The Sharp Aquos Crystal is certainly does not seem to be a $ 149 prepaid phone. It is really beautiful, and really stands out. Unfortunately, its performance has not yet measure up to good looks. But after all, this is a $ 149 prepaid phone. That makes it a solid value for the price, especially if you want to watch a lot of videos on your phone.
Physical Properties
The Sharp Aquos Crystal is the first phone we've actually used an edge-to-edge screen, and the effect is dramatically. For one thing, it gives you the largest screen possible on a narrow, one-hand-friendly phone. 5.16 by 2.6 by 0.4 inches (HWD) and 4.97 ounces, the Aquos Crystal is narrower and easier to hold 4.7-inch phones like 2015 Moto X and Apple iPhone 6.
No room will be wasted here. The keyboard is spacious for the overall size of the phone. When you watch a video, it is quite engaging. Build is not perfect, when looking at edge-on screen, the side-light is actually visible, but it is noticeable.
Screen 5-inch, 720p LCD panel with 293ppi IP. It is an excellent choice for size; Sure, 1080p could have been better, but the screen has abundant colors under real glass. This is a very high quality screen for a phone quote, it blows away the uneven 854-by-480 screen of the HTC Desire 510, for example.
Push the screen up to the top of the phone forced some other interesting design choices, too. The front facing camera is at the bottom now. The earpiece, meanwhile, is a full-screen neat trick, but one that has cost the muffled sound. (More on this later.)
Body is silver and white than black, and Sharp to use a smooth silver plastic around the edges that looks more premium on simplicity than its over-decorated Galaxy S5. The back of the phone is a white, stippled plastic peels off to reveal the SIM slot and microSD card; The battery is sealed in.
Call Quality, Networking and Battery Life
The Aquos Crystal is a very unusual earpiece: full screen vibrates to create sound. In my experience, which unfortunately made for the mediocre sound quality. (We had similar problems with Kyocera Hydro Vibe, which uses a similar technology.) The "earpiece," such as it is, sounds dim and slightly muddy, with lower maximum volume than I wanted . Shipping through the mic is a bit better in my trials; the cancellation of the noise created by the slight warping in noisy places, but not enough to kill the voice. The back-port the speakerphone is of sufficient quantity, but sending from a noisy place is not clear, muddy, and hard to understand.
The Aquos Spark Crystal is a Sprint phone, able to hit the fastest speed of Sprint LTE where they are available. If possible, you should only buy Spark-compatible phones on Sprint, Virgin, and Boost now. Trying to test in Midtown Manhattan, I saw a lot of problems in data coverage, a perpetual problem with Sprint devices. When range kick in, I got speeds from 9-12Mbps down and 4-7Mbps up, which is better than I've seen in non-Spark Sprint device. The phone also has Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n and the usual Bluetooth 4.0; no NFC.
Battery life is excellent, with 5 hours, 2 minutes of LTE streaming video on 2,040mAh battery when the screen is at maximum brightness.