Introduction and Design
4G LTE network speeds are coming to the masses, and while carriers continue to upgrade their networks and expand the signal, handsets that support LTE are also coming down in price. Coinciding with Sprint’s additional LTE rollout in major markets such as Los Angeles, we have the new Sprint Force from ZTE. It’s meant to be a low-cost entry level smartphone with LTE access, and while it retails for $299.99, existing Sprint customers can upgrade to it for as low as $49.99 with a new contract, and new customers can bring their own number over and get it for free with a two-year contract.
The phone itself is made out of plastic, with no sharp features or standout metal/aluminum pieces. It has a fair heft to it, so it doesn’t feel like you might accidentally fold it in half, but that weight also exposes it’s low-cost roots. With its overly rounded corners, and sloping “chin”, it almost resembles another phone wedged into a form-fitting phone case.
The Sprint Force is also dated right out of the box, since it’s running Android 4.1: Ice Cream Sandwich, with no Jelly Bean update in sight. An older version OS comes with the budget phone territory, but what potential buyers should really be wary of is Sprint’s LTE coverage in their area. Sprint is still working on expanding its LTE network, and unless you’re tied to the carrier, you’ll want to consider other options if fast data is what you crave, and Sprint doesn’t have it in your neighborhood.
Design
The phone measures out at 4.88″ x 2.54″ and is .047″ thick, making it slightly larger than an iPhone 5, and it weighs in at 5.4 ounces, an ounce and a half heavier than the Apple device. The face of the phone will also remind you that this is budget-minded as it comes with a 4-inch WVGA 800 x 480 resolution LCD screen. While these are fairly standard amongst lower-end phone offerings, it’s starting to slope into the lower-resolution end as more phones get better resolutions.
The biggest problem we had with the screen was the reflectiveness. Even with the brightness turned all the way up, in bright daylight it was almost unusable. Even in normal lighting, you’ll see a ton of reflection, especially with darker images.
The left side of the phone has two volume buttons and a microUSB charging port, while the top has a right-placed power button, and a somewhat oddly aligned headphone port. The bottom is empty, save for a thumbnail notch to level the back cover off, and the right side has the only real design annoyance we encountered: a camera button that was basically useless. It is meant to launch the camera software (which is sometimes did), and to act as a shutter button (which it never did) and just ended up being entirely unnecessary.
The back of the phone is textured plastic that is probably meant to serve as traction for holding the device, but it just makes it look a bit cheap. There are two vertical slots near the bottom left for the speaker, and a raised bump near the top for the camera and flash. It would have been nice if those were flush with the back, but that’s just nitpicking. Under the back cover you’ll find a slot for a microSD card, and a removable 1730 mAh battery. It is worth noting that there is no branding anywhere on the phone, Sprint, ZTE, or otherwise, which makes for a nice, clean design.
Interface, contacts and calling
Interface
Unlike some other Android phones, the Sprint Force doesn’t have an extra layer of “flavor” laid on top of it in order to customize the experience for you. Everything here is fairly straightforward Ice Cream Sandwich experience, and as usual is built around the Google ecosystem.
So, you’ll want to sync your account with an existing account if possible, in order to get the full experience. The base apps like for mail and browsing the web are decent, but you’ll get more mileage out of something custom like the Gmail app.
You’ll get a main home screen, with two off to either side for a total of five, and you can nest items inside folders to stay organized. The Google Search bar adorns the top of each home screen, and unfortunately cannot be deleted or repositioned. The favorites bar at the bottom can be customized, and there is a “Power Control” widget that gives you quick access to settings like Bluetooth, Brightness, and so on.
The onscreen keyboard is narrower than we would normally like, and the addition of buttons for Swype and the microphone, among others, depending on what app your in, don’t help alleviate this. Landscape mode presents the best way to type, but to input text via portrait mode, you’ll be relegated to careful typing so you don’t hit stray characters, or finally learning how to rock Swype.
Contacts and Calling
The installed Contacts app is serviceable, although it took several Sync attempts with our Google account before it would finally populate with our own entries. Even after that, the photos from Facebook that normally get attached to each contact took a lot longer. This was over WiFi, and there was no way to track how much had been updated, and the result was being left with a Spartan-looking contact list. But there are a multitude of options for each Contact, and with some massaging, this provided app can do everything you need it to.
For phone calls, the Force is great, with most calls sounding much clearer (and louder) than our iPhone. The little speaker on the back of the phone was fairly impressive, making speakerphone-based calls much easier to hear and understand. You can easily add in other callers for a conference, mute calls, and even record calls from within the app.
Our only unhappy experience with calls on the phone was the fact that Voicemail is a completely separate app. So if you’re in the Phone app, you can’t see that you have a voicemail. Not only that, but the Voicemail app continually asks if you want to “Subscribe to Premium?” so that you can have your voicemails transcribed, to the tune of an additional $1.99 a month. Some people might find that to be a welcome service, but offering it from within Voicemail is irksome.
Messaging, Email and Internet
The Messaging app offered here might feel bare-boned at first, but with the threaded messages, and the option to send photos, videos, audio, files, and more via text message, it offers everything you’ll need. We just wish it would send notices to the lock screen to let us know that messages had arrived when we weren’t paying attention.
We quickly started using Gmail on the phone after powering up for the first time, although the base Email app is just fine. Gmail just better integrates with the rest of our Google Overlord lifestyle, and once it was able to sync everything up it was by far our preferred client. Not that you’ll find Email limiting, as it offers the some basic functionality as Gmail.
The same was true of the supplied browser, which was entirely serviceable. We just preferred loading up Chrome and importing all of our bookmarks and history. Both perform just fine, although both also have some navigation problems on standard versions of websites. While you might lose some functionality, the mobile versions of sites look better here, in both browsers.
Camera, battery life and connectivity, apps
Camera
The Sprint Force comes with a 5-megapixel camera on the backside, complete with LED flash, although the photos were nothing spectacular. In bright light, images tended to have soft edges, and in darker lighting we noticed slight focus issues. There are a ton of options in the camera app, including 16 (!) different filters that range from Lomo to Lo-fi, offering up a smattering of appeal to hipsters. The 720p video didn’t impress much either, offering serviceable but lackluster video.
However, sound from the videos was better than expected, as there appears to be a rear-mounted microphone next to the camera lens (in addition to microphone holes on the top and bottom of the phone), and the ability to take photos while shooting video by tapping the screen is a nice touch. While it won’t replace even a point and shoot, it will serve for those moments when you desperately wish you had a camera.
Battery and Connectivity
The 1730 mAh battery worked just fine for us, providing around eight to nine ours of time via standard usage. However, heavy browsing, camera, and other non audio-only based activities depleted the battery much faster, as expected. Overall, this felt like a standard smartphone battery, which is to say it will get you through an average day, but will need to go on a charger overnight, and if you take it to an event or use it extensively, you’ll want to have some portable power or an extra battery with you.
While the phone supports 3G, and all flavors of WiFi, you’ll probably be most interested in the 4G LTE. Sprint has been busy rolling this network upgrade out to multiple markets, and it just recently came to the greater Los Angeles area, which is where we tried this phone out. While results were sporadic, while getting a good signal we averaged around 4.26 Mbps down and .75 Mbps up throughout the city, falling short of the promised 6-8 Mbps down / 2-3 Mbps up promised by Sprint.
We’ll chalk it up to them having just taken the shrink wrap off the brand-new service here, but will also be keeping an eye on it. Connecting via 3G was much slower, and was peppy through WiFi, as expected. When using the phone as a hotspot, we were able to connect easily and received the same average speed on a laptop and second phone, providing a nice option for WiFi on the go. The phone also offers Bluetooth and NFC connections, with the NFC being a nice addition for a lower-end model.
Maps and Apps
The standard Google Maps and Navigation apps are included here, and have become standard for commuters who use both mass transit and private transportation. We used both throughout the traffic-magnet Los Angeles area, and they were very accurate. Maps even provided spot-on transit information, allowing us to catch subway home on time, and showed us that walking was a better option than waiting for the connecting bus. The phone includes the Qualcomm Enhanced location service, which is meant to cut down on battery usage when accessing the GPS, and can be turned on or off at will.
Thankfully, the Sprint Force is nearly completely free of bloatware. In addition to the standard Google suite of apps, Sprint has only tossed in a handful of other offerings, including the Sprint Zone app that offers an easy-to-digest way to access your account information. Other carriers should sit up and take notice, as this should become the gold standard for account access from a device. Also of note was the included Alarm app, which provides extremely robust functionality as an alarm clock, something that most of us probably use our phones for.
Verdict
The Sprint Force isn’t meant to compete with more expensive and feature-rich phones from Apple, Samsung, or HTC, but it does strive to present at least the same basic experience. If suffers the most in the screen resolution and camera departments, but when you factor in the $50 to free cost of this phone, those are probably corners that most bargain-minded phone shoppers will be willing to cut.
We Liked
Obviously the most attractive feature here is the 4G LTE network, and while we didn’t quite reach the Sprint-promised speeds, it was peppier than 3G.
LTE support coupled with minimal bloatware made us feel like Sprint really wanted this experience to be enjoyable for power users right out of the box, and it offers up a potent phone at a low cost. We were also impressed with the Sprint Zone software that makes dealing with your own account enjoyable instead of a chore.
We’re thankful the Force has MicroSD, or its paltry 2GB of storage would be a problem. The removable battery is also a nice option.
We Disliked
While a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 1.5 GHz dual core processor powers the phone, it only runs Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich, and at times there were responsiveness lags on the touchscreen and inside certain apps like Messaging. These were normally half a second long lags between touch and response, which was slightly discouraging.
In addition to the camera, we also didn’t like the added Camera button, as it feels like a useless addition to the phone.
Final Verdict
Screen resolution and camera issues aside, people just entering the burgeoning smartphone market could do a lot worse than to consider the Sprint Force. It offers up everything from 4G LTE to WiFi to Bluetooth and even NFC connections at a fraction of the cost of other phones. While it won’t dazzle your friends as the newest piece of tech, it could easily become a workhorse for you. Although the phone only includes roughly 2GB of storage, with the addition of a 64GB microSD card this could easily become a serviceable media device.
If you are considering this for the network, be sure to check out Sprint’s announced 4G LTE rollout plans, which are in the process of being installed. Your mileage may vary, and you should check the web thoroughly for average 4G speeds in your area.
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