SAN FRANCISCO -- Cricket today launched their second Android smartphone, the Huawei Ascend, which brings Android 2.1 to Cricket's low-cost service plans for only $149 without a contract.
I saw the Ascend back in August and got more time with it today. The Ascend goes up against the Sanyo Zio in Cricket's lineup, and it has some advantages against Sanyo's phone. While the Zio has a high-resolution screen, it costs $100 more, runs an older version of Android, and has some problems with screen responsiveness.
The Ascend's screen was brighter and more responsive than the Zio's when I tried it here at the CTIA Wireless trade show. The Ascend uses a 320-by-480 screen - not the Zio's 800-by-480 resolution, but still adequate. More importantly, it runs Android 2.1, which brings in critical Microsoft Exchange and social-networking features that the Zio lacks.
Otherwise, yeah, the phone feels cheap. It is cheap! It's a little plastic thing with a now-out-of-fashion trackball and a 3-megapixel camera on the back. But it's fine at this price. It has 3G and Wi-Fi, all the usual Android apps, and a few Cricket apps that add to but don't replace the standard Android marketplace.
Huawei did mess with the Android interface a bit, giving the Ascend a "grid" of nine home screens that you move between both horizontally and vertically. Other Android phones typically spread their home screens horizontally; this is the first one I've seen with vertical scrolling. There's also a custom clock widget and a custom phone dialer, as well as a few other tweaks. It'll bug Android purists, but this isn't supposed to be an aficionado's Android phone - at $149 plus $55 per month all inclusive, this is designed to bring new users to the Android fold.
The proof here is in the performance. I was initially impressed with the Sanyo Zio, especially looking at its specs. But its reflective, unresponsive screen caused problems when I actually tested it in the wild. Huawei isn't known as a top-tier phone manufacturer here in the U.S., and the Ascend has to deliver stability and good call performance to be worth buying even over a feature-phone like Cricket's proven Samsung Messager Touch.
Cricket is heading more aggressively into smartphones than its major competitor MetroPCS, though MetroPCS says it will catch up next year. Chasing both of those low-cost carriers is Sprint's prepaid brand Virgin, which has been bringing over Sprint smartphones like the recently-announced Samsung Intercept. The three companies are working together to really reduce smartphone service plan prices in America right now, at least on entry-level phones.
The Ascend will be available in mid-October, Cricket said.