Casio G'zOne Boulder - Review

Casio G'zOne Boulder - Review Welcome to the phonearena.com video review of the Casio G’zOne Boulder. The Boulder is one of two push to talk devices form Verizon wireless. While both devices due passed military certifications, the Boulder is more wrap and tumble of the two, passing military A10F specifications for dust, shock resistance, and water resistance. In our time with the phone, we dunked in the fish tank, threw it out of a second story window and even run over with our ca and the phone passed with flying colors. There are two color options available. What you see here is obviously the orange and black. There's also a black and silver version. The black and the silver version have black with the oranges here as well as on the back. The battery is black for both of them. In the black and silver version, the black is coated in soft touch paint but in the orange it’s hard plastic. The phone is extremely well put together. However, to hold it on your hand you never know it’s so tough. The front of the phone contains a white on black circular LCD display. It also has a 1.3-megapixel camera with flash. The flash can actually be used as flat flashlight. And on that front screen, a digital compass can be brought up. The Adventure is definitely geared more tor outdoorsy people. On the left side of the phone you can see the small push to talk button up to the top. We’re crazy about this button. First off, it’s not really easy to find with your hand and second of all, even when you do find it, it’s small. We watched for further placement of traditional push to talk buttons which should be in the middle of the phone and much larger. Instead, we find the volume rocker there and below that a multi function button. On the right side of the phone is the Micro SD port. The Micro SD card is extremely recessed which is necessary because its port used to be waterproof. The same thing can be said for the charging port on the bottom which also doubles the headset port. The back of the phone— the battery actually has a sliding lock. The battery comes off simply. It’s a full piece not a battery door with the battery. Though it looks like there's series of speaker here, if you can see the right side, they only have the real perforated holes. You probably can’t read this label here but it warns us that the ports on the phone, the Micro SD and the charging both must be completely closed for the phones to maintain any water resistance. You also notice the two charging ports on the back. In a nice touch, the Boulder comes with the desktop charging cradle an accessory we’re not used to seeing with Verizon phones these days. Opening the phone up, reveals a small 2-inch QVGA display. At the bottom is a pretty traditional keypad. The keys aren’t the greatest in the world. We often found ourselves pressing the wrong keys and they don’t have a whole of lot to play so they do offer a reassuring click when pressed. The screen is crisp but we would like it to see a little bigger. However, the G’zOne does have multi-media functions but it’s definitely not a fashion phone. Its purposed built for the rough and tumble and it serves that purpose well. There isn't anything especial to say about the user interface on the Boulder. It does have an attractive skin, a couple of them actually but in the end, its still the same five-tab version of the Verizon interface that we’ve come to load. The Boulder does have a full set of multi-media features. It does not support V-cast TV. However, it does V-cast video and V-cast music with rhapsody service. It also features a 1.3-mega pixel camera, a step up from the VGA camera found on the typecast but the step down from the two-mega pixel camera found on the original type V. Of course the big draw for the phone is to push the talk service although I hadn’t contacted now here with more of our other demo units. In general, we found the push to talk service was okay. As you can see right now, we are in a video coverage. At the top up here, you can see the E-video is black and white instead of the normal white on black which means that we do have to push to talk coverage as well. You can see there's a slight delay between the two phones that we’re talking with but not much. When we—the whole coverage, we found that it was pretty decent of a service. We really just like the sound and there's no way to disable that. We didn’t think we’ve find a chirp that we just like more than Nextel but the Verizon manages to find one. Our problems came in when the reception was in fringe areas or when we drop down to one X. In those times, the service could take up to 30 seconds for the call to connect and at times even after connected, they’re delayed about up to 15-seconds between the message going from one phone to the other. It doesn’t sound like a big deal but when you're used to the instinct connection the Nextel always offers, it’s a huge difference. We ran to a few other issues too as there where times when we have service but not able to complete a call or when the call would be completed but there is no audio. Overall, we really think that Verizon run the course with their push to talk service. Without Nextel inoperability, the service will never take off. It’s time for them to scrap it and go to something new. About the only thing, that impressed us with the Boulder was its toughness. The thing really can take just about anything you throw at it. However, call quality in the phone was only so-so. Reception was sub-part to average to best and the push to talk service when not the phone fault is mediocre. If you're in need of a phone that can take extreme punishment, we highly recommend the Boulder. However, don’t buy it for any other reason.