If the Kyocera Hydro Vibe ( at Amazon)  sounds familiar, that's because you might be thinking of last year's Kyocera Hydro Edge ($69.99 at Amazon) . And it's not just the names that are similar. The Hydro Vibe ($29.99 with a two-year contract) is essentially the same smartphone as the Hydro Edge, albeit with a slight bump up in the spec department. That makes it worth the $29.99 premium over the Hydro Edge, but you can get a much better device if you're willing to spend your money on something that isn't waterproof.

Design, Waterproofing, and Display

At 5.02 by 2.50 by 0.43 inches (HWD) and 4.9 ounces, the Vibe is slightly larger than the Edge, but still easy to hold in one hand. It has a generic look, made completely out of plastic with a rubberized, textured back panel. The phone is mostly black, with silver buttons, and a dark gray band around the display.

You'll find a Power button and 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of the phone, with two Volume buttons on the left. There's a dedicated camera button on the bottom right, and a micro USB port for charging on the bottom. Three touch buttons sit below the display.

The Vibe is certified waterproof for IPX5 and IPX7 standards. That means it can survive submersion in up to 3.28 feet of water for up to 30 minutes. You need to make sure the battery door is properly sealed, but the headphone jack and power port needn't be covered, which is helpful. I tested the Vibe by soaking it in a pitcher of tap water for 30 minutes. After a quick pass of a paper towel the phone emerged unscathed, so if you've ever lost a phone to water damage, the Vibe is a device you might want to consider. 

The phone has an unimpressive 4.5-inch LCD. It features 960-by-540-pixel resolution, which works out to 245 pixels per inch. It looks fine, but sometimes text can appear a bit grainy, and compared with most other displays on the market it just isn't compelling. It could also stand to get a bit brighter.

Connectivity and Call Quality

The Hydro Vibe supports Sprint's 3G, 4G LTE, and latest Spark network, but performance wasn't great where I tested it in New York City. Reception was average at best, and the phone often dropped down to 3G. It also supports 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, and had no trouble connecting to our test network in the PC Labs.

The phone uses Kyocera's Smart Sonic Receiver technology, which transmits audio using tissue conduction rather than a traditional speaker. That means there's no speaker on the front of the phone—instead, the glass of the display sends sound vibrations to your ear. I've experienced this done well before, but that's not the case here. Call quality on the Vibe is abysmal. Voices sound thin, tinny, and grainy. When taking a call outside, it becomes difficult to hear. Calls made with the phone are only slightly better, but sound too digitized and suffer from poor noise cancellation. The speakerphone is fine, but far too low to hear outdoors.

The Vibe supports Bluetooth 4.0 + LE/EDR and connected to a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset. Calls over Bluetooth were much better, with a louder, fuller sound. The phone also has NFC, and can be charged wirelessly through the PMA (Power Matters Alliance) standard if you purchase a charging pad. Unfortunately, the 2,000mAh battery was only good for 6 hours and 59 minutes of talk time in our tests, which is on the short side.

Performance and Android

The Vibe is powered by a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8926 processor and 1.5GB RAM. That's a step up from the dual-core chip in the Edge, but performance is only average. Home-screen transitions sometimes lagged behind the touch of my finger, and benchmark scores were only average. It should be able to handle most apps just fine, but it isn't a great phone for gaming.

Kyocera has made some heavy tweaks to Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean), the dated OS that powers the Vibe. There's an Easy mode for smartphone beginners (which is somewhat difficult to find under Home Mode), which places up to six giant app icons at a time across three home screens, and gives you access to a simplified, vertical app menu. Back in Standard mode you get five home screens, which come preloaded with a minimum of apps and widgets. The Vibe is home to plenty of bloatware, though surprisingly it can all be deleted. Kyocera also includes a power saving feature called MaxiMZR, which lets you control background data connections for running apps.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions

The Vibe has 8GB of storage, but only half of that is available to the user. There's also a free microSD card slot under the back cover, buried under the battery, which supports cards up to 32GB—it couldn't read our 64GB card.

Media support is pretty solid. The Vibe was able to play back all of our test files except WMA, as well as all of our video files up to 1080p, aside from DivX. Once again the phone's speaker is somewhat low, but audio was fine over both wired and Bluetooth headphones.

The 8-megapixel rear-facing camera isn't the best. It fires off a shot in just 0.5 second, but details are lacking and color reproduction is only average. On images taken outdoors, some of the brighter colors were completely blown out even though it wasn't even a particularly sunny day. Another annoying feature is that, right after taking a photo, you need to press the back button in order to take another one. And there really is no video button—the Vibe just starts recording as soon as you press the video icon. Video quality is also lacking. The camera is able to record 1080p30 video outside, but it looked jerky and was constantly refocusing. Indoors, the frame rate drops to a sluggish 15 frames per second.

So while the Kyocera Hydro Vibe is undoubtedly an improvement over the Hydro Edge, it's only an average Android phone at best. If you're extremely clumsy, or if you've ever lost a phone to water damage before, it might be worth a look, but you don't need to spend much more to get a better device. The Moto X ($99.99 at Amazon)  costs $49.99 with a two-year contract, and it has a sharper screen, a better camera, and significantly improved call quality. The HTC One  can be had for the same price, and will get you a super-sharp 1080p screen and much better performance, even though it's over a year old. Both of those phones are relatively solid, but they aren't waterproof. If you need some peace of mind, you can always buy a water-resistant case.

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