Sanyo KATANA DLX Cell Phone / Sprint Service

Since there seams to be a serious lack of good info about currently available Sprint cell phones that work with BMW hands-free, here's my attempt at following Jonathan's format for reviewing the Sanyo Katana Dlx.

I was really nervous about picking a phone, given the finiky nature of phones and hands-free car systems. But Saturday I took a gamble and picked up a new Sanyo Katana Dlx. I won't go into the phone itself other than to say I really like it - I did some web research ahead of time and there are plenty of good reviews of this phone, and for the most part it gets high marks from those who have been using it for a while. The areas it was given lower marks were things I won't use much anyway.

Anyway for those who are looking for a good phone (Not PDA) with plenty of features and works well with BMW's car system (At least the 2008 535i), here you go....


Phone: Sanyo Katana Dlx
Carrier: Sprint

Car Tested: 2008 BMW 535i (no Navigation Package)


Bluetooth cell phone test results:
Sound Quality: 8
Mobile pairs to car: Yes
Audio (receive/transmit): Yes
Transfer of phone book: Yes (See Note 1)
Place calls using dial by number: Yes
Receive calls: Yes
Display of signal strength: Yes
Place calls via speech recognition (i.e. dial by name): Yes (see note 2)
Caller ID for incoming calls - what shows up on display: Name (if number matches entry in address book), otherwise number.
Rings through vehicle: Yes
Send/end call: Yes

Phone Info:
Software Rev: 1.010SP
Hardware: 0203
PRL: 60610

Notes:

1) Address book transferred completely. When a Katana phone book entry had multiple numbers for a name- e.g. home, work, and mobile, the iDrive menu showed each separately like this:

John (H)
John (W)
John (M)

2) Because I didn't have the NAV option, I had to manually set up voice dial name/number entries per the BMW manual instructions. Worked fine.