The Kyocera Rise  looks like a tempting deal—a brand new smartphone running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) with a solid keyboard for just $19.99 with a two-year contract. But that low price tag comes with a number of tradeoffs—like a lackluster display and a poor camera, for starters. You'll have to spend a bit more if you want a better phone, but it's probably worth it.

Design and Call Quality

The Kyocera Rise measures 4.5 by 2.4 by 0.6 inches (HWD). It feels rather bulky, though at 5.5 ounces, it's still lighter than the 6-ounce Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE . The phone is made of mostly shiny gray plastic with some soft touch black accents. The whole thing looks and feels a bit flimsy.

One look at the Rise's screen and you'll see why this phone only costs $20. The 3.5-inch display features 480-by-320-pixel resolution, which is standard among low-end phones, but looks particularly poor here. Text and images look jagged—you can practically see the individual pixels—and there's a faint vertical pattern running across the entire display that becomes apparent the more you move the phone around.

There are four capacitive function keys below the screen, which work fine. The phone slides open to reveal a four-row QWERTY keyboard. The keys are large and slightly raised, though the top row is a bit too close to the edge of the display for comfort. Still, it's a decent keyboard and easy to type long messages.

The Rise is a tri-band EV-DO Rev. A (800/850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. It also works as a Wi-Fi hotspot with the right service plan. The phone connected to my WPA2-encrypted Wi-Fi network without issue. Reception and voice quality are both average. Voices are somewhat harsh and fuzzy in the earpiece, and maximum volume could stand to be a bit louder. On the other end, calls made with the phone are a little low, and noise cancellation is average at best. Calls sounded fine through a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset , and voice dialing worked without trouble. The speakerphone is not loud enough to use outdoors. On the plus side, battery life was very good at 9 hours and 16 minutes of talk time.

Android and Apps

The Rise is powered by a single-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 MSM8655 processor, which makes for midrange performance. Benchmarks scores are on par with other similarly spec'd devices, though I encountered a good deal of sluggishness here. You definitely don't want to use this phone for gaming.

The Rise is running Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), which is a relatively new version of the OS. That's a good thing, because you shouldn't expect an update to Android 4.1 (Jellybean) anytime soon. This is a relatively stock build of Android, without an overlay from Kyocera. Sprint has added MobileID, which allows you to install various "ID packs" on your phone that include applications, ringtones, wallpapers, and widgets. It isn’t for everyone, but you don't need to use it if you don't want to. There's also Sprint Zone and an eco-mode app for battery management, but aside from that, there isn't much bloatware.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
There's 0.9GB of free internal storage and a 2GB microSD card preloaded in the slot underneath the battery. It also worked with my 32GB SanDisk card, but not my 64GB card. The Rise was able to play AAC, MP3, and OGG music files, but not FLAC or WMA. Audio quality was fine over a pair of standard 3.5mm earphones as well as Altec Lansing Backbeat Bluetooth headset. All of our standalone video files played back at resolutions up to 800-by-480 except for DivX.

The 3.2-megapixel camera comes with an LED flash but lacks autofocus. It snaps photos quickly, in just 0.3 second, but quality is poor. Photos taken indoors are very dark and lacking in detail. They're a little better outside, but nothing to write home about. The camera also records video at an underwhelming 800-by-480 resolution. Video recorded indoors is unusable, at a stilted 10 frames per second. Video taken outside plays back at a much smoother 30 frames per second, but looks grainy.

Aside from the keyboard and the low price, there isn't much else to get excited about with the Kyocera Rise. The free Samsung Transform Ultra is lighter and more manageable, with a not-as-bad (but still not great) display, though it's stuck on an older version of Android. If you're willing to plunk down the cash for a premium device, the Motorola Photon Q 4G LTE is by far the best keyboarded smartphone on Sprint, with a sublime hardware keyboard, speedy dual-core processor, sharp display, and support for fast 4G LTE. If you aren't willing to drop that much cash, but are willing to drop the keyboard, the LG Viper 4G LTE  strikes a nice balance between price and performance, with a good camera, powerful dual-core processor, nice display, and 4G LTE support.

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