Kyocera Rise User Reviews

This thing is so bad, I will never buy another Kyocera product again. I'm pretty sure it wasn't even designed by engineers, I think they deployed the thousand monkeys locked in a room technique on this one.

Pros: It has a physical QWERTY keyboard

Cons: Everything else

Let's see, there's the random reboots, it does that one about 4-5 times in a day.

There's the can't run 2 programs at once crash, which happens 95% or so of the time you try to run 2 apps at once. This one is especially awesome because when you are attempting to enter data by that physical keyboard it requires a system app to do it. That system app, plus another app (like say the webbrowser) will crash back to desktop almost always. Really awesome that despite having a physical QWERTY, you can't actually use it most of the time.

There's the inexplicable frozen but not frozen mode, in which the phone acts like you've started 4 major apps, but nothing is actually running, and what you are telling it to run runs at about 10% speed.

There's the blank screen freeze, in which the phone is turned on, but the screen will not turn on no matter if the slider is open or closed, or how many times you hit the unlock button. To fix this one you have to yank the battery.

There's the wireless with a mind of its own bug. This one is where the wireless turns itself back on within 30 minutes of turning it off. I've checked my apps, they aren't doing this. It happens so frequently that within a week of owning this "phone" you will give up trying to turn the wireless off, and just delete your networks so it doesn't have anything to actually connect to when it does it.

The biggest gripe though, and this kind of goes back to the memory leak issue where this thing runs at 10% is that I miss 50+% of all phone calls because by the time the phone reacts to you hitting the accept button, the phone call has already been sent to voicemail. This thing is so useless, it can't even reliably perform its base function let alone anything else a smart phone is supposed to do.

You are probably reading this and thinking it can't be that bad. Well, it's your money, but I don't want to hear any crying when you didn't listen.

Let me put it this way, some of you may be computer users for a while. Do you remember Microsoft Windows, Millennium Edition? This phone will make that and a computer of the same time period look like some sort of NSA supercomputer. It's bad man, I just don't have the words.

Why am I posting a review of a 3 year old phone? #1 Virgin is still selling this junk, and simultaneously deleting reviews that inform just how big of a pile this thing is. #2 It's really the only thing with a physical QWERTY I could find.

If you are reading this, and happen to work for Motorola, please light some fires under the guys making the Droid 5. This is tiring. I am not going to buy a phone unless it has a physical QWERTY. That is a non-negotiable. Please save me from Kyocera.

The phone would be wonderful if you could actually use it regularly. Bad reception causes many problems and often it is just unusable. I have had the phone for six months and while it is very durable, I often find that I can not use it in my home unless it is up against a window. I usually have to go outside to use it properly.

Screen shuts off even after setting it to go off after more then a minute. If you are on hold or check your bank account , etc. by pushing different buttons you have to continuiosly slide the keyboard open to get it back! It is very easy to accidentally call the last number you dialed, google who knows what, and end up on all different screens. The volume button is on the side so it is very easy to turn the volume down. I dont hear my phone rining! Worst of all, I had to dial 911 and it wouldn't let me get through with out pushing a bunch of other screens! I called virgin mobile about it. They sent me this reconditioned phone. The volume it terrible on speaker, cant take pics with text, in addition to all the previous problems mentioned. Reception is below average , cant get any in basements, blind spots in my house, dropped calls. ca't send texts sometimes, tells me full number with area code is imcomplete yet I can recieve texts on that number.

All in all this is a good phone for the cost. If you aren't looking for a high end android phone then this might fit the bill. It served me well for almost a week using it constantly after minor surgery on my hand left me unable to type on my laptop or use a mouse. I could hower "hunt and peck" with my index or middle finger on the phone screen to type and scroll through pages and apps without pain. So in that regard it worked great as my laptop replacement. I got pretty fast at typing on this phone in standard/vertical mode. Still couldn't type in horizontal mode due to the location of my incisions (thumb area) but it didn't slow me down much. LOL

This phone has very limited usable memory (RAM not storage). The storage is fine for what I need it for. It has .9GB usable storage on the phone itself. The phone can handle up to a 32GB SD card and you can use the app App2SD to move some apps to the SD card to free up space on the internal storage. I was using that app and moved everything to storage that I could but then I had to format and reinstall the phone due to system errors (probably caused by me from rooting and using Titanium Backup to freeze some system apps). So I decided it wasn't worth keeping it rooted due to the fact that the bootloader is locked and you cannot put any custom ROM's on the phone. There are none available for this phone due to that fact. Eh, so it's no longer rooted. If I end up needing to root it again, I will but for now, it's a non issue.

I love they keyboard. Even with no reception I am able to watch movies without buffering. Games stop working, phone freezes and shuts off randomly. I have had this phone for 6 months and the battery life has progressively gotten worse. I had to get a second Rise all this activity has happened with both phones. The first one was corrupt. When making calls if they can hear me it sounds like I am under water. The phone destroyed my memory card. I think the only things I like about this phone are the keyboard and if it decides to run whatever apps I open whether it be one or 10 they all run at a decent speed and the phone is DURABLE.

if your looking for an inexspensive smart phone, please do yourself a big favor and buy this. if you want a fast, powerful, good quality, up to date qwerty keyboard phone with Swype, android ICS, and a snapdragon processor at an insane price, this is perfect for you. if your looking for the best of the best, keep going.

I was tired of paying Sprint for my EVO, after some investigation I went with Virgin Mobile. I text more than talk, so I preferred a keyboard. Now I use sprints network for less than half the cost.
The phone is great, screen and camera are the only wishes. But, I knew that in advance. If it had a 5mp cam and higher res screen, would be perfect.
Buy this one!!!