14 DAY TRIAL // US-based carrier Cricket has just announced the immediate availability of the budget-friendly Groove smartphone.
Dubbed, 'Groove from Cricket' the handset comes with support for carrier's Muve Music service and can be purchased starting today via Cricket brick and mortar stores, retailers and online.
According to Cricket, the Groove smartphone is up for sale for a suggested retail price of $130/€100 outright and can be paired with any of the carrier's unlimited music, data, talk and text Android service plans starting at $50/€40 per month.
With Muve Music, Cricket subscribers will have access to unlimited downloads of their preferred music. In addition, they will have access to exclusive artist commentary, music and video through the Muve Music's monthly artist programs.
As we already mentioned, the Groove is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, and is likely to stay on this version of the platform until it gets discontinued, due to low hardware configuration.
In this regard, 'Groove from Cricket' is equipped with an 800 MHz single-core processor, 512MB of RAM and 1GB of internal memory, which can be further expanded up to 32GB.
The device is built by Chinese handset maker ZTE and sports a decent 3.5-inch HVGA capacitive touchscreen display, along with a 1500mAh Li-Ion battery.
On the back, the smartphone packs a 3.2 megapixel photo snapper with LED flash and video recording, while in the front there's a secondary VGA camera for video calls.
Cricket claims the Groove “offers impressive design and is loaded with features not commonly found in a smartphone at this price,” so it's up to Android fans to decide if it's worth it or not.
“Cricket's customers will be excited to experience the Groove with Muve Music, WiFi, tethering, and two cameras. The Groove is the perfect stocking stuffer smartphone or gift companion phone with the features holiday shoppers need to delight their family and friends,” said Matt Stoiber, senior vice president of devices for Cricket.