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Tell me about it

Funny he talks about its SIM card, then he says it’s CDMA, which, as far as I barely know, doesn’t have SIM cards... at least mine doesn’t.
 
And now there's the ZTE Whirl at ST... basically the same specs, same eighty bucks. And no, I'm not asking for a new subforum on this.
 
jefboyardee said:
And now there's the ZTE Whirl at ST... basically the same specs, same eighty bucks. And no, I'm not asking for a new subforum on this.
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There are several ZTE phones in the ST lineup with very similar specs. I am hoping that when we find a root method for one, it will work for several of the Jellybean based ZTE phones being offered at ST.

I know the ZTE Merit has been rooted, but you can't really go off that because it runs off Gingerbread.

I have tried about every method I can find to root my Valet, but so far I have not been successful. Sadly, finding exploits on my own is still beyond my current skill set.

However, I will put it out there... If anyone with the skills wants to help out without needing to purchase the phone, I will run through whatever steps are needed. I just need some instruction.
 
Two someones took the trouble to compare these nearly-identical droids. The main difference is that the Valet is CDMA, the Whirl is GSM. And the former has a flash out back.
 
jefboyardee said:
Anyone got one of these already? Watcha think? I’m so curious I accidentally started a subforum for it.
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This phone has quite surprised me. I bought one expecting a low end smartphone phone because but my 'dumbphone' screen had broken (DANG TEXTBOOKS! :P) and I wanted to try out the new smartphones at Tracfone.

I mostly didn't get what I expected. I enabled developer options and turned off the animations to give the gpu and cpu as much as a break as possible. I also installed Nova launcher over the stock launcher and it FLYS. I disabled the animations on Nova launcher for the same reason as above.

The wifi can be a little funky in some cases, but it works decently for me. (if it really bugs you just run a ping in the background from your computer). Service is good since it uses Verizon's tower.

The notification led comes in handy and is multicoloured, so that's a bonus. Battery life is good. Now here's the best part:

I installed some games and some apps and to my surprise they ran pretty well and some nearly flawlessly. In fact I tested a game I'm developing in my spare time and it gets about 56 fps a second and my game's hard-coded cap is 60-62. That shocked me. It also supports OpenGL ES 2. The phone comes with google apps and I the ones I used run just fine. The camera isn't the greatest, but some of the pictures I took looked pretty well to me and the flash comes in handy. Android 4.1.1 isn't the latest, but it is pretty new.

TD;DR:
This phone is a great entry level phone and to me feels like a mid-range phone. After some little tweaks mostly regarding animations the phone ran very fast and smoothly. Camera is pretty okay to me, but doesn't compete to the cameras we see in most new smartphones now days. Signal is well, wifi has some hiccups sometimes but works pretty well. Apps run pretty well and the phone can handle a lot of mobile games. Battery life is good as well.

I'd give it a 9/10.
 
Terrific review. Question: is it just 1GB internal memory, like other budget phones, and is that swamped with bloats?
 
jefboyardee said:
Terrific review. Question: is it just 1GB internal memory, like other budget phones, and is that swamped with bloats?
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Storage reports 2.34 gb of usable internal storage. The phone supports micro sd cards up to 32gb. Mine happened to come with a 4gb sdcard.

As for the bloatware: ZTE does install some of there own applications. Most of them are replacements for stock apps you'd see in AOSP. (i.e. email, calendar, clock, camera, note-pad, sound recorder, music, alarm). They do have some useful ones such as a file manager and a basic task manager. It's not super bad. They modified the lockscreen and homescreen a little. (homescreen doesn't affect me because I replaced it with nova). I've scene worst bloatware on other phones.
 
Weird... ST site shows it for eighty bucks. I dropped my Walmart today and it was still a hundred. And eBay's best Buyitnow appears to be seventy, although buying a phone there gives me the willies.
 
I got it for $80 at K-mart before the holidays. Its been $75 recently on Amazon. The best price I hear was some guy got one at a WC discount supermarket (can't remember name for $49 something!

The first one had a screen freeze and Tracfone replaced it. Its great with strong WiFi signal as an Android device. My area gets Verizon towers and my in-house bars are only about 1-2. Thats slightly weaker than my older LG-290c. No real problems and you can't beat the monthly cost if you don't use it for heavy data (I got 15.1 GB during their transfer from my old phone which was a 10-15x error they made in my favor;))
 
"I enabled developer options and turned off the animations to give the gpu and cpu as much as a break as possible. I also installed Nova launcher over the stock launcher and it FLYS." - UnkOwnOne

I tried this and man does it fly. Nothing seems different other than it moves faster. What am I doing when I turn off animations?
 
That Tuning Guy said:
"I enabled developer options and turned off the animations to give the gpu and cpu as much as a break as possible. I also installed Nova launcher over the stock launcher and it FLYS." - UnkOwnOne

I tried this and man does it fly. Nothing seems different other than it moves faster. What am I doing when I turn off animations?
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Did you go to Nova Settings -> Look and Feel and change Scroll Speed and Animation Speed to "Faster than Light" ?
 
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