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Kyocera Strobe

Kyocera Strobe

For the past two years, Kyocera's major theme in phone design has been simplicity. While not uninteresting by any means, the majority of Kyocera phones have been basic, quality models without many fancy features. And at CES, the company has taken that theme a step further with the rollout of the Kyocera Strobe. Although it incorporates a full QWERTY keyboard, the Strobe is no smart phone, with just a minimal feature set that includes a VGA camera, polyphonic ring tones, personal-organizer applications, instant messaging, voice-activated dialing, text and multimedia messaging, and a wireless Web browser. Like the LG VX9800, the attractive Strobe opens lengthways to expose the keyboard and an internal display, but its hourglass shape and looped antenna further aim the phone toward younger users. Kids, after all, love text and instant messaging, so why shouldn't they have a keyboard phone in their price range? The CDMA Kyocera Strobe will be out later this year for $99 to $149.