Water-resistant Kyocera Hydro View launches on January 8 on Cricket

Kyocera and Cricket Wireless today announced a new Android smartphone called Hydro View. Just like Kyocera's previous Hydro handsets, the new one is dust- and water-resistant (IP57-certified) - thus, it can be submerged in up to 3 feet of water for 30 minutes without being damaged.

The Hydro View resembles the Kyocera Hydro Air that was released in October by AT&T, though it's a bit smaller and thinner (139 x 72.1 x 9.9 mm vs. 143.8 x 72.8 x 10.9 mm).

The new smartphone sports a 5-inch display with 540 x 960 pixels, and is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor clocked at 1.1 GHz, obviously not being a device made for customers who want advanced features. Fortunately, the handset has LTE connectivity - this is becoming a norm even for low-end devices. The Hydro View further comes with a 5 MP rear camera, a 2 MP front-facing camera, 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB of internal memory - which can be expanded thanks to a microSD card slot. At the moment, the Hydro View runs Android 5.1 Lollipop, and Kyocera didn't say if it's going to update it to Android Marshmallow.

Cricket Wireless will sell the Kyocera Hydro View starting January 8 for just $79.99 (no contract required). So, who's planning to buy this new handset?


sources: Cricket, Kyocera