Cricket Wireless ZTE Grand X

Cricket Wireless ZTE Grand X-Positive (ZTE Grand X Cricket Wireless has a competitive price, good camera, and solid call quality). Negative (processor and slowly pull the camera makes this device performance and low-res display can be unresponsive sometimes). Important (ZTE Grand X will meet the basic needs of your smartphone, but the operator has a better prepaid handsets at the same price, if not cheaper).

ZTE Grand X Cricket Phone

With a 5-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera and dual-core processors, ZTE Grand X is a perfect example of a reliable and affordable phone. But while the device is $ 100 on contract price (after you send the mail-in rebate) from Cricket Wireless mighty interesting, you have to be willing to make sacrifices. For one thing, a dual-core handset is slow, and because it runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, already feels dated when you take the device out of the box.

In addition, the Grand X Max is not the only price competitive in the smartphone market. Carrier itself has many alternatives such as the HTC Desire and Motorola Moto G (2015), which offers a more seamless user experience and faster for low cost too.

Design

With the appearance that echoes US Cellular ZTE Grand S Pro, Grand X curving edges, smooth rounded corners and a matte battery door which adds a touch of refined premium. 0.37-inch device profile is very slim, but do not expect to fit too comfortably in your jean pocket, because overall, the phone is quite large, which is 5.7 inches and 2.87 inches to be exact. It's also a bit heavy with 6:06 ounces. Given the small grip, we can not easily maneuver the smartphone comfortably with one hand. That's not a problem breaker per se, but people with small feet should pay attention to this fact.

On the left edge is a Micro-USB port and a volume rocker. At the top is the 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the right is a button sleep / power. Both the volume and power buttons protrude slightly from the surface, making them easy to feel for and comfortable to press. The back of the house a 5-megapixel camera lens and flash, leaving a wide, shiny like the black oval. A small audio grille located in the bottom right corner. Using a small indentation on the bottom edge, you can unload from the back plate to access the 2,300mAh battery, SIM card and microSD card, expandable up to 32GB. 5-inch QHD screen has a resolution of 960x540 pixels handset is low. Although the text and graphics are easy to read and seen, the image can be seen and no obvious aliasing by letter. The screen can also be responsive to the touch, and on that occasion, take a few taps or finger swipes to register an action. Due to the narrow viewing angle, the screen may appear washed out when you tilt, and it becomes difficult to see the screen. At the top of the touch screen is a low-res shooter 1megapiksel and speakers.

Software Features

With Android 5.0 Lollipop been freed from Google, it was disappointing to see the Grand X running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean date OS. But it has a standard package of Google applications, such as Chrome, Drive, Gmail, Search, Plus, Hangouts, Maps, Images, YouTube, and portals to Play Store for Books, Games, Kiosk, Film & TV, and music.

The task of managing basic applications including browsers and email clients original, calendar, calculator, notepad, clock with alarm and stopwatch, news and weather apps, video and music player, voice recorder and voice dialer.

Cricket throw in some applications are preloaded. There is a mobile hotspot client, visual voicemail, and our Cricket users are allowed to manage their voice and data services. TouchPal X activate the keyboard and optional inserts text, Kingsoft Office is a mobile office suite, and Mi-EasyAccess lets you change the application shortcuts on your lockscreen.

Grand X is not available Bluetooth 4.0, fortunately, although the internal memory which is hampered in 4GB, and there is only 1GB of RAM. It was not unusual for cheap phone, but it does not mean you may want to look into and buy an external memory.

Camera and Video

Quality 5 megapixel camera to camera passable, but the camera itself is slow, and you have to wait a while to press the shutter again after you take a photo. It also requires an average of 4.35 seconds to launch the camera application once the longest ever measured during our testing, so if you want to pull out the Grand X to take a quick pic, you have to wait. In general, the images look sharp and clear images. However, the colors look muted and dark colors are more difficult to distinguish from each other. The light source can also be excessive and flash devices leave the hard blue.

The video quality is almost the same with the camera. At 720p, either stills or clips look sharp in comparison with high-definition recording, although they are still quite clear. Audio picked up well, although when it comes to the video shoot in the room, we could hear a low pitch voice drones subtle but constant throughout our records. Finally, there are times when the record will be "pulsed" as the camera takes time to adjust the focus. It is not too intrusive, but can also sometimes interfere.

The rear camera has a lot of editing options, including 4X digital zoom, filter nine Instagram-esque, and five shooting modes. There are four image sizes, ranging from 1,280x720 to 2,592x1,944 pixels. Also equipped with flash, gridlines, and face detection. In addition, there is a timer, meter to adjust image exposure and brightness, four white-balance settings; three levels of ISO; geotagging; and two anti-appeal options. This camera can also record video with the same filter layered on top, has four resolutions (VGA 720p), shoot time lapse recording, pause and take a picture while recording, and audio mute.

With no timer, no filters, no meter, and no white balance, facing the front has only a handful of the features seen in the rear gunner. It can take photos in three sizes (ranging from 640x480 to 1,280x720 pixels) and has four options are the same size in the recording.

Speed Data, Processing Speed and Battery Life

Because we are outside the US Cellular network LTE, 4G roaming only be measured. Data rate here is slow and inconsistent, but different users will have different experiences depending on their location. For us, there are many times when a web page will load in just a few seconds, but during the next session, the same site will stop loading at all.

On average though it took about 8 seconds to load the mobile site E-News and 7 seconds to load the desktop version. Mobile and desktop websites New York Times' published in 15 and 6 seconds. ESPN's mobile sites clocked in at 6 seconds, and 12 seconds elapsed before the desktop site fully charged. Ookla speed test app shows the average rate of 3.93Mbps and 1.15Mbps, and 43.70MB game Temple Run 2 took 1 minute and 58 seconds to install it.

Dual Processor 2.3GHz Snapdragon handset is capable of performing the duties required of small but well, but not at blistering, instantaneous velocity. You have to wait a while to act as a call by using the keyboard, switch from landscape and portrait mode, and swiping through the app drawer. On average, it took about 46 seconds for the handset restart. Benchmark tests reflect real-world observations. The highest score of five experiments Quadrant phone is impressive 4878. For comparison, the equivalent of placing LG Optimus F3Q and Increase Max (who scored 4837 and 4795, respectively). Grand X also has a multi-thread Linpack result of 119.622 Mflops in 1.41 seconds.

Anecdotal observations of 2,300mAh appears good so far. It goes on standby day without recharging. It has been reported talk time up to 8.5 hours and standby time of 17.5 days, but we will update this review with official figures in the lab results.