The Kyocera Verve, like the Kona reviewed on this blog previously, is an addition to Sprint’s line-up of accessible phones. It is listed on the Sprint accessibility page as such, but oddly enough the text-to-speech built into the phone is not listed as an accessibility feature. The booklets in the box don't reveal the text-to-speech feature, though the full manual online has details of the accessibility features, which is helpful. The PDF manual, while it has a few headings out of order and a few less-than-useful image labels, is quite well done. There is also an HTML manual, which is useful.

The Verve is a phone with a regular phone keypad and a slide-out qwerty keyboard, which will make typing a longer message easier on this phone than on many others, including the much-lauded iPhone, and that is a significant point in its favor. It also has buttons that are tactile and distinct, if not exactly large, another clear advantage. The qwerty keyboard is less easy to feel than the regular keypad, but still tactile, and the keys have good contrast for those with enough vision to see them. The back is textured and "grippy," which adds to the appeal of the phone.

The layout of the front keypad is familiar–a standard phone keypad, with a set of function keys above that. There is a larger Talk key on the left in the center, and an End/Power key of the same size on the right at the center. To the right of the Talk key, there is the left soft key at the top, and a speaker button below that. At the center of the keys is a large four-way navigation key with an OK button in the middle. To the right of those keys, and to the left of End button, are the right soft key (top) and the Back button (bottom). There is a headphone jack at the top of the phone. On the right side of the phone there is only the gap to release the battery cover and a camera button; on the left there is a Volume up/down button and below that a micro USB jack.

To set up the phone, go to Settings>Others>Accessibility>Voice Services>Voice Guide>Speech output. Turn on the speech output; or rather, ask a sighted person to do this. The process is inaccessible. It is, however a one-time set up, and easily done. In that same Voice Guide menu, the other option is Speech rate. The available rates, ranging from slow to fast, will serve the target audience for this phone well. The real trouble is the lag between actions, which makes the phone slow to use even with the fast speech. The speech is muddy, as it is on the Kona, but for the most part it is intelligible enough.

The low-vision functions are also found under the Accessibility submenu. You can adjust the font size from normal to large, with the caveat that the large font does not apply everywhere. The main screen, the web, third level submenus, and other elements don’t use the larger fonts. You can also set the screen to high contrast; the only option there is white on black.

At this point in the exploration of the Verve some serious hitches start occurring. Voicemail, one of the central functions of any phone, is not accessible. When you choose Voicemail in the menu, the phone autodials the voicemail service. It doesn’t announce this, nor are the left/right soft keys announced. This is troublesome because the left soft key mutes the call, and the right soft key is Options, which includes three-way call functions and saving a number. If you type in a number by hand the same thing happens–the number is read, but not the soft keys. What’s more, the dashes between the numbers are read as pauses that are so long that they are a nuisance, and really slow a user down. The text messaging opens in the edit field for the body of the text, not indicating that there are attachment and number fields above it. The received messages don’t read when empty, though it is read in the message menu.

Other areas are similarly hampered. The missed alerts don’t read. Bluetooth just reads “On,” not the accompanying question, “Would you like to turn Bluetooth on?” The rest of the Bluetooth menu also has incomplete speech, and is not usable without sighted assistance. The same applies to Media Transfer. The Settings are read, but that is not enough to make up for the shortfalls elsewhere, often in the simplest things. The soft keys for the camera don’t read, for example. Since soft keys are read elsewhere in the menus, I am puzzled why they don’t everywhere. The good news is that a little behind-the-scenes checking reveals that Sprint is working on an update for many of these issues and hopes to launch it soon. Those updates will go out to existing and new phones.

The Verve is a promising phone–the hardware has much to appeal to a blind user, and having a full qwerty keyboard is a boon–but it doesn’t live up to it. The same frustrations which I had with the Kona carry over to the Verve; it is so close, and yet manages to break down on simple and basic functions like messaging, thereby falling short of being a usable simple phone. It’s a crying shame, and after reviewing the Gusto 3, it feels more like a missed opportunity than ever. That said, if the promised updates can remedy even a few of the current problems, the Verve could easily suddenly be a lot closer to fulfilling its potential.