Kyocera Neo E1100 – With Bluetooth

This is a clamshell phone which goes by two names in the market – Kyocera Neo and Kyocera E1100.  This phone is covered by MetroPCS. The handset has a very glossy body which easily attracts a lot of fingerprints. I would recommend you to keep a cleaning cloth close, if you are a hygiene freak because the prints make the phone look very ugly.

The phone is very stylish and the coolest thing about it is the light pipe which runs on the lid. The light blinks when you get a call and this adds to the aesthetic appeal of the phone. This light pipe surrounds the camera lens too.  Being a flip type phone, there is an external display on the lid which is very small. It just shows the time and date and is not visible when the backlighting is off. Characters on the external display are very small and not easy to read. To switch it on, you just have to press the volume rocker button. I wish the screen was a bit bigger, I was expecting the numeric caller ID too. The external display is also hard to see in direct sunlight.

The internal display of the Kyocera Neo E1100 is a bit smaller but not a deal breaker in an entry level phone like this. The colors are vibrant and the screen too looks bright enough. Reading text on the screen is easy. One thing I really liked on the phone was the ‘info’ feature for the menu items. Select this and you will get tiny boxes which explain the feature to you. It is great for someone who hasn’t used a mobile phone before.

The navigation array of the Kyocera Neo E1100 is made up of two soft buttons, Send-End keys, back button, speakerphone button, and the traditional four way navigation button with OK button in the middle. These lie flat on the surface and hence you have to press a bit hard. Underneath this, there is the numeric keypad and these buttons too are flat on the surface. There are ridges around the buttons and I won’t recommend this cell phone to people who message a lot.

Kyocera Neo E1100 has a 1.3 megapixel camera and the photo quality is pretty mediocre. But I won’t complain about it here because this is an entry level phone. The manufacturer could have at least put a two megapixel camera. The photos are usable just for photo caller ID and nothing else. Other features on the phone include voice activated dialing, Bluetooth, speakerphone, etc.

Voice quality of the Kyocera Neo E1100 is fine but I wish the volume was a bit louder. You won’t be able to talk clearly in environments with lots of noises. For the speakerphone, I had to keep the handset close to my mouth while speaking or else my friends couldn’t hear me. This phone is made just for people who want to make calls and nothing else. There are no high end features here at all.