Kyocera Rise hands-on

So far, there have been few companies making any major announcements regarding smartphones, but as we’ve seen yesterday, Kyocera was bold enough to share some tidbits on two specific Android powered smartphones. If messaging is your kind of thing, the Kyocera Rise might be the better solution, since you know, it packs a landscape style QWERTY keyboard.

Honestly, the Kyocera Rise is a forgettable device in many ways already, as it fails to impress with its bland and all-too typical design scheme. Indeed, it’s constructed out of plastic, which makes it very lightweight, but it tends to make the device feel extremely cheap in the hand. On top of that, its build quality is hardly top notch – as we question its handling over time. Of course, the main attraction with the Rise is the 4-row landscape style QWERTY keyboard it’s packing along. Unfortunately, we’re not digging the plastic feel of the buttons, though, we’re still able to distinguish them from one another very slightly.



Checking out its 3.5” HVGA (320 x 480) IPS LCD display, we adore the natural colors it’s able to produce – albeit, its viewing angles are questionable. Nevertheless, combining its size and resolution, we’re able to recognize most fine details without a hitch. Powered by a single-core 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor, the Rise performs very quick with few instances of any lag or slowdown. Well, it probably helps that the handset is running a stock Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich – though, it might change seeing this one we’re checking out is a pre-production model.



So far, there’s no word on who will actually be getting the device, but all eyes point to some kind of CDMA carrier. Therefore, it might be bound with Sprint or Verizon, or some of the other prepaid carriers out there. Lastly, pricing is unknown at this point, but we’d sorely hope for it to be on the inexpensive side – especially when it’s primarily a messaging device.