ZTE Warp – The Best Prepaid Android Device
ZTE Warp is an impressive prepaid smartphone and is a device to get if you are on Boost Mobile, offering solid Android Gingerbread experience, conservative design, and rich call quality, all for an affordable price of $199 on prepaid no-contract cellular service of Boost Mobile. Surf the web from the palm of your hand and connect instantly to sites, including Facebook, Google and many more. With Warp, you can experience the adaptability and convenience of the world class leading smartphone platform and select from more than 250,000 applications in Android Market for tailoring your device and expanding its potential. Turn your handset sideways for watching videos and surfing the web in landscape mode, and then turn it back again for navigating through menus and dialing numbers in portrait mode.
The ZTE Warp might sound like a cutting edge handset from the future, but is really an entry level Android smartphone with basic camera, slow 3G data and modest speeds. On no-contract service of Boost Mobile, it fits in well. The company’s $199 Warp is a sign of that shift, providing full power of Android with plenty of speed for handling it. Get flawless and quick access to IM and email via Google Talk and Gmail, along with plethora of best-in class messaging experience. The Warp has a nondescript black slab shape, measuring 5 inches high, 0.5 inch thick and 2.7 inches wide, and weighing 5.3 ounces.
The ZTE Warp comes with 4.3 inch LCD display with 800 x 480 pixel resolution and pumps out acceptable amount of light. Colors look vivid, even if they lack saturation and impact found on other high end smartphones. Its thick bezel surrounding Warp’s screen makes it appear small. Additionally, the touchscreen is less responsive as compared to other devices in the market, perhaps due to its special Gorilla Glass that enhances durability. Its input is XT9 virtual keyboard with wide, gray keys and enough space, providing light haptic feedback. You can also choose from standard Android keyboard that is practically similar, however with square keys and black background.
Above the ZTE Warp’s screen, you will find a silver earpiece speaker, but doesn’t come with front facing camera, which means video chat is out of the question. Nevertheless, you will find a notification lamp, something which is found very less on today’s handsets. Underneath the screen, there are capacitive buttons for standard Android functions, including Home, Search, Menu and Back. The dedicated camera button and microUSB charging port are located on the right hand side of the device, while the 3.5mm headphone jack and small black power key on the top. The volume rocker button is situated on the left hand side of smartphone, while the rear facing 5.0-megapixel camera with LED flash and main speaker at the back. Once you remove the battery cover that is unnervingly flexible and thin, unveils the large 1600mAh battery of the device and gets microSD memory card slot that holds up to 32GB maximum.
The ZTE Warp provides very bare-bones Android experience with greatest Ice Cream Sandwich version of OS. The Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread operating system brings all of flexibility and powerful customization features, which will surely appeal to Android users. You will find five different home screens, which you can populate favorite application shortcuts and widgets, linking you to Android Market for library of Google of over 250,000 applications, music, movies and books. The company has preloaded Warp with staple selection of Google software like applications for GPS navigation, Gmail, messaging and email. There is also standard multimedia player for video and music with My Files application to sift via data directory of Warp and quite a few essential utilities such as alarm clock, voice recorder and stopwatch.
The only attempt for tweaking the ZTE Warp’s interface is the Mobile IS feature ported from parent company of Boost Mobile called Sprint. With this feature, you can download plenty of themes like MTV, Professional and Socially Connected built around applications and wallpapers customized to match them. The software of camera is usual for Gingerbread and the device doesn’t provide more sophisticated settings like 60Hz and 50Hz Anti Banding, sharpness, manual ISO and saturation.
Standard features on ZTE Warp include 2G Network: CDMA 800 / 1900; 3G Network: CDMA2000 1xEV-DO; Touch-sensitive controls; 4.3 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 800 pixels; Vibration; MP3 ringtones; microSD, up to 32GB; 4 GB storage, 512 MB RAM; Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Wi-Fi hotspot; 5.0-megapixel camera with 2560?1920 pixels, autofocus, LED flash and Geo-tagging; Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread); Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon; GPU: Adreno 205; SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM; GPS with A-GPS support; SNS integration; MP4/H.264/H.263 player; MP3/WAV/eAAC+ player; Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Talk and Picasa integration; Organizer; Voice memo; Predictive text input; Phonebook: Caller groups, Unlimited entries, Search by both first and last name, Multiple numbers per contact, Picture ID and Ring ID.
The ZTE Warp also adds Organizer: Alarm, Calendar, Calculator, Document viewer, Stopwatch, World clock and Notepad; E-mail: POP3, IMAP, Microsoft Exchange and SMTP; Bluetooth Profiles: Handsfree (HFP), Headset (HSP) and Advanced Audio Distribution (A2DP); Notifications: Music ringtones (MP3), Service lights, Vibration, Polyphonic ringtones, Silent mode and Flight mode. The rated battery life of Warp is nine days and nine hours in standby mode and five days of usage time.
Overall, it offers all the Android Gingerbread essentials with plenty of horsepower to get the job done.
