When I first heard about the Pantech C150 via a press release I knew the phone was small, but you don’t grasp how small it is until you actually hold one in your hand. It looks almost fragile in pictures but it isn’t I’ve already dropped it by accident and not a scratch on her.

I am pretty impressed with the Pantech C150, it’s super small, 4.1 inches tall and 1.7 inches wide and less than a third of an inch thick, it literally fits in the palm of my hand, it’s loaded with features such as a camera that does both stills and video and bluetooth. It also has a full color 1.8 inch LCD screen.

Aside from the small form factor and great looks of the phone, the first thing you notice is the user interface. It has to be one of the easiest and most straight forward UI I have ever seen. This is the first phone I can honestly say that I did not need the user manual to figure things out. Pantech did a great job developing the software for the phone.

The first thing I did with the phone was make a few calls, and purposely wasted the battery which took longer than I expected. I then charged the battery up which took less than an hour and I called my self and just let the phone sit to test battery life. I expected 4 hours 5 hours max before the battery was fully dead. Can anyone say 8 hours? It took a little over 8 hours of talk time to fully drain the battery. It took 2 hours to lower the battery power by 1 bar. I was stunned I thought maybe I did something wrong when testing, I looked at the call time for the last call when I plugged the phone in and it said the call lasted 8 hours 13 minutes.  I was really surprised by this because Pantech advertises the battery life at 3 hours of straight talk time. I then tested battery life with using data occasionally and that dropped down to 3 and a half hours, which is still pretty good better then my 400 dollar phone. (I ran the battery life a 2nd time and got just over 7 hours of straight talk time with the phones default settings)

Another thing I noticed right away when talking on the phone is the sound quality, I have the T-Mobile dash, and a Moto Razr and the sound quality on the Pantech C150 put both of those phones to shame, the speaker on the C150 is also much clearer than on my Dash and Razr.

I also did some web browsing on the phone and I am not sure if it’s the phone or not but the data transfer rate seemed faster on the C150 than it did on my Moto Razr on the same network.

The phone has a large screen for a phone of its size, and the screen is crystal clear and the number you dial appears large on the screen.  Texting is also easier for me because of how big everything appears on screen.

My mom who came over for dinner saw the phone and fell in love with it right away, the first words out of her mouth were and I quote “I love phones that are small like this one, but I can never read what’s on the screen” She has bad vision so she likes phones which display big numbers. I told her to dial a number and try it out just to get her reaction when she saw the numbers on the screen, she loved it even more. I think I will be getting her one for Christmas.

The C150 has a camera and while I was testing it out, I was a bit disappointed in the quality, but then I realized the lens was covered with a piece of protective plastic and when I removed it the pictures were a lot clearer, definitely not the best picture quality but it is good for a camera phone. To see a picture taken with the phone click here. The video quality is just as good.

Overall the Pantech C150 is a great phone, offers a lot features for a low price, and even though it doesn’t look like it can withstand a lot of wear and tear it can. So we here at CellRants.com award the C150 our 5 Start Must Have award. We don’t have any awards made out yet so we are using our sister site HardwareGeeks.com award in the mean time.

The C150 retails for $199, free with 2 year contract with wireless from at&t.

Full Phone Specs:
Weight: 2.57 ounces
Dimensions: 4.1 x 1.7 x .5 inches
Talk Time: Up to 3 hours according to Pantech (but I went 8 hours without the battery dyeing)
Standby Time: Up to 10 days
Tri-band world phone - 850/1800/1900 MHz
Address book stores up to 800 entries
260K TFT color screen with 128 x 160 pixels
Universal headset capable for hands free use
Warranty: One year on the phone and accessories
All talk, data, and standby times depend on network configuration