| Review of the Kyocera K494 |
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The Kyocera K494 is a CDMA phone available in Canada through Telus PCS. Last Updated: 31-Dec-2004 |
Before reading this review, please read Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
Leading up to my review of the K494 I’d been hearing people say that it was
just a Kyocera Blade in a new shell. While
that might be true, the K494 does seem to have improved on the Blade in a few
areas.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: In this regard the K494 is among
the best CDMA phones I’ve so far tested. This comes as no surprise, given that
the old Blade model was extremely competent in this aspect of performance too.
The K494 can hold onto a signal extremely well, and it manages to do so with
very little muss or fuss. The audio remains quite solid until there is virtually
no signal left.
Over-the-road Performance: Sadly the K494 is much
like the Blade in this respect. When used in a moving vehicle the K494 seems to
draw attention to even minor signal issues, and it produces an annoyingly large
number of audio dropouts and malformations when on the move. I must confess that
the K494 seems to be a bit better than I remember the Blade, but not enough that
couldn’t be explained away by admitting that my memory of the Blade’s
performance may have been a little inaccurate. Never-the-less, the K494
performed noticeably worse in this regard than the
Nokia 3205i that I tested at the same time.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: Like the Blade before it the K494
has a fairly natural-sounding balance to its sound, with a tendency to be a bit
boomy at times. The boominess isn’t excessive, and you only really notice it
when talking with people who have naturally boomy voices (both male and female).
The tone of the phone is nice enough to carry on long conversations without
experiencing any fatigue.
Sound Reproduction: The K494 has very good incoming
sound reproduction, which does seem to be an improvement over the Blade (based
on my previous comments for that phone). Voices are reproduced quite accurately,
with little detectable distortion (unlike the Nokia 3205i, which produces an
extraordinary amount of distortion) and good sibilance (reproduction of “s”
sounds). Outgoing audio isn’t great, but it seems to be much improved from the
Blade, which was virtually the worst-sounding phone you could subject your
callers to. Unlike the incoming audio however, the outgoing audio suffers from
sibilance problems that make your “s” sounds seem scratchy.
Earpiece Volume: The K494 really shines in this
regard. Not only is the earpiece loud and clear, but the phone also includes
Kyocera’s excellent Smart Sound feature, which does a couple of things to help
you hear the phone under adverse conditions. First off it tries to level-off
each of the calls so that faint and loud callers alike sound roughly same
volume. This goes a long way to compensate for extremely faint callers. Secondly
is boosts the volume of the earpiece when loud background noise (at your end) is
detected. This is great when you have to use the phone in an extremely noisy
environment such as a crowded mall or on a busy street corner.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: Like many phones these days the
ringer on the K494 is really not up to the task. Even when the loudest possible
ringtone and the loudest possible ring volume are selected, the phone is still
difficult to hear in noisy environments, especially if it is put in a purse or
pocket (thus muffling the ringer somewhat). The ringer is more than adequate for
less severe conditions however, and so it will probably suit a large number of
users’ needs.
Keypad Design: The keypad of the K494 is a marked
improvement over that of the Blade. The keys have generally excellent feel, but
I wasn’t too pleased with the fact that they butted up against one another at
the tops and bottoms. This made it difficult to feel which button your finger
was actually on. However, Kyocera seems to have learned their lesson, and they
no longer paint on the numbers (which on the Blade simply wore off after
repeated use). Like proper keypad designs, the K494 has the numbers molded into
the keys.
Headset: The K494 comes with an industry-standard
2.5 mm headset jack, which means that you can use just about any headset or
earbud with this model. Sound quality and volume through the headset is very
good, so you won’t feel like you’ve been demoted to second class citizen just
because you decided to drive safely.
Display: The color display on the K494 is no
different from the one on the Blade. It’s quite a small screen, but to their
credit Kyocera has at least used fairly handsome and sharp fonts. Color
rendition is good, but the display is poor in direct sunlight and totally
useless when the backlight goes off. The display is about average for a
bottom-end color phone.
Phonebook: The phonebook on K494 shares the same
excellent search features found on the Blade. There are few phones with such an
amazingly easy-to-access phonebook. You can search for a phone number based on a
partial sequence of digits (like finding a number that ends in 7113 for
example). You can also set up the phone so that as you dial digits it treats
them as though they were T9 letter and displays matching phonebook entries as
you go. If that’s not what you want, you just continue to enter the full phone
number and dial as usual. These search capabilities make the K494’s phonebooks
one of the best on the market.
Conclusions
The K494 is mostly a good phone, but its over-the-road performance is sub-par,
and that really takes away from the overall performance of the phone. However,
for anyone looking for an entry-level Telus PCS phone at a low price, the K494
is still an excellent choice.
