"Cricket's New Smartphones and Plans for 2011: Hands On"

[guru]

I haven't seen much on this:

ORLANDO—Low-cost carrier Cricket recently got a shout-out from AT&T as being a competitor in the U.S. wireless industry. And while Cricket, with 5.8 million subscribers, isn't going to threaten Big Blue anytime soon, the carrier wants to slake Americans' thirst for low-cost smartphones with a rich new lineup in 2011, Cricket's vice president of devices Matt Stoiber said.

"We'll be just as disruptive this Christmas as we were last Christmas, both in tablets and in smartphones," Stoiber said.
CTIA 2011

Tablets? Sure. Cricket plans to launch a 7-inch, Wi-Fi-only tablet this summer, with more tablets to potentially follow.

The carrier is also looking forward to 4G. It's building its own LTE network that will debut next year, and has also signed a roaming deal with LTE upstart LightSquared. Cricket is working with Qualcomm to get LightSquared's unusual frequency band integrated into Qualcomm chipsets for future phones. But it isn't throwing all of its eggs in the LightSquared basket, either; Stoiber said they're open to looking at other roaming deals as well. Considering that Cricket currently has other deals with MetroPCS and Sprint, connecting to MetroPCS's LTE network may be in the cards.


Hands-On With Cricket's New Phone Lineup

I got a peek into Cricket's phone lineup for the next few months. First, I got hands-on with the LG Optimus C, the current best smartphone on Cricket. The Optimus C is very similar to all the other Optimuses out there - it's the best possible low-cost Android phone, with a fast-enough processor, good-enough screen and Android 2.2. At $130 with no contract, it's an absolute steal.

LG and Cricket didn't add much to Android on the Optimus C, and what they did add is useful. LG included Facebook and Twitter apps, and a way to organize apps into folders so you don't get lost scrolling through your app tray. Cricket threw in an account management app and a games store that lets you charge games to your phone bill.

There's really no reason to get any other Android phone on Cricket right now. The Huawei Ascend feels cheap and has lower-quality features overall, from voice calling to the camera. And even if you can find the Sanyo Zio, it's also just not as well built as the Optimus C.

But the Optimus C is only the start. Cricket showed me two more Android phones coming by mid-year. The Huawei Ascend 2, also known as the Huawei X7, bumps up all of the Ascend's specs and will probably still be able to hit a $129 price point. Considering it has a 3.8-inch, 800-by-480 screen and a 5-megapixel camera, it'll outpace the Optimus C, too. The big question, of course, is how it will perform; Huawei phones aren't yet known for their solid voice quality and responsiveness, although the company seems to be learning fast.

The Samsung Rookie R720, coming out this summer, will be the first Cricket Android phone to feature the unlimited Muve Music service. This is a big deal; Muve lets you download all the music you want, but it's currently only available on the Samsung Suede, a feature phone which doesn't allow you to mix Muve music with your own music. The Rookie will let you combine your own mixtape or indie band collection with Muve's downloadable tracks, though you'll probably have to play differently-sourced music in different apps.

The R720 is a slab-style smartphone with a 3.2-megapixel camera, but Cricket didn't give me any other details of its specs.

The Samsung Galaxy Indulge will be Cricket's version of MetroPCS's current LTE smartphone. Like the MetroPCS model, the Indulge will be a powerful Android phone with a slide-out keyboard and 1-Ghz processor. But since this is Cricket, it'll trade in Metro's LTE for Cricket's 3G. The Cricket Ascend will also cost considerably less than MetroPCS's model, which retails for $399.99.

Cricket isn't giving up on dumbphones. Stoiber said that touch-screen feature phones will probably go away, but that consumers still want keyboarded texting phones and simple flip phones. So Cricket is bringing in the Samsung Comment R350 and Huawei Pillar M615, two texting phones with full QWERTY keyboards, and the Kyocera Luno S2100 and Samsung Chrono R261, two simple flip phones.

We'll have to review all of these phones to tell which one you should get. The Samsung QWERTY has larger, squarer keys than the Huawei, although the Huawei's keys are nicely separated, more like a BlackBerry Curve's. The Kyocera flip phone is a bit nicer looking than the Samsung; the Kyocera model is a black oval while the Samsung Chrono is clad in cheap, dull silver plastic.

"We're creating a full portfolio of smartphones, but we won't be abandoning feature phones," Stoiber said. We'll learn more about Cricket's plans, and review all of these phones, as the year goes on.

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[leadnerd]

Can cricket play with the big boys?

[ownmart]

so far none of these phones seem like they'll be taking out flashing of verizon/sprint droids...but it may lower our prices due to the average customer not caring if its a better phone, just the fact that its an "android". People are starting to make androids like iphones a "status symbol" in my opinion

[TechGuy]

As it turns out cricket had one more ace up there sleve before the ending of the year. Around mid to late november cricket will be releasing the Huawei "glory". A stunning piece of machinery of a phone. Running a 1.4 ghz dual core processor as rumored but huawei agreed to the rumors are true. And a 4 inch capcitive touch screen in high resloution very bright even enough to very outside plenty. Id hope so running a nice 1900 mah battery. And all for around 300$ will see how this plays out for now but in the mean time crickets going to try and blow the house down with this new powerhouse phone.