Kyocera Strobe Our Rating:

This entry was edited on June 16, 2008 after severe problems with our model as well as several warranty replacements.  Its rating was also significantly reduced.  At this point, we highly do not recommend this phone.

At first glance, the Strobe appears to be just an abnormally thick candy bar phone.  At second glance, this phone appears to make a turn for the better, turning out to be quite a pleasant surprise while opening up to reveal a full-size QWERTY-style keyboard.  Additional features like email and web compatibility make this a would-be nice entry level business phone without the cost of an expensive PDA or smartphone.  It would work great for anyone who does a lot of typing, via text, email, or instant messaging.

However, once you start using the phone and realize that it’s going to reset on you, constantly glitch up, and delete all incoming text messages once your inbox is full, regardless of if you tell it to clear out old messages to make space, you start to become a bit less impressed.

That’s pretty disappointing news, especially when one thing we liked about this phone is that when it’s placed in silent mode, nothing can cause it to make a sound.  Even if the battery goes low or you receive an instant message from a buddy in the middle of a meeting, you can be confident that you won’t be interrupting your boss in the middle of his presentation.  We’ve found this to not be the case with other phones, including Motorolla and Samsung phones, and were actually excited at first that this phone really is silent when it’s supposed to be.  Too bad just about everything else about it sucks…

The Strobe was far from flawless.  There were a few minor quirks with this phone… occasionally things got a bit glitchy, and some of the menus were not set up as logically as we thought they could have been.  Of course, sometimes the poor phone would just get so confused that it would completely reset, even right while trying to make or receive a call.  On top of all that, the camera was about the worst quality we’ve ever seen.

Overall, we were very unimpressed with the Kyocera Strobe, and are really hoping to see some seriously better products from Kyocera in the future.  As for the Strobe, we give it 2 stars (and barely, too) since it certainly is not worth the headache.  However, we were impressed by the design and hope to see a phone with the same features, full-size keyboard, and silent mode that’s actually silent.

Would we recommend that you get one?  Definitely not.  But it’s certainly up to you.  Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.