Casio Exilim C721 (Verizon Wireless)

7/10 Great Camera / Phone Software Could be Better

Gary Raymond - 06/19/09  (Edited: 06/19/09)

Last week, I upgraded my 3-year old Samsung A990 to the new Casio Exilim C721, and have now used it extensively. The GOOD news: G1) C721 has a good camera, including optical zoom. I like the photos and controls, and feel this upgrade from 3.2 Mp to 5.1 Mp is important G2) VZ Navigator works almost everywhere on the C721, including inside many buildings where I know many competitors won't operate well. G3) I like the flexibility of assigning shortcuts on the C721 in comparison to the more limited A990. G4) Great screen, easy to use keyboard, nicely lit keyboard. G5) Nice size, fits well in my hand. G6) Very good battery life. G7) The flip and rotate screen is great! Using the phone as a camera easy and natural. G8) Decent sound quality for rings and speaker phone. Good phone reception and operation. G9) One button shortcut to place into vibrate mode, turn on speaker, activate voice control, speed dial, lock the phone, and more. G10) Instant response, no hesitation to any function - except camera does take a couple of seconds to start. G11) Water & Dust resistance - should come in handy in future. The BAD news: Most of the new features I was hoping to be upgraded (aside from the camera) still have the same A990 disappointing limitations; some are quite irksome. I don't know if it is Casio or Verizon who are responsible for this poor software. B1) Verizon calendar functionality is mediocre. The C721 can't: tie appointments to contacts and/or notes. It does not permit setting default values for appointment fields. It forces me to specify CDT vs CST. Why not give me the option of just specifying CT without the "D" or "S". Let the cell network figure out whether daylight savings time is active. B2) C721 contact groups are limited to a max of 10 entries. How in the world do programmers think you can sell a phone with 500 or 1000 phone contacts and only permit a max of 10 contacts per group? B3) When I looked up contacts on the A990, I would just open the phone and type the starting letters of a name. For example, to look up "Elaine", just type: 352 (more digits if you like) and press UP arrow. Contacts matching 352 would pop-up. Fast and simple. With the C721, I have to use contact search method (also available on A990): press "Contacts", and multi-tap through names: C335552 - typically twice the keystrokes. I don't appreciate search for contacts only by matching characters at the beginning of name. I need to search by any portion of name, by phone number or area code. I store names as "Bob Jones". I want to search for "Jones" and also find "Bob Jones". The A990 had a note field associated with each contact; the C721 has dropped this important feature. Overall, this phone has barely adequate, mediocre contact list & group software functionality. B4) Casio photo editing software is inadequate. My A990 provided ability to rotate, crop and size, annotate, copy & paste, apply various effects to photos. The C721 cannot rotate photos, cannot perform the majority of A990 photo editing functions, and the minimal crop & resize are only of limited use. I'm really disappointed by the mismatch of software to this better type of camera - a significant step down from what I had with the A990. Summary Well, I got the improved optics, resolution, and optical zoom I wanted in this upgrade from my old Samsung A990 to the new Casio Exilim C720. Pretty much everything else is on par with what I had or a downgrade. With better software, I would rate the camera 4.5 out of 5.0, but have to rate it 3.5 instead. With better contact and calendar software, ease of use should have been a full point higher than the 3.0 rating I giving the C721. I'm also giving myself a "2" for making the decision to do this upgrade. I should have continued to wait for a more significant camera-phone product. And for those of you who would suggest the Samsung Omnia 5 Mp phone - I've used one for about a week, and didn't like it either. I'm convinced that Verizon just doesn't offer a high-quality full-featured camera-phone product yet in the USA.