1 review for Sunbeam F1 – Orchid

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.