ViewSonic ViewPhone 3 hands-on

We were able to take a closer look today at ViewSonic’s newest Android-powered smartphone dubbed the ViewPhone 3 which comes unlocked out of the box and has a dual-SIM card slot.

The ViewSonic ViewPhone 3 is a low-tier smartphone that runs on Android 2.3. ViewSonic has their own custom user interface overlaying it that is similar to what you may have already seen on their array of tablets. The ViewPhone 3 definitely feels like the low-end phone that it is designed to be. For what it intends to be though it isn’t all that bad. Build quality seems solid although it is mostly made of plastic. It has sort of a soft touch finish that didn’t really attract fingerprints which we liked. It isn’t the slimmest phone in the world but it is neither too thick nor too heavy.



The screen is what it is, measuring in at 3.5-inches with a lowly resolution of 320x480. Fortunately we seem to be almost completely past the days of resistive touchscreens for smartphones as the ViewPhone 3 uses capacitive technology. Colors weren’t really eye-catching and text appeared blurry at times, but that is what a $279 price tag sans contract will get you.

Navigating the phone wasn’t too bad of an experience despite it only having an 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM. Things seemed to respond well for the most part and we never had to deal with any extended lag.


Overall the ViewSonic ViewPhone 3 accomplishes what it really sets out to be. A budget-frienldy unlocked phone that can sport two SIM cards while delivering you the Android goodness. If it was made with the intentions of getting people to replace their top of the line handsets with it we’d have a problem, but since that isn’t the case the ViewSonic ViewPhone 3 is okay in our books.