14 DAY TRIAL // Cricket and Kyocera have just announced that they have teamed up to offer customers a brand new rugged Android smartphone, the Hydro PLUS.
The newest member of the Kyocera Hydro Series is now available for purchase via the Cricket online store and the carrier’s brick and mortar locations for only $140 (€105) off contract.
As expected, the smartphone comes with Cricket’s Muve Music 4.0 service, which provides customers with fast and easy access to millions of songs, along with the option to store music directly on the device.
Although it’s available at an affordable price, Kyocera Hydro PLUS is a bit disappointing when it comes to hardware and software configuration.
For example, the smartphone ships with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system out of the box, which is a bit too old even for a cheap handset.
The Hydro Plus sports a 3.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display that supports 480 x 320 pixels resolution and a 3.2-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash and video recording.
On the inside, the handset packs a 1 GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, 2GB of internal memory and microSD card slot for storage expansion (up to 32GB).
Other highlights of the Hydro Plus include Wi-Fi (b/g/n), Stereo Bluetooth (2.1 + EDR) wireless technology support and high-speed USB 2.0.
It features IPx5- and IPx7-level protection against liquids and it’s been certified waterproof against sprayed water and full immersion up to one meter deep for up to 30 minutes.
“Our active customers will love that they can have all their favorite features on the affordable, waterproof Hydro Plus without having to change how they live their lives.
“Our new Muve Music 4.0 allows people to carry their favorite music with them while on the go, discovering and downloading new music right from their home screens,” said Matt Stoiber, senior vice president of devices for Cricket.