Post your comments and questions on the Kyocera SmartPhone QCP-6035 review

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ActiveTuning - Partner & Director Of Sales & Marketing

It's been brought to my attention by Matthew Suhajda, a sales rep with Sprint PCS, that the phone is currently priced significantly lower than what was paid for it five months ago. The original pricing of the phone was $499 with cellular contract, $599 retail. The street pricing on the phone right now is about $200 with contract, $300 retail.

Furthermore, Kyocera has a $150 mail-in rebate available if you purchase the phone via Verizon Wireless. According to the website, the deal expires today, but for some reason, it goes on to say that it applies to phones purchased through 5-31-02. You'd probably better call for details, but the web page can be viewed here. The end price with contract is $99.99 for this awesome phone.

If you miss out on that deal, SprintPCS has the phone listed on their website here for $149.99 with a contract. Still a good price for the phone.

Be sure to let us know if you get in on one of these great deals!

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

As a Palm user for 4 1/2 years now I beg to differ on your views of the kyocera 6035. I bought it at Office Depot back in December '01 for $179. I just saw it yesterday @ Best buy for $149-. If someone wants something in this day of the internet, you'll be pretty hard pressed not to find it. I have heard stories of it going for as low as $79 - $ 99- around the country. I really love the integration of all that the phone/palm does. I also have an air prime digital link and it is turned off right now because it isn't as near as good as far as working with the Visor Prism. The jog dial, the ability to email, fax and phone is great. When the Palm VII came out in 10/99 it was very cool. The kyo takes the palm to the next level. My only concern is the screen. after using a color device for a little over two years, it's tough to go backwards.

Thanks for your feedback, John, but I do have a question. How did my views differ from yours? The only problems I had with the phone were the (then) steep price, and, fact of the matter is, buying this phone in a storefront *can* be hard. When we acquired this phone, we had to check with several Sprint stores in the area to get it - None of the office supply stores or other cellphone vendors in our area carried it.

[EDIT]And let me point out that, as a professional review site, we're primarily concerned with purchases of new equipment from established vendors, seeing as how buying used equipment doesn't guarantee that you'll get the same experience as you would buying a new phone firsthand. Also, the two primary vendors of the phone, Sprint PCS and Verizon, both use subsidy locks on the phone to prohibit users from switching phone networks, even after they've completed their contract. There isn't any documented way to unlock the subsidy lock, outside of some social engineering on the part of your old wireless carrier. I wouldn't be surprised if Alltel does it too.

And let's face it - If you buy it on the Internet used, then you had better hope that the seller is friendly enough to have either removed the lock for you, or helps you contact his old vendor to try to get it removed.[/EDIT]

But those were really the only reasons I docked points on the phone...I can think of a couple of other trifles, but all in all, the device is great. Did you think I was overly critical of it? And if you did, how so?

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I guess I just felt like you didn't see much value in the phone. I remember paying $ 449- for the VII at 2mgs, so even at $399- or higher this thing is a steal. I guess I just didn't feel the review was all that favorable. My error.

And I certainly wasn't speaking of buying one used.

Yeah, I thought the phone was really nice...and that's why I gave it an 8.0 out of 10. Personally, I haven't tried the Treo yet (I'm waiting on Handspring to send us one), but I'm expecting that I'll actually like the Kyocera better than the Treo. I dunno...the Treo just looks...awkward...and the only places I can really see for improvement are with the software integration, and even that's asking a lot, since there's not much room for improvement. :-)

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

Sorry...I had kinda assumed you were. I'm not sure about Verizon, but I know for a fact that Sprint, and many other non-PCS wireless carriers, are very edgy about supporting phones that they don't carry or that they didn't sell. Among other things is the issue that they don't always have the information on hand to program a wide variety of phones.

I used to work for an office retailer that also sold cellphones, and I was the sole individual responsible for that division. With ten different models from six different vendors, each with its own programming instructions, things got complicated. Couple that with people misplacing or losing those programming instructions, and the bureaucracy that we had to go through to get the damned instructions in the first place...It made things a royal pain.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

I run the Silicon Valley Palm Users group and we saw one back in November. It's very cool, but I don't see what the big deal is. Not for a grey scale unit for $500- or $ 600-. Hopefully the color kyo will be out soon 'cause us old guys have trouble with grey scale. I still debate whether to fire up my sprint module for my prism. What's your experience with the blackberry 'always on' devices?

If memory serves, Handspring will be offering the Treo 270 (The color model) in the late summer. Again, that's straight out of memory, which probably means it's actually called the Treo 521 and it's not out until the eighth Wednesday of 2004...

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What's your experience with the blackberry 'always on' devices?

Not as much as I'd like...meaning none. I think Dave (our site owner) has used a few of them. To my knowledge, we don't really have a relationship yet with Research In Motion...No reason why we shouldn't of course!

Aside from the always-on aspect of it, the problem that always bothered me about the Blackberry series was that the interface looks about as friendly as those on the Sharp $20 organizers in Walmart. If I get the chance to try one of these, though, I'll certainly either rescind my opinion, or I'll have factual basis for it.

[EDIT]Oops...I thought you meant a color Treo. Is there actually a color Kyocera in the works? It's the first I've heard of it. We'll have to see about asking Kyocera Wireless about it. I kinda got the impression that Kyocera's regular phones were doing a lot better, and that they weren't as interested in competing in this sector.

Did I read the first page of this review right?? 2MB Flash and 4MB RAM??

"The Kyocera contains a faster core processor (The venerable 33MHz Dragonball) and the full-sized 2 MB flash ROM space. Many complained with the pQ that it wasn't capable of handling PalmOS upgrades. Though you generally won't do many phone upgrades on the QCP-6035, it's within the generally accepted outline of standard Palm characteristics. It also features 4 MB of user RAM for installing extra apps and your ever-burgeoning database of phone contacts...because let's face it - If you're getting a cellPDA, then you're probably wanting the ease of one-click phone dialing and other similar address book features."



I just got this phone and it does NOT have Fash and it's 8MB RAM.

As far a price..... Circuit City was running a deal last week where the phone is $149 with a Sprint $50 Rebate and a CC $99 rebate and now Comp USA is running the same deal until 5/12. The phone is free now!!!!

That's very strange. I know it's 8 MB, and it even says so in the specifications list directly above that paragraph. Very odd...

As far as the OS ROM, it *is* flashable. If you read the QCP6035 boards, you'll see that users there are upgrading/downgrading their OS all the time, trying to find the best version for them, and sharing new finds with the other users when they take their phones in for professional programming. I even have the quasi-legal flash upgrade kit myself.

And as far as your pricing goes...when I got this phone, it was expensive. Try $400. The price seems to have dropped off dramatically since then (late last year), but it also seems that perhaps the Sprint Store where we got the phone overcharged us as well. At any rate, if it weren't for all the rebates, it'd be expensive, seeing as how that price is including a 1-year or 2-year service contract, and other phones are free w/service contract, and no rebates to mess around with. You're still out $150 until the rebate check is returned to you, and it's highly possible (I haven't read the terms) that they may not give you that money until your service contract is complete.

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"And knowing is half the battle!"

That IS strange. I installed JackFlash to see what I can do about preloaded apps and move databases to the Flash for emergencies, but JF says that there is NO flash and JF is rendered useless. Maybe there is a problem with JF. If there is flash memory, why haven't they (Kyo) released a 4.1 Palm OS version??

-B-

That's what I suspect...not so much that there's a problem with JackFlash, but maybe it's not compatible with the Kyocera, for whatever reason. And your concerns are shared - There are a lot of QCP-6035 users out there who were quite annoyed to find out that the newer software upgrades included redundant apps (Eg. Palm Mail *and* Eudora Mail), and that they weren't able to optionally select components to go in the ROM. Now they've got this chunk of memory being taken up by an app they will certainly never use.

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If there is flash memory, why haven't they (Kyo) released a 4.1 Palm OS version??

I think that's because it's not really needed. I mean, most of the changes are really about back-end support. Can you cite a particular reason why you'd need 4.1 over 3.5? The only thing I can think of are apps...but I'm hard pressed to find apps out there that require even 3.5.

OK, I figured it out!! Jackflash must not be compatible. I just checked out FlashPro from TRG on www.palmgear.com and version 1.10 introduced compatibility with the Kyocera Smartphone 6035.

So there you have it.