4 reviews for F1 Orchid – with Navigation and Weather

1. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Brent L. (verified owner) – May 29, 2021

   After a month of use, I’m very pleased with my F1 Orchid. Call clarity is excellent, the Voice to Text function (with premium services package) works really well and makes texting incredibly quick and easy for a flip phone. A single push of a button gives you the weather forecast for the day, then the hourly forecast, the 10 day forecast etc. The GPS finds your location, and points of interest quickly, and if needed gives you turn by turn navigation. On a full charge the battery has lasted more than 50 hours. The F1 is a nice size, fits comfortably in your hand or pocket, has large buttons, and a quality feel. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a simple but high quality phone.

   For those of you who have the time and patience to read more, here is my full review:

   This review is being written by a person who has owned and used a F1 Orchid daily for one month, after 12 years of using a Motorola 3G GSM flip phone. I have never owned, and hardly ever used a smart phone of any kind.

   The F1 is a nice size, not too big, not too small. While bigger than older flip phones, it fits nicely in your hand, and when opened is long enough that when the earpiece is at your ear, the microphone is close to your mouth which makes it easy for you to hear and be heard. The larger size allows for a larger screen which is bright and clear. The phone is thinner than my Motorola and fits easily in a pants pocket. I have the volume set to the next to lowest setting and can hear who I am talking to clearly. There is plenty of volume adjustment available for those who are hard of hearing. The buttons are a sensible size, big enough and spaced far enough apart that you don’t have to have skinny fingers, or high dexterity to use it. The phone has a solid, quality feel to it, from the way the buttons work, to the way it opens and closes.

   Call clarity is excellent (Verizon wireless) with the new 4G VoLTE technology. In the past year using my old 3G GSM phone meant almost every call got dropped mid call, I could hear the person I was calling, but they couldn’t hear me or vice versa, or some combination. Since I started using my Sunbeam F1, I haven’t experienced a single dropped call. I can hear who I’m calling and they can hear me, there is no static or echo. Calls are clear enough that you can hear nuances in speech that were completely lost in calls on my 3G phone. The F1 works as well as one could hope for making telephone calls.

   I have kept track of battery life for the past month. On average the battery lasts 53 hours of my use on a full charge. With the phone on 14 hours a day that’s more than 3.5 days between charges. I don’t talk a lot, less than an hour a day, and send/receive a handful of text messages each day. Charging is easy with the supplied charging cradle. Just drop the phone in the cradle and 3 to 4 hours later it’s 100% charged. I like not having to plug and unplug a charging cable.

   I highly recommend the optional premium services package ($3.50 per month) to get the Voice to Text function. This makes texting incredibly quick and easy, especially for a flip phone. You just start a text, locate the person the text is going to in your contact list, then push and hold the message button. Once this is done you just talk to the phone. As you are talking you will see what you have said appear as text on the screen. When you let go of the message button, the phone then adds capitalization and punctuation to your text where needed. If you then want to add something to the middle of your text, simply put the cursor in the correct place in your text, push and hold the message button, and talk to the phone again. Once you’ve verified that what you see on the screen is what you want to send, click the send icon and off it goes. I have found this function to work extremely well. I do sometimes have to make a few corrections to the text after I have talked to the phone (I’ve been accused of being a mumbler more than a few times) but I would say that 95% or more of what I intended ends up in the text first try.

   The Orchid model has weather, and GPS navigation built in. I have found both functions to work very well. Each can be accessed by pushing a single button. The weather function gives you the daily forecast first, and with a few button pushes you can see the hourly forecast, the 10 day forecast, and moving weather radar (with premium services package). The GPS navigation finds my location quickly, and it is easy to find a point of interest and ask the phone to navigate you to it. While navigating the phone gives you warning both visually and verbally for upcoming turns. It also displays your speed (if used in a vehicle) and lets you know if you are exceeding the speed limit! Using the GPS to navigate does use up the battery noticeably so if you plan on using this feature often you may want to find a way to charge the phone in the car.

   I am very pleased with my F1 Orchid. Part of why I held onto my old Motorola flip phone so long was that I couldn’t find anything newer that I liked as well. The choices were either a touch screen smart phone (which I didn’t want) or a very basic and cheaply made flip phone. The Sunbeam F1 is superior in every way to my Motorola V195S and is a worthy successor. I highly recommend the F1 to anyone looking for a quality phone for talk and text.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Yehuda R (verified owner) – June 30, 2021

   Fantastic fantastic device. I bought one, then another for my wife, and I’m telling my friends about it.
   It has a very well thought out interface. The touch screen isn’t a gimik, it’s really useful for typing out weird slang etc which the T-9 predictive keyboard (which is also excellent) wouldn’t know.
   The call quality, both regular and speaker phone, are top notch.
   And the voice to text! Worth the extra few dollars a month. It works very very well.
   The weather is nice, the maps – I poked around with it, and it looks great, but I confess I haven’t been brave enough to go on a long distance trip relying on such a small screen. Maybe sunbeam could also sell a holding thing which would hold it open in the car on the dashboard or something?
   But whatever – the main thing is, I have a life again! It is such a blessing and a luxury not to be plugged in to a smart phone 24/7.
   This is the only flip phone I would consider buying. A carefully curated interface, no distractions, but it does call and text (and then some!) in the best way.

3. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   Alexander Medina (verified owner) – October 5, 2021

   This is exactly what I needed. I’ve been looking for a dumb phone to help with what is obviously a phone addiction. I tried a bunch before this one (nokia 225, lightphone2, go flip3), but there was always something it was missing or didn’t do correctly. The only things I really needed were phone/text and GPS since one of my cars does not have navigation. This phone didn’t come up on gsmarena, so I spent too long not knowing this phone existed.

   After two days I knew this was the phone. I reset my android phone to factory default and I officially have the F1 as my only phone. I had a doctors appointment and the GPS took me there with no issue. It was weird to be in the waiting room without a browser. I didn’t’ know what to do with myself… I had to pick up a magazine! Calls are clear. Bluetooth headphones work great for music and works great in the car, and speaker phone sounds clear. Getting re-used to T9 is a bit of a pain, but with the voice to text feature I don’t even type 99% of the time.

   With my old smartphone I got very used to wireless charging. And the dock makes it that I don’t have to plug this in every night in the dark. Honestly I really really love this phone. It just has everything I need, and DOESNT have anything I don’t need. Actually there is one thing I would have added to this phone and that is hotspot. But looking back to the last year, I’ve probably used my hotspot 1-2 times, so I’m sure I’ll be okay.

   I have yet to run into any glitches everything just works.. like in the olden days of dumb phones.

4. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   R. Yount (verified owner) – November 9, 2021

   TL;DR Summary: I love this phone, and I expect to buy another one when the time comes for a replacement. I feel more productive, less distracted, and believe my privacy is far better protected than it was with my old iPhone. I am telling my friends and family this phone, and I don’t usually get that enthusiastic about a device purchase. If you’re on the fence, I’d say (as an Orchid owner) to take the plunge already!

   The longer version:

   My use case is that I don’t need (or want) a lot of bells and whistles in a phone, just the literal basics of talk and text. I was looking for something that reduces as much of the creepy tracking by Big Tech companies as I could, and I don’t “need” all the apps, email, or internet connections that enables so much of that invasive tracking on phones these days. For reference, I am using Verizon as my carrier, and I generally preferred the flip-phone style phone over today’s smartphone designs.

   I initially came here looking for more info on the F1 Dandelion and Daisy models, which initially seemed like the best candidates for my needs. I narrowed my search to the Daisy because I did need text capability sometimes (mostly for two-factor authentication on accounts). The more I researched reviews and videos about these phones on the internet, the more impressed I was. While I really liked the two other phone offerings too, ultimately I decided on the Orchid because if I wanted to upgrade to wanted the additional voice-to-text and/or Navigation or Weather, I’d have to wait until my next phone replacement cycle. But by buying the Orchid instead, I can do a virtual downgrade to a Daisy simply by not buying the Premium Services, without having to buy additional devices.

   My set-up was a breeze; I was able to insert my existing SIM card (after following the FAQ instructions on turning off iMessage before transferring the SIM), and turned it on! The menu system is simple, so if you used a flip phone before you know what to expect here. The phone case is plastic, and the rear battery compartment is easy to access (I bought a spare battery as I travel to remote areas that may not have access to charger power, so swapping batteries is very simple and doesn’t require any tools. You have the ability to configure many aspects of your phone, including how and when it sends notifications. Buttons feel responsive and I expect they will perform well for the life of the phone. The phone feels good in hand and is virtually unnoticeable when carried in a front jeans pocket.

   Review of the phone features:

   Premium Services: At first I was on the fence about purchasing this, but after using them in the first 30-day free trial period, I can say I made the right decision on buying this phone and Premium Services…plus it helps Sunbeam keep providing this great phone, even if just a little bit. The price of the subscription services makes this a pretty painless choice.

   Texting: This is one of the best features of the phone, as you have three ways to create texts: 1) Type in using the keyboard; 2) use the touch screen; or, 3) via Voice-to-Text capability that comes with the Premium Services (which includes the Voice-to-Text, navigation, and weather service), and at this point, I’m almost exclusively using the Voice-to-Text method. The voice conversion system is highly accurate, and manual corrections are rare, so I can text super fast and easily using this feature. It is one of the best features of this outstanding phone.

   Navigation and weather: Immediately after I got the phone I took it on the road to test this feature (I also purchased the maps on the microSD card). The maps were accurate going through an ongoing construction project, which I found impressive. Viewing the smaller-than-smartphone screen is surprisingly easy, but you will need to ensure you use a hands-free set up (I’m trying to figure out a way to install it on a dash magnet mount for my application. During my test I found that my Orchid was frequently alerting about approaching exits or recommended actions sooner than my car’s built-in navigation system. The weather has been accurate as could be expected, with details about current, hourly, daily, and radar forecasts.

   Phone calls: I live in a major city and my call quality is crystal clear, even better voice quality/volume than my old iPhone. You have speed dial capability, and the keypad keys are large and backlit, making adding or dialing numbers a breeze even if your vision isn’t perfect. There are several ringtones, speakerphone capability, and ring volume buttons on the side of the phone…virtually anything you’d need or want is likely here. You have a jack for earbuds/headphones as well.

   Charging: The standard base works well, but since I don’t make a large number of calls, I find that I can go multiple days without needing to charge the phone. I like the stand as it is always at the ready, just set it in the cradle to start charging.

   Updates: This feature is a very limited way the phone can reach out to the internet; it basically “phones home” to check for updates, and notifies you if it finds one. The one update I performed so far was straightforward and painless. This website also provides details of past and pending updates, so if you experience a bug it’s a good place to look.

   Other features: The phone has a camera, but I don’t use it (I put a small piece of electrician’s tape over the lens to prevent someone from attempting to hack my camera) – remember that I was looking for a more private phone. It has a built-in alarm clock, calendar, voice reminders, calculator, notes, flashlight, a sound recorder, music, and other features like SOS capability and emergency alerts, as well as a way to report bugs built-in. For those in need of accessibility options, there are many configurations available in the Settings area. You can also lock your device with a PIN if you need to, and you can set up a Do Not Disturb schedule as well.

   Support: I sent several messages to the support email, both before and after my purchase. All of my questions were answered promptly and even explained, which gave me confidence in how the phone was built with privacy in mind, and that the company really cares about its customers. I like that they are frank about potential issues, and provide extensive support on the webpage FAQs.

   Last comments: I like to be candid in my reviews, and include things that I’d like to see improved as constructive feedback. In this case, I got the privacy-oriented phone I was looking for, with no major flaws found. Anything else I could mention would be so minor that it would be nit-picky. If I could suggest one thing, it would probably be to ask for a Orchid without a camera…and even that is a minor thing, considering the tape fix is a cheap and easy solution for users.