So, I’m not quite sure how I missed this little (or big?) gem during CES 2015, but I did, in fact, manage to overlook it - the Saygus V2. Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t coming from a big-wig manufacturer, or maybe it was because the market has never seen a phone from this company come to fruition yet. However, after seeing what Saygus has to bring to the table when it comes to the V2 (pronounced “vee squared”) I have to admit that I like what I see and I think a lot of us can hope that this phone actually does make a debut this year.
The V2 isn’t Saygus’ first attempt at entering the smartphone market. After doing a little research, it would seem that Saygus was attempting to enter the market back in 2010 with their VPhone during CES 2010, but the device never made it to shelves. (That probably explains why this phone is called the V2.) The VPhone was actually quite impressive it seems for a phone in 2010, although if you talk about what made it so impressive now it seems really silly. But the phone featured a front-facing camera and allowed you to make video calls, not to mention it had some pretty nifty specs as well. However, that is neither here nor there given that the phone just never managed to show up.
We’re hoping that’s a different story for the V2, because there’s only one word to describe this phone: beastly. And I’m not talking like Disney’s Beauty and the Beast kind of beastly. More like... Godzilla. The 2014 version. The huge one. This phone is just awesome, that’s what I’m trying to say. But enough about beasts, let’s talk about the phone.
From the outside, the V2 isn’t anything particularly special. It has a 5-inch full HD display, comes in black, and it has a slab design, so when you’re looking at it, it looks similar to a lot of other smartphones already on the market. However, the V2 is IPx7 certified, which means that it can be submerged in up to 1 meter of water for up to 30 minutes. That’s a plus right there, and part of the reason why the phone is great - but that’s already been done before, and isn’t going to wow anybody.
When you get to the internal specifications of the device is when you’re likely to be wowed. First and foremost, there’s no 16 or 32GB of internal storage to choose from, like many manufacturers offer. The V2 goes straight for the 64GB option, and it doesn’t stop there by a long shot. The V2 also offers not one but two microSD card slots, both of which support up to 128GB of external storage. That’s up to 320GB of storage total, which is pretty freakin’ awesome.
The V2 is powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core processor and has 3GB of RAM. Maybe not the most powerful, but it’s definitely up there. It’s nothing to sneeze at, that’s for sure.
And then you get to the camera aspect of the phone. Now, there’s nothing crazy about the V2’s camera. You’re not going to find any 41-megapixel camera on the back like on the Lumia 1020, but there is a 21-megapixel camera there, along with a 13-megapixel camera on the front, and both feature optical image stabilization. Both are more than adequate by today’s standards.
The V2 features a 3100 mAh battery, Qi wireless charging (why is this not an industry standard yet?), a fingerprint scanner on the side of the device, and Harman Kardon sound technology. If none of that sold you, to make the phone even sweeter the V2 also comes pre-rooted and able to flash ROMs via SD card. The phone also has the ability to multi-boot, which is an extremely rare find.
There’s just one problem that the V2 has, and that’s that the phone ships with Android 4.4.4 (KitKat), which is kind of a bummer. However, with the phone already being rooted and ready for ROMs to be flashed, it sounds like it wouldn’t be too long or hard to find a decent Lollipop ROM to satiate any need to have the latest and greatest while users wait for an official release.
The phone isn’t perfect, but in my opinion it gets pretty darn close. It really takes care of a lot of the issues I have with many smartphones on the market. Instead of buying into the thin and overly huge trend, Saygus chooses to keep things practical with a thicker, waterproof device with a decently sized battery and a fairly modest screen size. The immense amount of storage, the powerful internal specs, the waterproof design, the exceptional front and rear-facing cameras, and the phone coming pre-rooted are all reasons that I think that the Saygus V2 looks like a winner of a flagship this year already. I just hope that the phone doesn't pan out to be one of those "too good to be true" scenarios and never see the light of day. If this phone is as great as it seems on paper, this company could become pretty big if this is what we can expect out of them in the future.
What do you think, readers? Are you hoping to pick up a Saygus V2 sometime this year, despite not having ever seen another phone from this Utah-based company? What’s your favorite feature of the V2? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
