Cricket Leaps Into Smartphone Market

Low-cost carrier Cricket announced the availability of its first two smartphones on Tuesday, the BlackBerry 8530 and the Sanyo Zio Android smartphone.

"Cricket for a long time has been waiting to say 'smartphones are here,'" said Al Moschner, Cricket's chief operating officer.

Cricket's BlackBerry 8530 is similar to the model sold by Sprint, Verizon Wireless and MetroPCS. Like those phones, it's a messaging-centric smartphone with a 320-by-240 screen and a very good QWERTY keyboard. The 8530 will sell for $299.99, according to Cricket. It will be available this Friday.

The Sanyo Zio by Kyocera is a low-cost, Google Android-based smartphone that we first saw at the CTIA Wireless trade show . It includes a 3.5-inch, 800-by-480 touch screen and a 3-megapixel camera, but it runs the older Android 1.6 operating system rather than the latest 2.2 "Froyo" version. That phone will cost $249, according to a fact sheet from Cricket, and it will be available "in a few weeks," according to Moschner. By the holidays, it will drop to $199, executives said.

"We now have forever changed how prepaid is thought about from a device perspective," Moschner said.

Device prices are coming down, too. Moschner said he expects to see prepaid Android phones below $150 and tablets below $200 next year.

The Zio will come with a $55 service plan including unlimited voice, and text usage on the phone, plus 1 Gbyte of data, per month. The BlackBerry's plan will cost $60. Those plans will join Cricket's two other basic feature phone plans, at $35 for unlimited voice and text and $45 for voice, text, picture messaging and mobile Web.

Cricket also announced the Samsung Messager Touch, a $159.99 feature phone that offers many of the aspects of a smartphone. It has a 2.6-inch touch screen, Internet-based home screen widgets that Samsung is calling "TouchWiz Lite", a Web browser, and Wi-Fi.

With 5.3 million customers in 35 states, Cricket is currently the seventh-largest cell phone network in the U.S.

About Our Expert

Sascha Segan

Former Lead Analyst, Mobile

My Experience

I'm that 5G guy. I've actually been here for every "G." I reviewed well over a thousand products during 18 years working full-time at PCMag.com, including every generation of the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy S. I also wrote a weekly newsletter, Fully Mobilized, where I obsessed about phones and networks.

My Areas of Expertise

US and Canadian mobile networks
Mobile phones released in the US
iPads, Android tablets, and ebook readers
Mobile hotspots
Big data features such as Fastest Mobile Networks and Best Work-From-Home Cities

The Technology I Use

Being cross-platform is critical for someone in my position. In the US, the mobile world is split pretty cleanly between iOS and Android. So I think it's really important to have Apple, Android and Windows devices all in my daily orbit.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad Carbon X1 for work and a 2021 Apple MacBook Pro for personal use. My current phone is a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, although I'm probably going to move to an Android foldable. Most of my writing is either in Microsoft OneNote or a free notepad app called Notepad++. Number crunching, which I do often for those big data stories, is via Microsoft Excel, DataGrip for MySQL, and Tableau.

In terms of apps and cloud services, I use both Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive heavily, although I also have iCloud because of the three Macs and three iPads in our house. I subscribe to way too many streaming services.

My primary tablet is a 12.9-inch, 2020-model Apple iPad Pro. When I want to read a book, I've got a 2018-model flat-front Amazon Kindle Paperwhite. My home smart speakers run Google Home, and I watch a TCL Roku TV. And Verizon Fios keeps me connected at home.

My first computer was an Atari 800 and my first cell phone was a Qualcomm Thin Phone. I still have very fond feelings about both of them.

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