Review: UStarcom Super Slice
UTSTARCOM’S PCS1450, THE “SUPER SLICE,”
CARRIED BY VIRGIN MOBILE
January 2008
By Audrey Gray
This candy bar-style handset is the width of a Girl Scout thin mint, only .4 inches. It’s light too, just 2.5 ounces. But this diminutive frame houses an astonishing array of features for an entry-level phone priced now at $49.99 with no contract necessary. The Super Slice is Virgin Mobile’s first phone with built-in Bluetooth. What better way to boost a young person’s self-esteem than to equip them with a Bluetooth headset for mall strolling? It also has a VGA camera, nothing to brag about, but sufficient for quick, Facebook-worthy arm-length self-portraits.
It’s nice to see a pay-by-the-minute phone pack those features, a telltale sign of a mobile industry trend Consumer Electronics Association market researcher Tim Herbert calls “These Go to 11,” meaning that the over 1 billion cell phones expected to be sold in 2008 are getting smaller, faster, and more advanced, all while becoming less expensive.
Virgin Mobile has a number of different pay plans, ranging from 10-cent minutes (for $6.99/month) to a $44.99 for 400 anytime + 2000 nights and weekend minutes. Of course, the carrier is hoping the user, especially that targeted under-25 demographic, will be lured into purchasing all manner of downloads and entertainment services including what the Virgin Mobile website calls “daily good-time nuggets.” I’m generally suspicious of content that sounds like sugary breakfast cereal, but for the sake of research, I investigated the variety of ringtones, screensavers, and games offered as direct downloads to the Super Slice.
The unit comes with three game demos already loaded, the most eyebrow-raising of which was “Sexy Poker,” a demo which begs you to “challenge and undress the hottest women!” I’m more gangster than gambler, however, so I opted to pay $5.99 for “Def Jam FIGHT for NY” so my character, Ludacris, could kick-box a poser named “Method Man” into definitive submission. It was during this rout that I felt the most disappointed with the Super Slice, as its 1.75-inch display, though bright, seems painfully low-res, making the blood-squirts way more pixellated than I’d have preferred. (I was also slightly annoyed by this handset’s charger port cover, a flippy piece of plastic that’s far too tough to get open. Still, this phone has a powerful little battery, so you don’t have to go through that very often.)
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