fraser
Verizon’s new line of phones features the most advanced wireless internet system ever known with the new 4G LTE system. Among this line of phones is the Pantech Breakout, a sleek touch-screen phone that, at least on the surface, looks like a very nice phone, typical of the nice phones on the market today. An Android, the Breakout is a very nice phone, but until you get used to it, you will likely think it is the most frustrating and inconsistent cell phones ever created.
One of the first issues I had with this phone is that it is very difficult to set up whether the phone is on silent or not. Even when you think the phone is on silent, it still vibrates, and, perhaps ironically, there is no actual vibrate mode. There is a ringer mode and a vibration option, but to truly access vibrate mode, you have to change the ringtone to none. You also have to access a completely different menu to get your messaging ringtone set to vibrate, and for the first two weeks of my having this phone, whenever I tried to access said menu, the messaging application crashed. Before that, even when set to loud, there was still no message tone. Even after finally being able to set my ringtone and message tone to vibrate, the vibration is very soft and easy to miss. As someone who prefers the simple vibration as opposed to obnoxious ringtones, this feature is hard for me to overlook.
Another issue this phone frequently has is its very slow start up. When turning it on or just taking it out of sleep mode, the phone takes several moments to boot up, which can be very frustrating when you are trying to quickly look something up. This is also the case with a number of the Apps downloaded from the Android Market. Verizon advertises its 4G LTE system having “blazing speeds,” but they should focus more on the speed of their phone in general as well as just their internet.
One thing this phone does well is its messaging. Once getting around the issue with accessing the messaging settings, this phone is very convenient and quick for texting. The touch-screen phone uses “Swype,” with which you are given a QWERTY keyboard and you start at the first letter of the word and literally connect the dots to make the words you want. Although a little hard to get used to at first, once you get the hang of Swype, it is very quick, easy, and, honestly, kind of fun. This plus the ability to read entire conversations on one page without having to flip back and forth make this phone, although lacking in some other areas, a solid option for those looking to do a lot of texting.
When I first got this phone, I was having some serious issues with the battery life. I was told specifically in the Verizon Store that I would have to charge the battery every night, but I did not expect to have to plug it in at seven every evening, which was especially frustrating because I wasn’t even using it that much. After a few days, I was able to figure out that just turning down the phone’s brightness drastically improved the battery life. I still charge it every night to be safe, but since turning down the brightness, I have not come close to running out of battery in one day. Anybody who decides to purchase this phone will be far happier if they do bump down the brightness even just a few notches.
Overall, I would call this an average phone. There are certainly a few glitches that will take some getting used to, but if you’re patient with it and can overlook these small issues, you will be very satisfied with the Pantech Breakout from Verizon Wireless.
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