Devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One, and the iPhone 5S are currently some of the biggest and baddest smartphones on the market. However, if you are on a bit of a budget for your next handset, or if you are getting your first ever smartphone, you may not need all of the latest and greatest specifications. That's where devices like the Kyocera Hydro Elite come into play. The Hydro Elite is only selling for $49.99 with a new two-year contract, so it certainly is on the affordable side. With that said, the Hydro Elite fails to live up to even that low of a price point. With poor hardware and software specs alike, the handset just ends up being a bad smartphone. To find out just why you should do your best to avoid this train wreck of a phone, keep reading our full review! 

As always, let's start with the design. Right off the bat, it doesn't take a smartphone genius to see that this is a very poorly designed device. The back of the phone has a two-tone color scheme. Two-thirds of the back has an uncomfortable, textured plastic that just feels weird when holding the device in the hand. The top one-third of the backside uses a glossy plastic that looks incredibly cheap. The phone is also quite chunky, with a weight of 128 grams and a thickness of 11 millimeters. And as if that wasn't enough, the phone is absolutely covered in branding. Starting out on the front of the phone, a Verizon logo lies at the very top of the device, and a Kyocera logo rests at the bottom. Moving onto the back you will find another Verizon logo, 4G LTE logo, and a second Kyocera logo. Add those together, and you're looking a total of 5 individual logos on this device. So, unless you're a fan of cheap plastic, thick and heavy phones, and being a walking advertisement for Verizon and Kyocera, you most likely will not like the design here on the Hydro Elite.  

One highlight of the Hydro Elite is the fact that it is waterproof. The Hydro Elite has IPX5 and IPX7 certifications, which means that it can be fully submerged in up to 1 meter (or 3 feet) of water for up to 30 minutes. This is an especially nice feature to have on a phone if you frequently take your handset to the beach, poolside, or near the shower. I tested out these certifications as much as I could, and I can say truthfully say that this device is indeed waterproof. I do want to note though that you cannot use the phone while it is submerged in water. 

The Kyocera Hydro Elite features a 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 HD display that crams in 342 ppi. If you look at the screen head-on, it actually looks alright. However, if you look at the display from any sort of an angle, colors become washed out instantly. The screen doesn't get that bright either, and is quite hard to see in direct sunlight. So, although it might be 720p HD, the Hydro Elite's display left much to be desired.

In terms of processing speeds, the Hydro Elite is packing in a 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor along with 1.5GB of RAM. Despite having more RAM than we usually see in mid-range smartphones, the Hydro Elite is a very slow machine. We've seen Qualcomm's S4 CPU perform like a beast in other handsets, but the Hydro Elite never felt like it had enough processing power for me. Swiping through the home screens and app drawer is not without a good amount of lag, motion blur ensues when scrolling or swiping through a page on the phone, and gaming was downright bad. Playing Beach Buggy Blitz was not enjoyable at all of this phone. The frame rate was slow, and the animations looked quite poor on the handset. 

Unfortunately for the Hydro Elite, the story doesn't get much better when it comes to its camera. The Hydro Elite is equipped with an 8MP rear-facing shooter with LED flash, while there is also a 1.3MP front camera. Neither of the cameras produced any good looking photos. As expected with a 1.3MP camera, pictures taken with it were extremely grainy and included a lot of digital noise. However, I was a bit surprised at how poorly the 8MP rear-shooter performed. We've seen 8MP cameras kick out really good looking pictures on devices in the past, but the main camera on the Hydro Elite was not good at all. Colors are washed out, details are soft, and low-light photos turn out looking plain awful. The camera is also lacking a bit on the software side of things. You have your standard settings for panorama shots, changing your shutter sound, and a selection of 8 different filters, but that's just about it. If you're a big shutter bug, the Hydro Elite isn't the phone for you.

The Hydro Elite also suffers in one of the most important categories for a smartphone: Phone calls. People I talked to on the Hydro Elite said that I sounded quite distorted at times, and that I often sounded muffled as well. On my end of phone calls, people sounded tinny. The audio always felt like it was missing something. This is quite unfortunate, seeing that the bread and butter of a smartphone is the actual action of talking on the phone. Thankfully, data speeds with Verizon Wireless's 4G LTE towers were consistently strong. My download speeds averaged out at around 16Mbps and upload speeds had an average of 10Mbps.

Powering the Kyocera Hydro Elite is a 2,100 mAh removable battery. Kyocera reports that you will be able to get 13 hours of talk time on the Hydro Elite, but I found this to be otherwise in my tests. With heavy texting and Facebook usage, moderate YouTube streaming, and light game playing, I only had 25% battery remaining after 5 hours and 30 minutes of total usage time. That my friends, is pretty far off from the reported 13 hours of usage. 

The Kyocera Hydro Elite is running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and a future update to 4.2 or 4.3 doesn't look all that promising. This means that you do not have access to Android goodies such as Photo Sphere, Daydream, Lock Screen Widgets, among other things. You do, however, have Kyocera's custom UI layered on top of the Android experience. Unfortunately, this does absolutely nothing to improve the OS. Kyocera's UI feels slow, laggy, and is a pain to use. Even with no applications running in the background, swiping through your home screens and app drawer is never without lag and/or motion blur. 

Kyocera tries to add a bit of functionality to the software side of things by adding some quick toggles to certain settings from the notifications bar. These settings include GPS, Bluetooth, Sound, NFC, and Eco Mode. While these work fine, there is an extremely large and obtrusive Wi-Fi toggle placed below these. The Wi-Fi toggle is the same width as the others, but is 5 times as long as each of the toggles above. The worst part is that this stays in your notifications tray even if you aren't using Wi-Fi. I understand that this sounds like a very small complaint, but it proved to get quite annoying over time. Another software issue I had with the Hydro Elite was its bloatware. Out of the box, you have apps pre-installed such as Amazon, Audible, DiXiM Player, Facebook, Games, IMDb, My Verizon Mobile, NFL Mobile, Polaris Office 4.0, Slacker Radio, VZ Navigator, VZ Security, and so much more. As it always goes with Android devices, none of these applications can be uninstalled from the handset. 

As you can tell, I am not a fan of the Kyocera Hydro Elite at all. While I did like the phone's waterproof ability, nothing else worked for me. Between my issues with the design, display, processor, camera, call quality, battery life, and software, I could not find anything redeeming about the phone. If you take your handset around the beach, pool, or anywhere else that it has the chance of getting wet, then I can see why you would be interested in a waterproof device. However, we've seen from Samsung with the Galaxy S4 Active that you can make a waterproof device without skimping out on the other specifications. Sure it may be one of the only waterproof devices available from Verizon, but I cannot find any real reason to justify the purchase of this device. Yes, it's only $49.99 with a new 2-year contact, but so is the HTC Droid DNA (which we also reviewed and gave a score of 9/10). So, at the end of the day, the Kyocera Hydro Elite is a bad smartphone. Yes, it works, but it doesn't work good. This review may have sounded harsh, but I absolutely hated my time with the Kyocera Hydro Elite. Hopefully the next phone we review is better than this train wreck. 



Author: Joseph Maring

After almost an entire year without any new hardware, Motorola is back in the smartphone game with 4 new offerings. Their most popular new handset, the Moto X, has been receiving great reviews (hoping to get our review unit in soon), and has proved to us that Motorola knows how to make a killer piece of tech. The company has also released 3 new Verizon Wireless exclusives. Those phones include the Motorola Droid Mini, Droid Ultra, and the Droid Maxx. The Droid Ultra is in the middle of these new Droid phones, and is the most similar to the Moto X. While it has a lot of the same hardware and software features of the Moto X, the Droid Ultra has a few things going against it, and still makes us wonder why this phone exists in the first place. The Ultra isn't a complete train wreck, but there is a lot wrong with it. Want to find out more about Verizon's Droid Ultra? Keep reading our full review!

Before we talk about just how bad the Droid Ultra's design is, which it most certainly is, let's talk about the one good aspect it has going for it. The phone is extremely thin. Measuring in at just 5.41 x 2.80 x 0.28 inches, the Ultra is a very trim device. It's also not too terribly heavy at 4.83 ounces. Unfortunately, that's where the positives end. The front screen of the Droid Ultra is a horrible fingerprint magnet. Within a matter of seconds, the screen has fingerprints all over it. Turn the phone around, and you'll see a Kevlar back. However, Motorola decided to add a layer of plastic on top of it, which attracts fingerprints just as bad the screen does. After using the phone for a couple minutes, it looks like you've had your grimy hands all over it for a month without cleaning it. And also, the phone just doesn't look good. Between the horrible plastic, unattractive camera lens, and 3 large logos on the back, the Ultra ends up being ultra ugly. 

One difference between the Droid Ultra and the Moto X is the display. Unlike the Moto X's 4.7-inch screen, the Ultra's is just a bit larger at 5-inches. The pixel resolution is the same, however, at 1280 x 720. With 294  ppi, the Ultra's screen certainly isn't the sharpest on the market. Blacks are nice and deep with it being a Super AMOLED panel, but the screen fails to get very bright, and is also hard to see in direct sunlight. 

In terms of processing speeds, the Droid Ultra is a pretty snappy phone. Just like the Moto X, and all of Motorola's latest smartphones, the Droid Ultra utilizes Motorola's X8 computing system. The X8 computing system is based off of a 1.7GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU. It also includes an Adreno 320 quad-core GPU, and two additional processors (one for contextual computing and one for natural language processing). Overall, I was quite pleased with the performance I got out of the Droid Ultra. Browsing the Web, using various apps and games, streaming video, taking pictures, and more was always buttery smooth. 

The Motorola Droid Ultra is packing in a 10MP ClearPixel rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera for all of your picture taking wants and needs. So, how do they perform? It's so-so. Images have a decent amount of detail in them, but a lot of the shots I took ended up looking rather cold and bland. I was able to capture a couple really good-looking photos, but for the most part, the Droid Ultra's camera is very underwhelming. With that said, I will admit that I am a big fan of Motorola's UI for the Ultra's camera app. When you open the camera app, you will see only two buttons (one to enable video recording, and one to switch what camera you are using). Swiping to the right reveals a half circle of settings. From here, you can choose from features including HDR, flash settings, tap to focus, slow motion video, panorama, Geo-Tag, shutter tone, and Quick Capture (the ability to launch the camera app with a couple flicks of the wrist). It is clean, minimalistic, and I love it. Hardcore shutterbugs will most likely find the user interface too bare bones, but it worked great for me. 

If Motorola is known for anything, it's their excellent call quality on their phones. Thankfully, the Droid Ultra is no exception here. Everyone I talked to said that I sounded as if I was right next to them, and people on my end were crystal clear as well. Since the phone is a Verizon Wireless exclusive, you also have access to Verizon's blazing fast 4G LTE data network. 

While call quality may be fantastic, the Droid Ultra has another issue that makes it a pain to use. The Droid Ultra features a 2,130 mAh non-removable battery. With Wi-Fi turned on, the screen brightness at about 80% to 90%, heavy texting, moderate game playing, light Web Browsing, and light picture taking, I was only able to squeeze 8 hours and 53 minutes of usage time out of the Ultra. When it was just 4:49 PM, I only had 19% battery life remaining. If you use the phone a bit more sparingly, you'll probably be able to get through a full day of use with the Ultra. However, I always seemed to find myself looking for my charger before 8:00 PM. 

The Motorola Droid Ultra is running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. While it may not be the absolute latest version of Google's mobile OS, Motorola has (thankfully) left Android looking similar to a stock flavor of it. This is a Droid phone after all though, so Verizon has made sure that they've left their intrusive mark on it. Ladies and gentlemen, I am referring to bloatware. Verizon handsets always have a lot of preloaded applications, but on the Droid Ultra I found 18 apps preinstalled on the phone. These range anywhere from Amazon, IMDb, Verizon Tones, the Amazon Appstore, VZ Navigator, Viewdini, Ingress, and more. And, as always with carrier bloatware on Android phones, none of them can be uninstalled. 

Thankfully, the Droid Ultra comes equipped with two cool additions to its software that really do enhance the overall experience. One of those features is Active Notifications. With Active Notifications, the Ultra's screen will automatically turn on when it senses you turning the phone over onto its back, taking it out of your pocket, or even just picking it up. When the screen turns on, it will show you the time, along with any notifications you may have. It completely blows standard notification lights out of the water, and it is really going to be hard to live without it.

The second software feature included is called Touchless Control. With Touchless Control, you can perform certain functions on the Ultra by simply saying the phrase "Okay Google Now" and then what you want the phone to do. For example, even if the phone's screen was turned off, I could say "Okay Google Now, how's the weather?" and then have Google Now tell me what the weather is like in my area. You can also send people text messages, set alarms, make reminders for yourself, and more, all without ever touching the phone. This is all possible thanks to the Ultra's natural language processing chip found in the X8's architecture. It is also worth noting that after you go through the process of setting up Touchless Control on the Droid Ultra (or any of Motorola's other new handsets) it will only respond to your voice. 

As you can see, the Motorola Droid Ultra is a mixed bag of results. There are a few cool features that the phone is rocking, but there are also quite a bit of negatives to go along with it. The biggest factor that's going against this phone though, is actually the Moto X itself. The Moto X has a far better design, more compact screen size, is available on virtually every major carrier here in the US, and is selling for the same price of the Droid Ultra with a new two-year contract ($199). When you factor that in, along with the abysmal design, underwhelming camera, poor battery life, and loads of Verizon's bloatware, the Droid Ultra becomes an incredibly tough sell. It also becomes a phone that I can't see myself truly recommending to anyone. Yes, the phone works fine, but the competition it's going against completely blows it out of the water. 



Author:Joseph Maring