Kajeet might be an unfamiliar name to most, but the company has been around for the past five years, providing wireless service as a virtual operator in its own niche as a child-friendly alternative to  other, more expensive services.

The provider has recently rearranged its lineup to include smartphones, but with the new additions comes added features to protect kids and teenagers from unsavory and potentially unsafe content as well as new features for child tracking and safety. Read more for the complete review.

I was sent a standard LG Optimus S as an example of the smartphones Kajeet is now carrying earlier this month, which include the HTC Shift, Samsung Conquer and Replenish. The smartphones themselves are typical of Sprint’s current lineup and are identical in terms of hardware. Where the phones differ is in the services supported, as Kajeet has taken extra steps to make the phones safe for children and teenagers.

Starting with its most recent feature addition, the provider offers a free content filtering service included in the monthly rate which lets parents control what children can browse and do on the phones and gradually decrease filtering until deemed unnecessary. Not only does Kajeet allow content filtering, but it also allows near complete usage control for voice and messaging by scheduling appropriate time blocks to deter phone use at inappropriate times, such as at night and during school hours.

Another feature which Kajeet is heavily promoting for all of its lineup is its GPS Phone Locator service which can be used on a pay per use basis at 0.99/per use or as part of a monthly add-on for $7.99 that includes access to a web portal that tracks a child’s phone in real-time as well as allowing the addition of landmarks, a monthly overview of a child’s activity and automatic triggering of emails to track a phone if its either lost or if the child is lost.

Having used the LG Optimus for two weeks, the hardware itself is solid and testing the content filter worked as advertised along with the usage control features. Battery life was surprisingly solid despite the phone only running Froyo and not having an update to Gingerbread available.

As far as monthly plans are concerned, all Kajeet plans are monthly plans with no agreement and start at $4.99 a month going all the way up to $50 a month for unlimited voice/text/GPS Locator access, though smartphones are excluded from unlimited picture multimedia messages and rely on an additional monthly data plan for use, while featurephones are allowed to send unlimited picture messages. Data plans start at $4.99 for 50MB of access and go all the way up to $24.99 for 1GB of access which can be combined with the feature manager to block or enable select sites and services.

Using the phone for two weeks and testing out all of the features, I was pleasantly surprised to see that none of the features got in the way of normal phone usage. I did like being able to track the phone and looking back at the history of where the phone went while I did my usual errands as the location service was accurate to within ~20 feet. The content filter did its job, blocking out access to sites depending on filtering level and worked well enough for the purposes of this review.

After all is said and done, Kajeet is a viable alternative for parents looking to get their kids a smartphone without having to worry about what they can do with them that could potentially lead to inappropriate activity or content, with the bonus of being cost-effective and a good way to keep watch over them with the inclusion of pay-per-use GPS location service. Even though I personally don’t have kids, I would highly recommend Kajeet over taking out another line on a postpaid plan or another prepaid service for any parent that does.

Kajeet – Official Site

Just in time for the holidays, Sprint has rolled out the Android 3.2 Honeycomb upgrade that we first confirmed was on its way for the HTC EVO View 4G.

The upgrade is is well over a hundred megabytes, those on a capped 3G/4G data plan are urged to download this update over Wi-Fi. The update took around a half hour to install completely on our in-lab EVO View 4G.

Of note, the update will disable the menu, home, and back keys that were prominent along both sides of the EVO View. This is in stark contrast to devices like the Dell Streak 7, which maintain the keys after being upgraded. HTC confirmed to us that this was due to Google-certified devices requiring that they keys be disabled in Honeycomb. While the Streak 7 has Google’s suite of Android apps, it is not a “with Google” device, hence Dell was able to keep the soft keys enabled.

Nevertheless, the loss of soft keys is not something that we would suggest holding up from updating. The EVO View is a vastly better device post-upgrade, and we think it has changed the outlook for the device entirely. What was an overpowered Android 2.3 tablet is now a potent Honeycomb tablet, bearing a no-contract price point below $250.

In addition, Sprint’s release notes also note that the upgrade adds enhanced security protocols: Sprint Data Link and 3LM are now supported. In addition, bug fixes to Google Video Chat are included, and the upgrade also fixes a bug that prevented Bluetooth from functioning with Airplane Mode enabled.

If you were on the fence about a Sprint-powered tablet, the EVO View is now worthy of the title of flagship Sprint tablet. While it is unclear if the device will get Android 4, at this price point we consider it a worthy device, even if this is the last generational firmware upgrade the device receives.

Still, we wouldn’t count out an Android 4 upgrade. While HTC and Google are planning flagship tablets for 2012, the Flyer generation of tablets appears to have all the underpinnings needed to run Ice Cream Sandwich, and we certainly can see HTC green lighting an update to show its commitment to its first major tablet offering.

We were kindly provided a Boost BlackBerry Style for review by Boost Mobile’s PR agency this month and I’ve been using it as my primary phone instead of my E71. My full review won’t go up until this weekend, but here are a few things that I’ve been able to take away from using the phone for a couple weeks.

• Applications such as Twitter and Facebook hook in at the system level and alerts are triggered for replies to status updates and tweets, which is a huge plus since no longer are you forced to stay in an app. Twitter for BlackBerry also features full Unicode support, so foreign language tweets render properly.
• The phone is an unfortunate magnet for smudges and fingerprints owing to its glossy finish.
• The 5.0 megapixel camera is positioned oddly on the backside of the phone, leading to situations where my index finger would be completely covering the image sensor and inadvertently taking pictures.
• BlackBerry 6 is not the resource hogging mess that it is on other BlackBerry devices, but it still demonstrates key limitations that hamper it from being an effective consumer level operating system compared to Android and iOS.
• Indoor antenna sensitivity is a huge issue if you live in a below average coverage area.

There’s more I could touch on, but I’ll leave the bigger stuff for this weekend. For now, check out some pictures of the phone and what you get in the blister packaging when you buy it, such as software and the combination sync cable/charging cube adapter. Let me know if you have any questions or if want to see more pics.

The most powerful prepaid smartphone in America gets a full review. At twice the price of the LG Optimus V, is it worth the cost of admission? Read more to find out.

It’s pretty amazing that in the past three years how much the wireless landscape has really changed. When iPhone came out, it was $599, and people actually bought and used it as a prepaid phone at the same price that the postpay users bought into. Fast forward to today, and iPhone is now banned from prepaid, and its price has fallen to a maximum of $299.

Seeing a phone for the same price, that can rival iPhone feature-for-feature, and not have a contract attached to it, is what the Motorola Triumph was built to do.

When we unboxed this phone for the first time, we were generally impressed with its build quality. This does not appear to be a non-Motorola manufactured device. We already knew that it was ODM’ed by Huawei, as one of Motorola’s first Android ODM endeavors.

Motorola has been trying to make outsourcing manufacturing work for them for years now, and we can think of all the failures along the way. Name one Motorola C-series phone that you actually enjoyed. No, we couldn’t either.

As such, there was quite a bit of apprehension about what would happen when we first powered on the apparently-outsourced Droid-alike Triumph. Would it handle more like a Droid, or more like Motorola’s history of ODM failures…

Thankfully, it handles more like a Droid, a lot more.

Unlike the LG Optimus V, we were able to install our usual payload of apps without running out of in-phone storage. We had a similar woe on the other Virgin Mobile Android phone, the Samsung Intercept. The phone has an ample 2 GB of internal storage, so thankfully, storing apps that do not support App2SD are not an issue on this device.

Quickly, we realize where this device slotted into the Android ecosystem; a true cost-effective alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S. While it is a bit slower, it has a few more modern features like built-in HDMI output, and also does not get bogged down by a poor firmware implementation.

Unfortunately, this phone does not appear to be built off of any specific Droid firmware branch from our pokings-around. We suspect this is due to its ODM heritage.

While Virgin Mobile and PhoneNews.com probably will never see eye-to-eye on their anti-rooting policy (Virgin claims it is a violation of their terms of service, something we don’t see legally binding), the phone is indeed easy to root. One-click rooting exploits from other phones have already been ported over.

Unlike LG’s blunder, there is no easy one-touch option to enable Mobile Hotspot on the device… it is fully locked-down, unlike the Optimus V. So, while Optimus V gets to hotspot without the gray area, you’ll have to root the device to enjoy the same functionality on the Triumph.

Also equally mildly disappointing (and equally not unexpected), the battery life. It gets through the day, but power users will want to keep a portable charger around. The surprising bit for us is that the battery is indeed Motorola-manufacturered, and yet performs like what we would expect from an ODM product.

Thankfully, we do expect this phone to get some traction in the hacking community, it’s cheap enough to be useful for the elite phone community, and when combined with Google Voice, it can be used without changing your phone number. Considering the $35/month voice plan has only 300 minutes, this is actually an attractive option for falling back to other prepaid, voice only phones should you run out of minutes in a month.

And yes, Google Voice works well with this phone. In fact, you can finally make free VoIP calls using the many Google Voice SIP bridges that have emerged. The CPU is powerful enough, and battery long lasting enough, that we were able to carry out Google Voice phone calls without problem. It’s also a low-bandwidth task, so the 2.5 GB throttling threshold should not affect that (however, we were not able to test that scenario, yet…).

We’ll have camera photos up in a follow-up article, but what impressed us the most was the built-in LED flash. Finally, a good prepaid phone with a flash. And, it also works with Motorola’s on-Market Droid LED flashlight tool, so you can use it as a flashlight all the time as well.

In the end, we were left throughly impressed with the Motorola Triumph. The only features we found lacking were the lack of an extended battery accessory, and a poor performance by the front-facing camera. We really don’t see the front-facing camera as anything more than a novelty on this device, unfortunately… it was too grainy even in excellent lighting conditions.

However, all of that aside, this is now our prepaid phone of choice. While $299 in this economy is an extreme expense for many, this will now give you the capability to do just about anything an iPhone can do, and without selling your soul for a two-year contract.

It’s a great phone, and despite Virgin Mobile’s recent drawbacks on quality (and pricing) of service, it still makes for the best bang-for-your-buck solution out there.

Updated to correct a reference where we did not refer to the phone properly as the most powerful prepaid smartphone in America today.

On May 10th, after weeks of looking for a prepaid service to serve as my new primary service to save some cash, I decided to skip the usual suspects in MetroPCS, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, GoPhone and Verizon Prepaid and ended up choosing Walmart’s exclusive Straight Talk prepaid service. You may be wondering why I would choose a nearly unknown service provided by the world’s largest retailer along with one of the largest virtual operators in Tracfone. Read on and you’ll find out why along with some pretty neat stuff about the service as well as the phone that I bought in the Nokia E71-2.

The Phone
After looking at Straight Talk’s lineup of phones and looking at tons of forum posts on the subject over on HowardForums, I decided that I would buy the Nokia E71-2 without a second thought. You might ask yourself why I didn’t choose the newer 6790 Merge on account of its support for S60 Feature Pack 2 in comparison to 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 on the E71-2.

Simply put, the Merge/6790 has no Wi-Fi radio and was less capable overall than the E71, despite retailing for $229.99 compared to the $199.99 ($224.48 after taxes) of the E71-2 at the time. The E71-2 as sold by Straight Talk is the exact NAM model (RM-357) previously sold by Nokia upon its release in 2008 for $450, with no firmware changes whatsoever and the only differences being locked to Tracfone/Straight Talk.

The phone features a stainless steel bodyshell and backing plate, 3.2 inch QVGA resolution display, QWERTY keyboard, 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and (painfully bright) LED flash, microSD slot, GPS transceiver with A-GPS support, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi b/g radio. The packaging for the phone included some rather questionable legalese printed on it which I’ll get to in the next major section.

Living with the phone for nearly two months, it’s clear that Nokia peaked in terms of hardware and software with the E71 and S60 FP1. The phone doesn’t slow down or lag and is packed with features, such as a full version of QuickOffice, barcode/QR Code reader, full media player with Flash support and small touches such as support for unsigned apps and a front facing camera for video calls, with full support for SIP internet telephony over either 3G or Wi-Fi.

The Service
Straight Talk is composed of two prepaid service tiers: 1,000 minutes, 30MB of internet access and 1,000 messages for $30 a month or unlimited voice/text/MMS/data service for $45 a month. Since the E71-2 is a smartphone, it requires the $45 service plan, with the option to buy 3 and 6 months or even a year of unlimited service online. I actually ended up having to go online to activate and purchase service for the phone due to the lack of $45 prepaid cards at the particular Walmart where I purchased the phone. The online activation process went rather smoothly and was quite fast, though it is very easy to sign yourself up for the auto refill option once you purchase a month of service online using a debit or credit card if you’re not careful.

The Straight Talk service for the Nokia E71-2 and the Nokia 6790 operate on AT&T’s GSM and HSPA network, which means I’m getting 2.2Mbps down and full 1.5Mbps upload speeds on the E71 in my neighborhood, which is great for emergencies and those days when Charter decides to act up (which is thankfully rare). While around town, I’m almost always within 3G coverage, though I prefer to switch to GSM only to conserve battery power during the day. Voice service is above average on 3G and GSM, though attempts to use Google Voice with it have been less than successful, with incoming calls not working correctly and resulting in delays when speaking to callers or callers not being able to hear me.
Now then, onto the legalese printed on the packaging. In an interesting attempt to force service bundling, Tracfone has come up with some serious caveats for those looking to purchase Straight Talk service only and is actively attempting to prevent usage in unlocked phones:

Some Straight Talk wireless phones have SIM cards. If your Straight Talk phone has a SIM card, then you agree to safeguard your SIM card and not to allow any unauthorized person to use your SIM card. You agree not to, and not to allow any other person to, directly or indirectly alter, bypass, copy, deactivate, remove, reverse-engineer or otherwise circumvent or reproduce the encoded information stored on, or the encryption mechanisms of, your SIM card. You may not remove your SIM card or use the SIM card on any other wireless phone. Any violation of the restrictions on the use of your SIM card that are contained in this section may result in the immediate termination of your service without notice. The Carriers, TracFone Wireless, or its service providers, may, from time to time, remotely update or change the encoded information on your SIM card.

The above is not quite enforceable since it conflicts with both the First Sale Doctrine and attempts to enforce an EULA style agreement for service, which is legally tenuous to begin with. Since Tracfone sees the $45 service level as a subsidy along with the cost of the phone, the above could also be interpreted to mean that Tracfone is attempting to force a postpaid style agreement where there is none, since the phone was purchased at MSRP. This also means that Tracfone is preventing you, the potential customer from reselling the phone and just keeping the SIM card for service, which is also bad.

Even with those (rather massive) caveats, the service itself is worth paying for and is experiencing surging popularity within the Jailbroken and unlocked iPhone communities because it works with little effort, save for some manual MMS/data configuration as well as on other major smartphones. Now if only Nokia could send me a US version of the (E7, N8, E6) so I can test a theory that I have regarding AT&T and T-Mobile network access that I’ll explore in a future article (hint, hint Nokia).

My Personal App List for the E71
Ovi Store
Opera Mini (for EDGE)
Opera Mobile (for 3G)
cCalc Pro
JoikuSpot (for Wi-Fi tethering)
IM+
SMSAlert (Individual SMS tones for contacts)
Skype (VOIP over 3G supported)
Gravity (Social networking)

Wrap Up
I wanted to wrap this up by explaining why I went with Straight Talk when there were other options out there with more up to date smartphones. Boost Mobile has Shrinkage but requires you to be on the service for at least six months before you reach the same rate, MetroPCS doesn’t have a similar rate with unlimited data on LTE, Virgin Mobile has a $40 rate plan with unlimited data and messaging but voice is limited to 1200 minutes a month. GoPhone now features a $50 unlimited voice and messaging plan for smartphones, but data access is not unlimited, while Verizon’s new flat-rate prepaid offering is limited to select phones.

Straight Talk is available now and is the best of both worlds: Cheap enough to help control costs and easy to fit into a tighter budget, but with a service level that will let you breathe easy and not worry about watching minute usage or data, with the bonus of easy tethering for those moments when Wi-Fi just doesn’t cut it. You can buy the phone at the link below from Walmart.

Straight Talk Nokia E71 – $169.99

We did say we weren’t going to review the CherryPad America, due to the ongoing issues with the device. But, we did have it in-house, so here’s the unboxing of one of the cheapest functional semi-functional possibly-up-and-coming cheap tablets.

Read more to view the complete unboxing.

Please note, these photos were taken with the original firmware. As previously reported, Cherrypal has been forced to remove the Android Market from the current firmware due to a bug. They plan to re-add Android Market, to the CherryPad America, with formal support from Google upon the release of Android 2.3.

Cherrypal has acknowledged that the CherryPad America has serious issues that the company acknowledges cannot be fixed immediately.

The company’s offering has curiously included the Google Experience. PhoneNews.com contacted Google to find out if the device legally licensed Google’s superset of Android (known as the Google Experience). These apps include Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, and the Android Market. Google declined to respond to our requests, but our questions appeared to have triggered an investigation, forcing the matter with Cherrypal.

As such, Cherrypal has acknowledged that the CherryPad America tablet is not compliant with the minimum requirements for Android 2.1 or 2.2. The company dodged questions as to if they had pirated the Google Experience from Google. At the same time, the company did confirm that they are “temporarily discontinuing” support for the Android Market on the device.

Relations between Cherrypal and Google are not clearly destroyed, however. The company is claiming that Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread, will loosen some key requirements that will allow the CherryPad America to be Google-approved. The company promises to post a beta version of Android 2.3, once they have adapted the upgrade.

Customers may be in for a significant wait, however. Google has yet to formally announce, let alone share the source code for Android 2.3. The CherryPad America may be quickly adaptable, and Cherrypal may be working with Google using internal builds. Neither company has commented formally.

The CherryPad America is a $200 tablet (including shipping) that currently ships with Android 2.1. It is based on the common TeleChips 800 MHz Android debug board that many budget tablet manufacturers are using. However, unlike other tablets, the CherryPad America sports an iPad-like unibody metal casing, and features an iPod dock connector, along with a microSD slot. Support for other add-ons such as USB host port mode have been announced but not released.

Due to the reasons above, PhoneNews.com will not be reviewing the CherryPad America at this time.

Sprint’s Peel by ZTE was the perfect accessory for iPod touch. Unfortunately, it is undercut by Sprint’s own prepaid offerings, which offer unlimited data for iPod touch for only slightly more per month.

It’s the usual debate of style versus substance. Do you get the ZTE Peel with 1 GB of MiFi data for $30/month, or a Virgin Mobile MiFi for $40/month… and unlimited data.

First, what is the ZTE Peel? The Peel is a sled-type accessory that fits over a second-generation or third-generation iPod touch. It provides a Wi-Fi hotspot so that you can access the web just like an iPhone… but without the voice phone. It will also provide Wi-Fi to any other Wi-Fi device, such as your laptop or tablet. Sprint is offering the device, as we mentioned above (and previously) with a 1 GB data plan for $29.99 per month. At launch, it will retail for $79.99.

For some people, 1 GB of data is just fine… until you go over in that one rare instance. Much like on AT&T and Verizon’s metered data plans, the carriers are correct that 90 – 99% of customers each month can fit into those solutions. However, these are what we call “damn statistics”.

The one-to-ten percent of customers that exceed their data expectations each month are typically not the same customers each month, odds are, eventually you’ll be one of those ten percent. And, going over in just one month can dramatically effect the cost-per-month that you were expecting to pay.

It’s not clear why Sprint chose to price the Peel at $29.99 for one gigabyte. That is half the data that AT&T offers on their iPad data plan at a similar price-point. We were expecting a 1 GB plan that would have run for $19.99/month, giving customers easy access to casual browsing on the go. I suspect, however, that Sprint realized that 1 GB for $19.99 would give enough customers cheap data, that it would start to attack their own on-contract 250 MB data plans for laptops and aircards.

While this is Sprint’s first first-party prepaid offering in a long, long time, it misses the mark on price alone. The ZTE Peel fits great, and it gives an added boost of power that will compensate for the second-and-third generation iPod touch models feeling long in the teeth.

While opting for the cheaper and far-worse WEP encryption may seem lame in an era of WPA2-PSK, it does make sense here. First, Sprint wants people to pay for a more expensive device and plan. While the Peel creates a Wi-Fi hotspot, it is designed for low-security usage on the iPod touch. Anything sensitive that you would transmit on the iPod is likely already secured with some form of SSL. However, this again pushes people that know their technology back to the MiFi, which uses WPA by default.

The three hour battery life is also below the MiFi, but again, we don’t knock the Peel for that. The power button on the back allows for easier control, since it is physically in your hand the entire time with the iPod touch. With the MiFi, it’s much easier to forget that it’s powered on.

I suspect ZTE is working on a plastic re-arrangement that will allow Peel to work on the latest iPod touch models, without having to undergo re-evaluation by the FCC. Apple’s change of design happened too late in the evaluation process to make Peel work for the newest iPod touch. Either way, the hardware is not the problem… it’s the data pricing.

Pros: Excellent hardware sled for second-generation and third-generation iPod touch models.
Cons: Messed up data pricing that pushes people back to Virgin Mobile MiFi. WEP encryption.
Score: None – Sorry, we’re not going to score this one. We hope Sprint will fix the data pricing and we can give this a fitting score that the hardware deserves.

Eleven photos of the entire unboxing and booting of the Samsung Intercept, the first 3G prepaid Android phone in America.

Got questions? We’ve got the device… ask away in the comments.

The first review of the first LTE phone in America. Can the Samsung Craft on MetroPCS answer its WiMAX rivals in the marketplace today? Read more to find out.

As you may know, we’ve moved to a more fast-paced review format. As such, this may be our shortest review ever. Don’t buy this phone. Period.

The Samsung Craft is purely a test mule phone for MetroPCS. It’s a great device for helping MetroPCS engineers establish protocols, make sure activation systems work, and get their 4G network up and running. However, it also gives LTE a horrible first impression with the United States.

This is a BREW feature phone, with just about everything interesting neutered. No tethering. No apps that deliver a compelling 4G experience. Not even an Opera Mini-grade web browsing experience. We’re not sure why Wi-Fi made it into this phone.

The lack of fallback to EVDO is even more sickening. MetroPCS’s 4G network, from our experiences over the past 24 hours, means you’ll be falling back to 1xRTT-only… a lot. All the time. Walking across streets. It reminds us of AT&T Wireless’s GSM network rollout. It’s really dismal.

Don’t get us wrong, there’s nothing technically defective about this resistant-touch screen feature phone. Calls work, Bluetooth works, apps work. But there’s nothing that justifies this phone’s existence either. You’d be much better off buying any other phone on MetroPCS right now. With no contracts, there’s no need to suggest getting this phone just for the better network. And, we expect the price on this phone to crater as soon as there is a compelling LTE device on MetroPCS.

Like we said, this was going to be a fast review.

Pros: It has LTE
Cons: It has no reason to use LTE
Rating: Editor’s Choice – Good Buy – Mediocre - Do Not Buy