LG Viper
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Very good for a basic phone!
Got the phone back in 2012 and still have it to this day. Capable of doing a lot but has limits due to it being only upgradable to android 4.3. Recommended for a first phone especially if buying it for kids and teens.
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Device is okay... Android version is disappointing.
I have had this phone for about a year now. It was a gift from a friend - their old used phone - which they gave to me so that I could play around with Android. I don't have Sprint service, so I put it in airplane mode and just use it on WiFi. It was a lot of fun at first. I used the developer options to force GPU rendering, and that smoothed out the OS considerably. I installed some apps that I liked, especially my personal favorite, QPython (I like to write and run python scripts). I used the GPS in standalone mode from time to time as well, and was able to navigate without any cellular connection as long as I launched the navigation, and brought up the map, in a WiFi hotspot.
So, I played around and customized quite a bit, but eventually I wanted to root the thing and install CyanogenMod. This is where I hit a big snag: I am running Android 4.0.4, kernel 3.0.8 build ZVK... and it is apparently unrootable! I've tried every exploit that I could find for any LG Viper, and the only way to root is to downgrade to either the ZVI build, which is tricky, or straight back to Android 2.3, which is just a little ridiculous. Without cellular connection, I cannot downgrade the software, and so I cannot take advantage of any of the downgrade exploits anyway. Every time I attempted root, it would set off the security feature, and even if it said it had made root it simply did not work after that. Fortunately I was prepared with backups, and so did not lose any data after factory restoring.
I must say that the device has a decent battery life, a nice screen size with good colors and minimal pixelation, and has a lot of features for its age. All of the hardware components of the phone that I use work well. Compatible apps are extremely plentiful, more so than I really have the time to take serious advantage of. However, I was quite disappointed that the phone is essentially unrootable.
All in one
I have tried every phone out there, no joke, and this one by far has it all!! The screen is big enough without being so big it looks like a computer. The battery life is hands down AWESOME!!! It has a nice thin body design, even in a case it feels nice and thin. Overall I have got to say that this phone has a lot to offer.
