Credit has to be given to the Kyocera Torino for its unique look, but I’m not saying it’s pretty. As a messaging phone on MetroPCS, it’s functional in the BlackBerry-style of smartphones, though users may complain about the somewhat cramped full QWERTY keyboard and the lack of shortcuts. Still, the Torino is not an all-out eyesore and it offers some decent features (but they aren’t mind-blowing and don’t extend beyond anything conventional). Certainly you can drop your money on a better device, but it’s hard to drop lower than $29 without a contract.
Around the edges of the Kyocera Torino you’ll find a volume rocker and camera shutter on the left spine, a 2.5-millimeter headphone jack (which is just really sad to see in this day and age) and a Micro-USB port on the top, and on the back you’ll find the camera lens and a speaker. The front of the Torino is where you’ll find most of the action; there’s a 2.2-inch, 262,000-color QVGA LCD, the full QWERTY keyboard, and a navigation panel with a four-way toggle and central OK button and a couple of soft keys. Perhaps the best thing about the keyboard is the fact that it’s backlit but, again, that’s nothing revolutionary or unique to the Torino.
So, as a messaging device, the Kyocera Torino offers text and multimedia messaging (including an SMS Chat View that shows a chain of text messages to and from a single contact) and instant (AIM, Yahoo, MSN) and voice messaging. Other features include 10 polyphonic ringers (though ringtone caller ID is limited to groups only), gaming (depends on carrier), alarm clock, 500-name contact directory, voice memo recorder, scheduler, stopwatch, timer, tip calculator, airplane mode, and world clock.
Also, as a MetroPCS device, you’ll get access to their services, such as MyMetro, MetroBackup, @Metro (their app store), Metro Navigator, and MetroWeb.
While menus are easy enough to navigate, the next worse thing to the 1.3-megapixel camera with no video capture is the music player, which is virtually non-existent. Guess the Kyocera Torino wasn’t built for that.
Undressing the Kyocera Torino S2300
Underneath it all is Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, BREW 3.1.5, and WAP 2.0. It’s all packed into a device that measures 4.06” x 2.6” x 0.59” and weighs 3.49 ounces and comes with a rated talk time of 330 minutes and 300 hours of standby.
