I'll have to agree with you on the slider. It does loosen up with time, keyboard is too flat and close together. The screen is horrifically dark when the backlighting is off, even during the day. I didn't care for the menu structure on it either.

It does have a decent speaker in it though, and short of the LG550, I've yet to hear a louder handsfree feature.

Bad points aside, this phone flew off the shelves, and we sold tons of them. It's a true testimonial to the fact that people are looking for something different. I always explained the down-sides to this phone, and more often than not, was met with "Yeah, but theres nothing else like it".

I hope in the future that Kyocera will have a re-worked version of this phone in place, and that Bell will put it back into the line up.

At present time, the Slider is End of Life with Bell. However, you might find the odd dealer that has one around in stock.

Calvin.

Unfortunately I've heard a few bad stories about how the sliding action loosens over time. It definitely is a cool looking phone, but its buttons are a bit too small and the screen and graphics are blaa. I had the luck of demo'ing this phone and didn't really care for it, but of course, that's a matter of individual taste. You can read a few Kyocera Slider reviews (https://www.cellphones.ca/cell-phones/phone/164/) here and get a better idea what people are saying.