14 DAY TRIAL // Following Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch at Cricket, the carrier announced the availability of another Android smartphone, the Huawei Mercury.
Also known as Huawei Glory or Honor, the smartphone is available beginning today for a suggested retail price of $249.99 (190 EUR) at all Cricket stores and authorized retailers, as well as online.
According to Cricket, the Huawei Mercury is available on its $55 per month smartphone service plan that offers subscribers unlimited talk and long distance, caller ID, voicemail, call waiting, 3-way calling, call forwarding, unlimited text, picture and video messaging, 3G mobile data and email.
The device supports several Cricket services, such as Cricket Storefront Client, Cricket Mobile Web, My Account, and My Backup.
“We are extremely pleased to be the first carrier in the United States to bring this high quality smartphone to customers and we're excited that we are able to offer this compelling device at a very affordable price,” said Matt Stoiber, senior vice president, devices for Cricket.
Huawei Mercury is powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, but the Chinese handset manufacturer already confirmed plans to upgrade the smartphone to Ice Cream Sandwich next year.
However, there’s no telling when it will be available for Cricket Huawei Mercury owners, as the company will probably deliver the upgrade for unlocked units first.
The smartphone comes with a larger 4.0-inch capacitive touchscreen that supports 480 x 854 pixels resolution and 16 million colors.
On the inside, Huawei Mercury is equipped with a 1.4 GHz single core processor manufactured by Qualcomm, which is complemented by an Adreno 205 graphics processing unit.
The phone packs 1GB of internal memory, 512 MB of RAM, 4GB of ROM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB). It also sports an enhanced 8-megapixel rear camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing photo snapper.
“This particular device, the Huawei Mercury, is an opportunity for us to offer a quality high-end device to the U.S. market that can deliver rich multi-media content including music, video and gaming applications seamlessly,” concluded Jiangao Cui, President of Huawei Device USA.