Customer Reviews

Pantech C810 Duo Phone (AT&T, Phone Only, No Service)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought my 18-year-old daughter this phone to replace a Razor so she could text more easily. She has had it for 6 months and LOVES it. Very easy to use as a "texting tool". She does not connect to the internet on it. The smaller size is nice, it fits well in a pocket.

I then bought the phone for my 16-year old son, and had a different experience. After 25 days, we returned it because it froze frequently, and would not receive phone calls/texts occasionally even with full bars of service. He regularly had to remove the battery and put it back in to reset it. The new replacement pantech duo phone has worked great, no problems. He has had this one for 2 months.

I am guessing that maybe there are some duds out there, so just make sure you can exchange it before you plunk down your money. (I purchased mine through an AT&T store and had no problem with the return.)

I purchased this phone after reading mixed reviews.. I am glad that I followed my gut on this one and got one.. Other phones promise, but this one delivers.. The bluetooth is solid, using the device for email and messaging is the easiest I have ever experienced. I get service with this phone in areas where my other phones wouldnt.. the QWERTY is very usable and the phone is very solid.. I have dropped mine numerous times and it still works perfectly... I am getting my husband one for his bithday since he is always asking to use mine!!!

I purchased the Pantech Duo model C810 because of the qwerty keyboard feature. That part of it worked fine. The rest of it I was more than a little disappointed in.
MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT is the sound quality of a normal voice conversation. It was extremely muffled and at times unintelligible.

QWERTY KEYBOARD: This is a nice feature if you send a lot of text or typing. The layout is, of course, small and takes some practice to get the right keys. It is still better than tapping out on a numerical layout.
BLUETOOTH: I tried to use bluetooth to transfer my ringtones from my other phone and received an error message stating that "was not supported". Although it did come with a data cable in the box to transfer them from a computer.
MENUS: It is easy to get lost in the menus. It took quite a while to even find where to change certain options or how to set ringtones. I feel I am very knowledgeable on with electronics. I have had and set up many different cell phones by several different manufacturers. With that said, I quickly became lost in the menus.
I will be returning this phone and do not recommend it if your primary use for it is voice communication.

Let me first start off by saying I LOVE AT&T- I love their services, I love their customer service, they have great phones. I was trying to switch over from Sprint. Sprint sucks. their customer service is horrific, I've had nothing but problems, and most of their phones fall short of the current technology.

Secondly, IF YOU BUY CELL PHONES WITH SERVICE FROM AMAZON, YOU CANNOT EXCHANGE THEM. You can return them for a refund, your account will remain active with the cellular carrier you chose, but you cannot exchange the phone through Amazon, and you have to close the cell account, return the phones and wait 60 days before ordering cells with service from Amazon.com again, if you decide to do so. I will not.

but back to the Duo. we've had this phone since Jan 2, 2008. they are being returned, without exchange mind you.

I have a Treo 700wx and my daughter has the Rumor with Sprint. she loves her slide-out QWERTY and YIM, and I was envious of that- I have a full QWERTY, but no java support on WM5 for instant messaging services (I can't even send picture text messages without 3rd-party software). we wanted to switch over to AT&T for several reasons, and the Duo seemed like a good match for the both of us. so I ordered 2 of them through Amazon. I should have listened to the reviews.

in our opinion, the Duo is small in size, difficult to handle, and the buttons are small as well as difficult to manage. the slide-out QWERTY is the second "layer" and it is not hard to slide out- actually, it's hard to make sure it doesn't! the 12-key pad has a locking to it, to avoid accidental sliding, unlike the QWERTY. in all, it felt like with one drop on the carpet, this thing would break into it's three layers, and you feel that sensation while in your hand.

the QWERTY keys are square, rubbery and flush with the tray, so it is difficult to type with. I had fun playing with it, but my daughter was almost crying because she wanted her Rumor back. she really did not like this phone. she thought she was going to break it.

I'm a multi-tasker, and I could not hold the phone between my ear and shoulder. the way the slider is, there's not enough there to hold onto this way. I hadn't investigated enough to know how to turn the speaker phone on.

calls sounded muffled on both mine and my daughter's. even with the volume all the way up, it was hard to hear whomever we were speaking to. we checked with AT&T to see if it was the service area, but it was not.

it is attractive to look at, until you see the finger smudges all over. the camera was decent. the colors and screen clarity are great, but the screen is small to me. great AT&T services to use the internet, instant messaging, etc.. WM6, which is great, but you cannot customize the today screen with what *you* want on it, unlike my Treo with WM5.

so we're back with our Sprint phones for the time being, until all this mess gets straightened out with Amazon, so we can have our phone numbers ported back on phones we really want, with an excellent service provider.

This phone is one of the best phones I have ever used.

The features on this phone make life a lot easier because it's like a PDA but smaller and a phone. Now, I am not a business person on the go, but I'm a full time student and working 30 hours a week, so things can get pretty crazy for me. This phone has helped with scheduling my classes, work , and time set aside for homework.

If I had to name one problem, it would be that when I first received this phone, I got a faulty one. When I went to the settings menu, I found codes instead recognizable language. So, I returned it and AT&T gave me a new one with no hassle at all.

Some people have given this phone bad reviews and that's their opinion. I think they don't like this phone because they are too used to their old phone and too stubborn to break their shell and try something new. My point is this, if you're looking for a new phone and you want your day to flow with easy, give this phone a try.

There are many pros and cons to the Pantech Duo. Unfortunately, there are probably more cons than pros.

PROS
- The keyboard feature is amazing. It's great for people that love to text.
- The Internet feature is handy. I can look up the weather, go on myspace, and look for directions or maps on mapquest.
- You get a couple entertaining games with the phone.
- There's a calander that you can write upcoming appointments in and the appointments for that day or the next day will show up on the homescreen (for those people that are forgetful and need to be reminded often).
- There are many options for the homescreen layout.

CONS-
- Bad sound quality. Even when the volume is all the way up, I can't hear the person I'm talking to well.
- Even if you have no intention of using the Internet, you have to pay $30 a month for the Internet option.
- When you change the homescreen layout, you probably won't realize you have texts, missed calls, or voicemails because it's not noticable on the screen. I ended up missing a call for a job interview and I didn't realize it for days.
- There's other little quirks that bother me but probably nobody else, such as the inability to edit phone numbers without saving them and not being able to see the time on text messages or recent calls.
- The Internet option is great, like I said, but it takes awhile to do anything on the Internet because computer screens are huge and cell phone screens are so small, making it a little bit slower and more difficult to use.

I would recommend this phone to somebody that texts a lot, because of the keyboard feature. I would not recomend this phone to someone that talks on the phone a lot, because the sound quality sucks. Also, if you don't want the Internet option, I recommend looking for another phone. You don't want to waste $30 a month if you're not going to use the Internet.

Overall, it was kind of a disappointment.

I have had this phone for a month. This is a great smart phone .
Web download times are great. The phone switches to landscape view with in 2 seconds not instantly, but not bad either. The color on both screens is great. Although the phone only has a 1.3 mega piexel camera
it takes pretty good pictures.The phone can be set to have your e-mail
come to your phone almost as soon as it reaches your work/personal
e-mail accounts. The dual slide function is great. The phone overall
seems pretty solid mechanically. I have dropped the phone several times
and have had no problems with it.

CONS: The battery life leaves much to be desired. If I use the phone
a lot, I have to charge the phone daily, sometimes twice a day. If I
only use the phone for conversation the battery may last 2 days at most.

I've been using this phone since it came out at the AT&T store. It's my first smartphone; I have owned PDAs before but didn't choose to enter the smartphone/PDAphone fray until now.

Let me first address the physical characteristics of the device. I think it's a great form factor. The dual sliding is very natural. I wish the QWERTY keyboard were a little larger but it's much more usable than the devices with the full keyboard exposed on the front. The number pad makes for natural and easy dialing; I agree that the keys could have been made a little better in terms of being able to dial by touch (they're smooth) but once you are accustomed to the layout it's no big deal.

I've dropped my phone a number of times with no ill side effects. I don't perceive the flimsiness at all.

It actually even fell out of my shirt pocket into a lake and I was able to recover it but that's only because I knew what to do and did it quickly. I can't attribute that to the build quality of the device and would not recommend or expect others to repeat my mistake. :-)

My home town is Woodinville, WA. I get great 3G and/or Edge connectivity pretty much everywhere I go even through the mountain passes. When in my home area I have never had the freezes / lockups / battery drainage problems that have been reported with this phone.

That did change this past summer when I went to Belgrade, ME. While I was there I experienced all of the bad complaints that people have had with this phone - lockups, battery discharge, not accepting calls somewhat randomly etc. I don't know if it was due to the service provider or the nature of the towers in the area with the phone being unable to deal or what but while I was on vacation, it was just as bad as people said.

But then when I returned home, back to normal.

Pantech has released an update for the phone to Windows Mobile 6.1. The browser is more usable and sliding the phone open/closed answers/hangs-up as you would expect. Previously I had a utility that I had installed that did this task for me.

Smartphone stuff like email, calendar and contacts are great. I was able to set up a connection to my mail service without having to do through a PC for ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center.

Summary: I think this is a really super phone and will probably upgrade to the Duo 2 when it's released and my contract subsidizes it (July 2009). The flakiness that people have experienced is real; I've seen both sides. It seems to have to do with location / carrier. The experience in the greater Seattle WA area has been flawless. The changelog for the WM 6.1 update from Pantech includes some radio fixes so it's possible that the observed flakiness is fixed with the update. I like the form factor over any other qwerty keyboard phones I've seen (whether hidden/sliding keyboard or exposed).

As a point of reference, the iPhone graphics/experience is better (hands down!) but no keyboard and the exchange/calendar integration is not as tight. I have an iPod Touch for everything fun that I would have preferred the iPhone for and the Pantech Duo for being a good phone+calendar.

I purchased this phone for my wife (the red Duo) to help her stay organized. And so far she loves it. We haven't experienced any of the issues other reviews noted. My wife hasn't had any major complaints.

This is a Smartphone and does not have a touch screen, but once you get used to the navigation methodology of smart phones you won't think twice about it. The only complaint I have is there does not appear to be a light to indicate the caps lock or the function lock is on. When trying to switch from inputting numbers (using the keyboard) to letter the function key stays locked. This is more than likely a lack of familiarity with this functionality, but it didn't seem to be intuitive.

You'll have a little harder time finding software for the Smartphone, but there is some great stuff out there. Like any device the software you install will make a huge difference in its usability. I would suggest using SBSH Facade, Pocket Informant, and Pocket Quickens, to name a few.

If you are a power user, you will probably get a little frustrated with this device. You are limited to microSD cards (and not microSDHC cards) so you are limited to 2 GB of extra storage. For most users this isn't an issue, but if you want to store tons of music and movies you may need to look else where.

For my wife and most users this is a great phone, and I would recommend it. But if you are a power user you may want to look at the Tilt or something similar.

First, I would like to state that I did not buy this from Amazon.com, but from AT&T. This review is more about the phone itself with a few snippits about phone service.

Overall, I really like this phone. I am not much of a texting person, but I found the pad useful for other things such as entering contacts. My fiance has stated that he found the MS programs very useful for entering his grades (he's a teacher) and that has saved him some time.

The picture quality is not wonderful with this phone. My main issue, actually, was just getting the picture feature to turn on. I need to hold down and hit the button a few times to get the camera to turn on, and I love taking photos on my phone. They could work to improve this feature.

My fiance and I bought the family plan from AT&T. So far, I have not been able to send him a text, and the book does not state anything about texting other then the instructions for doing so. We did not buy a texting plan, but I was under the assumption that we would be charged per text message. Need to contact AT&T about this.

The sound is alright on this phone. Not the best, but it works very well for what we need. At least, unlike my previous T-Mobile with Razor phone, we can contact each other when we're on the bus (could not get through/ would not ring with my previous plan). It sounds just a little bit more muffled when doing this, but we can fully understand each other in this situation.

Overall, I am finding this phone to my needs and am happy with the purchase.