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Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise Review
Our friends over at Virgin Mobil have sent us the Kyocera Rise for us to review! This is one of their newest smartphones and it features Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and a full QWERTY keyboard. However, it is only a 3G device not a 4G WiMAX device. It is currently available for $99.99 and it runs on Virgin Mobile’s Beyond talk plans. You may be asking your self, should the Kyocera Rise be your next phone? Well we will answer that in the full review, which begins right now!
Design
The Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise is neither the thinnest or the thickest smartphone on the market, it comes in at 0.56-inches thick. It does have a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard, which does add to the thickness of the device. And you can feel the phone in your hand at 5.54-ounces. The Rise has 2(two) main colors, those being black and silver. The main body is silver, while the front and parts of the back are silver. On the back of the device you will find “QUALCOMM 3G DMA” engraved into the back, and you will also find your 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash. If you pop the back cover off the 1500 mAh Li-Ion Battery is exposed. Along the top of the device you have a power/sleep button and headphone jack.. To my surprise and liking, there is a dedicated shutter button on the left hand side. Your micro USB port and volume rocker are located on the right hand side. Even though this is running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you still have the 4 dedicated Android button below the screen, along with a Kyocera logo. And lastly above the screen you will find the Virgin Mobile logo and a LED notification light. The QWERTY keyboard keys do light up, both white and blue. That is when the keyboard is slid out. Texting fans will fall in love with this keyboard, they are real keys and are spaced out just right.
Hardware And Software
The hardware on the Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise is interesting, while parts of the phone are high-end other parts are not so high. Let’s begin with the display, you get a 3.5-inch HVGA LCD Touchscreen Display. If you’re looking directly at the display it is okay, but viewing angles are not good. However, for texting I think you should be fine with the quality of the display. You can tell that it is a HVGA LCD display. As far as internal space goes you get 2GB and a micro SD card slot. For speed you get Virgin Mobile’s 3G Network and inside the device you have a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor with 512MB of RAM. For texting the Kyocera Rise moves very fast, but when you start using many applications at once that are intense, it may start to slow down a bit. Kyocera did not put a good camera on the Rise, I think if they put some more time into it they could have made it much better. A 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash, does not give the best pictures. Many of our test shots were fuzzy and video recording was very shaky and auto focus kept refocusing throughout the video. The User Interface on the Kyocera Rise is customizable via Sprint Mobile ID packs. It comes pre-loaded with the Virgin Mobile one, and it is very simple and clean. They add the Virgin Mobile Live widget to the home screen and several application shortcuts. In terms of pre-loaded applications you get Activate, Battery, Browser, Calculator, Downloads, Eco Mode, ICE, Google App Suite, My Account, Mobile ID, People, News & Weather, Virgin Mobile Live, YouTube, and more. Eco Mode is a unique application that helps you save power, you can have it go to sleep after a certain time, lower the brightness, wallpaper change, auto-sync, haptic feedback, auto rotate, and more. Overall, it will help you get more out of the battery in your Kyocera Rise and it is a welcome addition to the device.
Bottom Line
The Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise is a nice phone. Texting fans can rejoice knowing that Virgin Mobile has a nice simple to use and feature filled QWERTY slide-out device. And for the price of $99.99 for the device and with monthly plans beginning as low as $35, you should definitely look at this device. It has a great Eco Mode that will help you increase your battery life. A 1GHz processor that keeps the device quick and moving. A nice simple and clean operating system. Overall, if you are a big texter and like a physical keyboard or are just looking for a nice simple to use Android device, the Kyocera Rise on Virgin Mobile may be right for you. For More Information On The Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise, Please Click Here. We would like to thank Virgin Mobile for providing us with a copy of the “Virgin Mobile Kyocera Rise”.
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