Kyocera Hydro Elite
Phone Scoop Review
Oct 9, 2013 by Eric M. Zeman
Kyocera's Hydro Elite is the first device it's sold with Verizon in years. It's a water-resistant Android smartphone that's wrapped in a small, capable package. Here are our thoughts. read review ›
User Reviews
hide detailed ratings
perfect size waterproof phone
Picked one up on craigslist,rooted it,then downloaded sqlite so I could edit the apn's and now I use it on Tmobiles $30 5gb plan. Dont get LTE but I do get hspa plus and the download speeds in my area are around 15mbps.The phone is only a little thicker than my 5s. Pros-size,waterproof,nice screen,and price. Cons-The phone seems to heat up pretty fast
hide detailed ratings
Great inexpensive device
You can find these phones on eBay for less than $100. The Hydro Elite is a solid performer and has the best battery life of all the Android phones I carry around with me. I get Verizon LTE about 99% of the time, except for in a few counties in my state where they don't have a license. The phone almost looks like an iPhone5 clone from the front, but is a little thicker and has a more textured back side.
Call quality is one major drawback of this device. I made some calls to people on landlines from this phone and a T-Mobile iPhone, and they preferred the voice qualty of the T-Mobile call, hands-down. The landline users to me sounded tinny, cold, and hollow using this phone. They said I sounded robotic on the Verizon call. Verizon has had a pretty crappy voice codec for awhile, and this phone is no exception to the rule. Hopefully when VoLTE comes along, this problem will be solved.
Pros:
Cheap (used)
Water resistant
Battery life
Simultaneous voice and LTE data
RF performance
LTE performance (up to 40mbps in my tests)
Cons:
Poor call quality (Verizon/codec issue)
Verizon bloatware
Camera quality
