CRICKET ZTE CHORUS REVIEW: A SIMPLE PHONE, BUT GOOD FOR MUSIC
PCWorld Rating
2.5
2.5 / 5 – PCWorld, Feb 13, 2012
Pros
Unlimited music downloads and texting
Inexpensive phone though a contracting contract
Cons
Poor camera and video quality
Resistive shade makes typing scarcely impossible
Bottom Line
Although the ZTE Chorus has the shortcomings, it isn’t a bad fit if you’re on a parsimonious bill and essentially wish to attend to music.
Images (click to enlarge)
The ZTE Chorus for Cricket is a handsome, compress phone with a diverse, built-in song living room pleasantness of Cricket’s MuveMusic software. Although pretty labelled ($50 though a stipulate and $45 per month for a song plan, as of Feb 13, 2012), this prepaid phone falls reduced due to bad touchscreen attraction and a low-end display.
Design
When you collect up the ZTE Chorus, you’ll rught away notice the sharp feel–as well as the less-than-sturdy construction. The silken piano-black cover is good to the touch, and tasteful in appearance. The dull edges communicate a soothing look, and concede the phone to fit more positively in the palm. Measuring 4.40 by 2.20 by 0.60 inches, the Chorus is a tiny hunker for my liking, and feels massive in my pocket. Weighing 3.7 ounces, it has a light cosmetic frame, which is a bit troubling: The phone seems similar to it would mangle simply if it were to fall. The battery backplate comes off in a snap.
The 3.2-inch WQVGA resistive touchscreen arrangement is the phone’s greatest weakness. The shade frequency responds to hold unless you press resolutely and precisely (with your fingernail); typing is formidable to the indicate that texting or browsing becomes a chore. In addition, the shade has a low fortitude of 240 by 400 pixels.
Below the arrangement is a touch-sensitive volume control, along with a home/back key. Annoyingly, the Chorus requires you to pull the home/back pass regularly to switch from the MuveMusic program (see below) to the home screen.
The MuveMusic button, which is located in between the volume and home/back buttons, is a utilitarian control for fast accessing the MuveMusic software. A earthy key, the MuveMusic symbol bears a music-note emblem.
MuveMusic
Music is the Chorus’s strongest feature. The MuveMusic program offers a outrageous preference of songs to download–millions of tunes, trimming from the ultimate hits to classics to more problematic songs. You can download as many songs as you wish with your monthly song interpretation plan. As for audio quality, the receptive to advice is not as transparent as what you competence attend to on a PC. Testing the phone‘s outmost speakers, I listened to Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” and encountered a tiny white noise; the effect became more distinguished when I put headphones on. I favourite carrying the option of branch on SRS (Sound Retrieval System) in Standard Mode, which extended Del Rey’s voice and the credentials music.
Android…Or Is It?
The interface for the Chorus is easy to navigate; as this is a bill phone, however, it uses a general Linux OS in place of Android. I found the poverty of the three-by-four apps menu unimpressive, and the icons lacked detail and worldly shading.
Since the Chorus isn’t an Android device, it doesn’t yield access to the common apartment of Google apps. You do get Cricket’s Storefront for apps, though they miss the accumulation that the Android Market offers. If you wish to try Cricket though you positively need the Market, you should squeeze an tangible smartphone–such as the ZTE Score–and the MuveMusic devise for Android phones, which costs $55 a month.
Camera and Video
Since the Chorus is versed with usually a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, I wasn’t awaiting world-class picture quality. After receiving a shot on Bryant Street in San Francisco, I beheld a bluish stain via the photo. Images I took indoors lacked sharpness.
Test photos taken with the Samsung Focus (left) and the ZTE Chorus (right).
The camcorder available with a tiny lag, and discerning movements constructed video with jellylike aftereffects.
Performance
Call peculiarity over Cricket’s network was rsther than uneven. Sometimes the calls I done to friends’ dungeon phones and landlines went through fine. I could attend to voices well, with the difference of a low immobile sound, which resulted in a tiny fuzziness. In a single instance, the immobile was so heated that I indispensable to stop the call. Web browsing was also a bit irregular, given I couldn’t bond at times. When I did, Cricket’s 3G network speed was decent, loading the PCWorld.com homepage in fourteen seconds. Battery life, however, was poor: The Chorus survived tiny more than 4 hours of successive song play.
Conclusion
Although the ZTE Chorus has a low-quality camera and camcorder, a poor display, and a resistive touchscreen, this phone isn’t a bad fit if you’re on a parsimonious bill and you essentially wish to attend to song on the go. If you do confirm to use the Chorus for information exchnage purposes, you get 1000 mins any month and total texting (but you may have to buy a tiny stylus only to type comfortably). And if the Chorus doesn’t work out in the end, you’re not thankful to stay with it given it is a prepaid phone.
PCWorld Rating
2.5
2.5 / 5 – PCWorld, Feb 13, 2012
Pros
Unlimited music downloads and texting
Inexpensive phone though a contracting contract
Cons
Poor camera and video quality
Resistive shade makes typing scarcely impossible
Bottom Line
Although the ZTE Chorus has the shortcomings, it isn’t a bad fit if you’re on a parsimonious bill and essentially wish to attend to music.
Images (click to enlarge)
The ZTE Chorus for Cricket is a handsome, compress phone with a diverse, built-in song living room pleasantness of Cricket’s MuveMusic software. Although pretty labelled ($50 though a stipulate and $45 per month for a song plan, as of Feb 13, 2012), this prepaid phone falls reduced due to bad touchscreen attraction and a low-end display.
Design
When you collect up the ZTE Chorus, you’ll rught away notice the sharp feel–as well as the less-than-sturdy construction. The silken piano-black cover is good to the touch, and tasteful in appearance. The dull edges communicate a soothing look, and concede the phone to fit more positively in the palm. Measuring 4.40 by 2.20 by 0.60 inches, the Chorus is a tiny hunker for my liking, and feels massive in my pocket. Weighing 3.7 ounces, it has a light cosmetic frame, which is a bit troubling: The phone seems similar to it would mangle simply if it were to fall. The battery backplate comes off in a snap.
The 3.2-inch WQVGA resistive touchscreen arrangement is the phone’s greatest weakness. The shade frequency responds to hold unless you press resolutely and precisely (with your fingernail); typing is formidable to the indicate that texting or browsing becomes a chore. In addition, the shade has a low fortitude of 240 by 400 pixels.
Below the arrangement is a touch-sensitive volume control, along with a home/back key. Annoyingly, the Chorus requires you to pull the home/back pass regularly to switch from the MuveMusic program (see below) to the home screen.
The MuveMusic button, which is located in between the volume and home/back buttons, is a utilitarian control for fast accessing the MuveMusic software. A earthy key, the MuveMusic symbol bears a music-note emblem.
MuveMusic
Music is the Chorus’s strongest feature. The MuveMusic program offers a outrageous preference of songs to download–millions of tunes, trimming from the ultimate hits to classics to more problematic songs. You can download as many songs as you wish with your monthly song interpretation plan. As for audio quality, the receptive to advice is not as transparent as what you competence attend to on a PC. Testing the phone‘s outmost speakers, I listened to Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” and encountered a tiny white noise; the effect became more distinguished when I put headphones on. I favourite carrying the option of branch on SRS (Sound Retrieval System) in Standard Mode, which extended Del Rey’s voice and the credentials music.
Android…Or Is It?
The interface for the Chorus is easy to navigate; as this is a bill phone, however, it uses a general Linux OS in place of Android. I found the poverty of the three-by-four apps menu unimpressive, and the icons lacked detail and worldly shading.
Since the Chorus isn’t an Android device, it doesn’t yield access to the common apartment of Google apps. You do get Cricket’s Storefront for apps, though they miss the accumulation that the Android Market offers. If you wish to try Cricket though you positively need the Market, you should squeeze an tangible smartphone–such as the ZTE Score–and the MuveMusic devise for Android phones, which costs $55 a month.
Camera and Video
Since the Chorus is versed with usually a 2-megapixel camera and camcorder, I wasn’t awaiting world-class picture quality. After receiving a shot on Bryant Street in San Francisco, I beheld a bluish stain via the photo. Images I took indoors lacked sharpness.
Test photos taken with the Samsung Focus (left) and the ZTE Chorus (right).
The camcorder available with a tiny lag, and discerning movements constructed video with jellylike aftereffects.
Performance
Call peculiarity over Cricket’s network was rsther than uneven. Sometimes the calls I done to friends’ dungeon phones and landlines went through fine. I could attend to voices well, with the difference of a low immobile sound, which resulted in a tiny fuzziness. In a single instance, the immobile was so heated that I indispensable to stop the call. Web browsing was also a bit irregular, given I couldn’t bond at times. When I did, Cricket’s 3G network speed was decent, loading the PCWorld.com homepage in fourteen seconds. Battery life, however, was poor: The Chorus survived tiny more than 4 hours of successive song play.
Conclusion
Although the ZTE Chorus has a low-quality camera and camcorder, a poor display, and a resistive touchscreen, this phone isn’t a bad fit if you’re on a parsimonious bill and you essentially wish to attend to song on the go. If you do confirm to use the Chorus for information exchnage purposes, you get 1000 mins any month and total texting (but you may have to buy a tiny stylus only to type comfortably). And if the Chorus doesn’t work out in the end, you’re not thankful to stay with it given it is a prepaid phone.