Casio Exilim C721 (Verizon Wireless) 

Design
Unlike its G’zOne brethren, the Exilim C721 has a sleek, smooth, and stylish exterior, which is more indicative of the Exilim brand. You would never think that the Exilim C721 is military-certified (under code MIL-STD 810F) to withstand immersion in water, blowing rain, shock, dust, vibration salt fog, humidity, solar radiation, and high altitudes. The chassis is a hard plastic shell, and the headset and microSD ports are protected with tight rubber seals. There’s also a slide lock mechanism for the battery cover. Though we didn’t submit the C721 to the same battery of tests as the military, we did dunk it in water and throw it on the floor a few times to test its durability. It kept on working without a problem.
Measuring 4.06 inches long by 1.97 inches wide by 0.77 inch thick and weighing 4.76 ounces, the C721 is wide yet slim, and has a nice solid heft in the hand. The entire front surface of the C721 is clad in glossy black save for the Verizon logo at the bottom.

Casio Exilim C721

On the left of the phone are a microSD card slot and a charging pad. On the right are a headset jack, a back button that doubles as a rewind or previous track key for the music player, volume controls that can be used to navigate the camera’s menu and act as camera zoom controls when in camera mode, a side control key that can only be used in camera mode for selecting functions and settings, and the camera shutter button. On the back of the C721 are the camera lens, a very bright LED flash that can also act as a flashlight, and an external speaker.

C721 display

Flip open the phone and you’ll see a beautiful 2.3-inch display with 262,000 color support. You can adjust the screen’s backlight time, the menu display, the clock format, and the size of the dial fonts. But there’s another very interesting thing you can do with the front flip; you can actually twist it so that the color display faces outward, and then close the phone, thus transforming it into a large viewfinder for the camera. In fact, doing so actually activates the camera and all of the controls on the right side of the phone become the aforementioned camera controls.
Of course, the Exilim C721 is still a phone, so when you twist it open again, you’ll find the typical navigation array and number keypad underneath the display. The navigation array consists of two soft keys, a round toggle with middle confirmation key, a dedicated camera/camcorder key, and a speakerphone key that doubles as the flashlight key (which just turns the LED flash on). The up, left, and down direction on the toggle can be mapped to user-defined shortcuts, while the right direction leads to a My Shortcuts pop-up menu, which you can customize with up to four more shortcuts. The Send, Clear/voice command, and End/Power keys are clustered together with the number keypad. The keypad is spacious, and the keys are separated by slight edges and indentations, so it’s easy to dial by feel.
The Casio Exilim C721 comes with a handy charging/syncing dock. When you dock in the C721 with the display facing outward, it will automatically trigger the photo frame or slideshow mode.
Features
The Casio Exilim C721 comes with a generous 1,000-entry phone book, with room in each entry for five phone numbers and two e-mail addresses. Other basic features include a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock, a stopwatch, a countdown timer, a world clock, a notepad, a speakerphone, a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, and voice commands.
More advanced users will like the GPS support with VZ Navigator, stereo Bluetooth, mobile instant messenger (AIM, Yahoo, and Windows Live Messenger), links to mobile Web e-mail (this launches the browser), and visual voice mail (which costs $3 a month). You can also get a mobile e-mail app so your e-mail arrives directly to your in-box, but the app costs $5 to download.
Perhaps the most surprising feature on the Exilim C721 is that it has a HTML browser. You access the browser via the Verizon Wireless Dashboard, a Web portal that leads to various channels and information sources. The HTML browser also supports WAP 2.0, so you can choose to either view Web pages in its full size or the scaled down mobile versions. We quite like it, as you can zoom in and out of pages, subscribe to RSS feeds, and search through pages. The only caveat is that if you want to enter in your own URL, you’re redirected to a VZWGoto site where you can then enter in the URL in a small search box. This constant redirection makes surfing the Web a bit of a pain.
Since the Casio Exilim C721 has EV-DO Rev. A, it has access to Verizon’s wide array of broadband services, which include V Cast video, Verizon’s streaming video service, and V Cast Music with Rhapsody. The music player on the Exilim C721 is housed within the V Cast Music interface, which isn’t the most attractive, but it’s functional enough. Also useful is an airplane mode, so you can keep listening to tunes while in the air. There’s a microSD card slot for additional storage.

the C721's 5.1-megapixel camera

But the biggest feature of the Casio Exilim C721 is undoubtedly the 5.1-megapixel camera. The features on the camera rival that of dedicated point-and-shoot cameras. You can take photos in seven different resolutions (2,560×1,920; 2,048×1,536; 1,600×1,200; 1,280×960; 640×480; 320×240; and 160×120), two quality settings, and five white balance presets. There’s 3x optical zoom, 16x digital zoom, auto focus (with both spot and nine-point focus), an incredibly bright LED flash, an image stabilizer, normal and multishot modes, and a digital photo frame function that puts all your images in a slideshow. Other settings include macro mode, brightness, a self-timer, and a shutter sound (which you can toggle off)
The camera feature we liked most is BestShot, a series of 15 modes that let you pick the right custom setting depending on your subject. These modes are Person (for portraits), Scenery, Night View, Person & Scenery, Twilight, Food, Character (for nutrition labels or business cards), Sports, Party, Monotone, Sepia, Reverse, High Sharpness, High Contrast, and Vivid. Photo quality was stunning. We really loved how sharp the images look and how vibrant the colors were. The image stabilizer really works well in preventing blurry images.
There’s also a camcorder setting that can record in three resolutions (176×144 for video messages, 176×144, and 320×240). Settings include four color effects, to toggle on/off the recording light, a macro mode, brightness, white balance, and a start sound (which you can also toggle off). Video quality is surprisingly decent for a camera phone. The image stabilizer works in preventing jerky videos, though they’re still not quite as sharp as we would like. Still, they work as short video messages or something you would upload to Facebook or YouTube.
You have plenty of personalization options with the Casio Exilim C721. You can adjust the wallpaper, display themes, alert tones, and more. You can download more via the Verizon online store. The Exilim C721 doesn’t come with any games, but you can download them via the Verizon store as well.