List Price: $129.99
Sale Price: $68.99
Today's Bonus: 47% Off
I bought this phone to replace my LG 900g from Net10. And while it has more features, it may not necessarily be the best upgrade from a lower end phone. So here are some pros and cons to help you decide.
Pros:
+ Muve Musicmy favorite feature about this phone as $55 dollars not only gets you 1000 talk mins, and unlimited texts and 3g Web/Data, it gets you unlimited music downloaded. Granted, it has it's faults like songs don't download sometimes I just re-download and it's fine. It has Shazam (which is the only thing in Muve that works over wi-fi) its a awesome feature nonetheless
+ 3G speednow where I live (30 miles east of Washington DC) I get pretty good 3G service (sometimes down in the basement) so this is a great thing to have since Foursquare, Facebook, & Twitter all work and update pretty quick, I do get a couple of very brief dead zones (where I don't get signal) I still have good service overall. I haven't tried the partner service yet but will when I go on vacation to the beach in a few weeks.
+ Full Google Play StoreAnother thing I like is that this phone has the full (for the most part) Google Play store. So if you want to download your favorite sports, music, or social apps, its all there. I could find Shazam and Soundhound as standalone apps, but again just use Shazam inside of the Muve Music app.
Now on to the cons:
StorageOne of my biggest gripes with this phone is the internal (and even the SD card that came with this phone) has very little storage space. After installing all of my favorite apps (Foursquare, Tweetdeck, JuiceDefender, ESPN, among others) I only had 15MB internally! That kind of disappoints me as I thought a smartphone would have more storage, and even the SD card which claimed to be 4GB only had 1GB available (I knew about Muve taking up 3GB), seems like the only solution is to root and remove bloatware (which I will do one I get a good USB cable) and then get a larger SD card.
Random shutoffsThis may be a bug but this phone randomly shuts off while in sleep mode. For example, if i'm at work and I use the phone and then put it in my pocket and then go to use it later, I press the power button and its off!! Now I just turn it back on and ignore it but if your turn it back on 4-5 times a day it gets annoying. So be prepared.
CameraOk, i'll be flat out honest on this one, the camera sucks. Even using a burst camera app doesn't help it. So if you want a phone with a good camera looks elsewhere
Neutrals, could go either way:
+/Battery lifeOut of the box the battery life is horrible, but a way to improve the battery life is to download JuiceDefender and put it in "aggressive" mode, it really extended my battery from 5-6 hours (if that) to 9-10 hours (no joke!) so i'm leaning to towards positive but we will see
Final thoughts:
The Score is my first Android smartphone and my first Cricket phone and while Cricket's service is not so great for some, it is for me. And it is the cheapest phone, which is obvious by some bugs. Good phone overall and 4 stars. Also, if you head over to Kmart this phone is only $39 until 6/17. So you only pay around $100! Great deal!
EDIT 7/18: Since I wrote my review I have rooted the phone and removed the bloatware, and I am currently sitting at around 35 MB of internal memory, also I put in a 8GB SD card. These things have made storage issues nonexistent. As for the random shutoffs they are still there and still annoying, I have been looking at other phones just in case, but all is well now.
EDIT 8/6: I have found out that by putting the phone in airplane mode, the phone would not shut off in airplane mode (which also saves battery TREMENDOUSLY!), just make sure you have a WiFi and airplane toggle widget.
EDIT 8/18: I have now flashed a custom ROM (exile kitchen) and partitioned the SD card and now have 111 MB of free space internally, along with Adobe Flash (paired with an older version of Dolphin Browser), the phone is now a sure fire winner for anyone wanting a cheap Android phone that (with a few modifications) could be great. Also to those who are whining about how "bad" this phone is may need to second guess themselves!
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