Pantech Jest 2 (Verizon Wireless)

The original Pantech Jest (2 stars) wasn't all that funny, and unfortunately the new Jest 2 isn't much of an improvement. It swaps the first version's fatally flawed touchpad for a proper five-way control pad, and it's now a true world phone as well. If you want something small for voice calls and frequent texting, it's only a decent, middling choice now. Aside from its odd shape, this cell phone still doesn't stand out in any way.

Design, Controls, and Voice Quality
The Jest 2 looks a lot like the original version, which isn't a great thing at all, but at least it's comfortable to use. It measures a squat 3.7 by 2.6 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.1 ounces. The smooth, glossy plastic and rounded edges make it especially easy to slip the Jest into a pants pocket or purse, while the rubberized back panel adds comfort during long phone calls. The 2.4-inch, 320-by-240-pixel LCD looks bright and colorful.

The controls are a vast improvement over the last model, with a regular five-way control pad front and center and two hardware function keys in lieu of finicky capacitive buttons. Pantech also moved the four main function keys down a bit, and blended them into a single button bar with a textured surface that's easy to use one-handed. Pantech left the original keyboard largely intact, although the new one has more attractive, metallic red accents and brighter backlighting, which looks sharp.

Unlike the first model, the Pantech Jest 2 is a real globetrotter, with dual-band 1xRTT (850/1900 MHz) and quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) support for calls made overseas. But despite the 3G/CDMA sticker on the side, the Jest 2 is squarely a 2G-only device. There's no Wi-Fi either, but feature phones usually don't have Wi-Fi.

Voice quality was pretty poor, with a honking, midrangey sound in the earpiece that was uncomfortable to listen to. Transmissions through the microphone sounded thin and brittle, with plenty of street noise filtering through. Reception was average. Calls sounded fine through an Aliph Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset ($129, 4 stars) and the Nuance-powered voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth. The speakerphone sounded a bit harsh but had decent gain, if not quite enough for use outdoors. Compared with the first version, battery life fell almost an hour to 5 hours and 57 minutes of talk time, but this is still pretty good.?

User Interface, Apps, and Multimedia
This is really just a voice call and texting phone, but we'll dive in and talk about its other features just for completion's sake. The home screen's animated wallpaper is cute. The main menu consists of nine icons arranged in a grid pattern. Verizon finally dropped its ridiculous $5-per-month charge for e-mail, and now gives you free access as part of the $10 data plan (which also lets you browse the Web). One nice bonus: You get Opera Mini as the default browser. Opera's server side compression helps with delivering Web pages more quickly, though there's only so much you can do on 2G; stick with WAP sites and it works well enough. You also get voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions with VZ Navigator for an additional $10 per month.

The Jest 2 still isn't much of a multimedia phone, though. The non-standard 2.5mm headphone jack makes finding decent sounding earbuds virtually impossible. There's just 44MB of free internal memory?bizarre, since the original version had almost a gigabyte free. At least the Jest 2 recognized all tracks on my 32GB SanDisk microSD card, not just the ones in a specific folder. Music tracks sounded clear and bright through Plantronics BackBeat Go Bluetooth headphones ($79, 4 stars), and I heard none of the dropouts that plagued the first Pantech Jest. Standalone video playback is out, though.

Camera and Conclusions
The 2-megapixel camera has no flash or auto-focus, and is, to put it bluntly, a total disaster. There's about a second of delay between when you hear the shutter sound and when the photo is actually taken, meaning you'll have to sit perfectly still or risk blurring the result. Even when I did sit still, photos had plenty of color noise and were never completely sharp. The video recorder is also completely useless, thanks to its maximum 176-by-144-pixel video size, which is barely larger than the resolution of an iPhone app icon. There's no excuse for this on a phone today, even a free one, especially since plenty of low-end devices with 1.3-megapixel cameras snap usable photos.

Feature phones are a tough sell to begin with these days, thanks to steadily dropping smartphone prices. The Jest 2 acquits itself better than the first model, but just barely. It's a decent buy if you want a free phone for lots of texting and voice calls, and you have a separate point-and-shoot camera and iPod. Another good texting alternative is the LG Cosmos 2 (Free, 3 stars), with its better voice quality, more traditional dimensions, roomier horizontal QWERTY keyboard, and second numeric keypad. Our favorite feature phone on Verizon Wireless remains the admittedly expensive Casio G'zOne Ravine 2 ($199.99, 4 stars), which offers stellar voice quality and stands up to plenty of abuse, although it's not a texting phone like the Jest 2.

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time:?5 hours 57 minutes

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