Kyocera
Hydro Air
Kyocera
announced a new inexpensive smartphone for AT&T's GoPhone prepaid mobile
service. Called the Kyocera Hydro Air, this is a entry-level smartphone priced
at US$ 99 with free shipping. Although the price is definitely very low for an
off-contract smartphone, the Kyocera Hydro Air does come with a few interesting
tricks up its sleeve.
As
the name suggests, the Kyocera Hydro Air is water resistant in depths of up to
one minute for up to 30 minutes. Although a US$ 100 water-resistant phone is
certainly interesting on its own, the deal is made even sweeter by the phone's
Military Standard 810G, a certification that ensures that the Kyocera Hydro Air
is rugged enough to take a beating and survive to tell the story.
At
a price of US$ 100 with no contractual obligations, it's obvious that Kyocera had
to cut some corners, and this is plainly obvious following a quick look at the
specsheet. Comes with a 5-inch display with a resolution of 540 by 960 pixels,
a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset (undisclosed model) with a 1.2 GHz quad-core
processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of expandable storage, LTE compatibility and a
2300 mAh battery.
In
the camera department, the Hydro Air features a 5 MP primary camera and a 2 MP
shooter on the front. As far as the software goes, the phone runs Android 5.1
Lollipop, but with some customization from the manufacturer. Overall, these
seem like very good specs for a sub-US$ 100 smartphone.
