Why You Can Trust CNET Kyocera Hydro Life review: Water-resistant, but struggles to stay afloat
This waterproof, rugged Android phone is forgettable, but it stands up to the elements.
Kyocera has cemented itself as a maker of water-resistant phones with its splash-friendly Hydro line. The company's latest is the Hydro Life, a prepaid phone that costs only $150 off contract, before taxes, and available exclusively on T-Mobile's prepaid service and MetroPCS (a T-Mobile subsidy). The phones are identical and I'm reviewing the T-Mobile version here.
Kyocera Hydro Life
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The standout feature of the Hydro Life is that's designed to hold up to the elements. It's military graded for ruggedness, dustproof, and water resistant. Otherwise, this Android 4.3 phone is a bit forgettable, with a weak camera and sluggish performance.
The Hydro Life is nearly identical to Boost Mobile's Kyocera Hydro Icon in design, features, specs, and price. The only differences are carrier availability, name and the camera (5 megapixels on the Hydro Life, 8 megapixels with the Icon).
Rough and tumble
Like many of Kyocera's phones, including the Hydro Vibe , the Hydro Elite , the Hydro Edge and the Brigadier , the Hydro Life is built to be tough, and it stands up well to water and tumbles. It has an IP57 rating, making it dustproof and water-resistant for up to 30 minutes under one meter of water. It also meets the Military Standard 810G, meaning it's designed to hold up under adverse conditions, such as extreme temperatures, and it can handle a fall without taking significant damage.
In my testing, the phone withstood a few splashes of water without any leaks or damage. It also survived several drops from around 3 to 4 feet above with ground with no scratches, dents or dings. The back cover even stayed perfectly in place. I even dropped it in wet sand at the beach, and was able to easily wipe it off like it never happened. That makes the Hydro Life a good phone if you spend most of your days in dusty or wet conditions.
Design
Even though it can withstand drops, water and dust, the Hydro Life doesn't have a particularly rugged design. It features a band of shiny dark gray metal around the edges, and a soft matte textured back cover, which gives it some style. The phone feels sturdy and solid with some heft, but it's only 4.8 oz. (136 grams), so it still feels light.
At 5.18 inches tall (131.8 mm) and 2.57 inches (65.3 mm) wide, it's compact enough to fit nicely in my hands and small pants pockets. It's also comfortable to hold up to my face for a phone call. What stands out about the design is that the Hydro Life is thick, almost half an inch (officially 0.42 inch, 10.9 mm). I don't mind that though because it makes it easy to grip, thanks also in part of to the textured back cover and the phone's rounded edges.
The removable back cover is tough to pry off to get to the battery, MicroSIM card and SD card below. That's mostly because the back cover has a built-in seal that keeps water and dust out. Be careful to press the seal back into place every time you remove the back cover, otherwise you might end up with a soggy phone.
You'll find the headphone jack and power/lock button at the top edge, and the MicroUSB port at the bottom. On the left, there's a thin volume rocker.
On the front, the Hydro Life has a 4.5-inch IPS, qHD screen with a 960-by-540-pixel-resolution display, which comes in at 244.7 pixels per inch. It's certainly not as crisp as displays on today's top smartphones, but it's still easy to read. The smaller screen feels a bit cramped compared with today's larger smartphones, making typing a bit more difficult. The display itself is a bit dim, even indoors. Outside, in direct sunlight, it's hard to see the screen even at full brightness.
Aside from protecting the LCD display, the impact-resistant front glass panel plays another important role. It's used to transfer sound waves from the phone's "Smart Sonic Receiver" to your ear using vibrations that pass through the tissue in your head to your eardrum. However, you don't actually feel the vibrations. Kyocera uses this technique so it doesn't need to use an earpiece on the front of the phone, which helps keep the phone watertight.
Software features
The Hydro Life is running 2-year-old Android Jelly Bean 4.3, which is a few steps behind the current Android 4.4 KitKat that comes standard on many phones today. What's worse, though, is that Kyocera's custom design competes with the traditional Android style, with elements of both onscreen. There's both a sleek Jelly Bean-styled notification menu, and a confusing, clunky lock screen. It's also difficult to edit your home screens, as there is one menu to add new screens and add widgets, and another menu to delete or rearrange some of your home screens.
With Android 4.3 comes the typical Google apps, such as Gmail, Maps and Calendar. There's also a persistent search bar at the top of each home screen, which is helpful, but you can't remove it easily if you don't want it there.
Kyocera also included a few of its own apps. Some are useful, such as MagniFont, which makes the phone's system larger and easier to read, and a file manager. Others are redundant, such as photo gallery app Graphics, because the phone also comes with the standard Gallery photo app, which is part of the Android OS. There's also a separate Panorama photo app, which is unnecessary because that feature is built into the main camera app.
Additionally, T-Mobile packs a few of its own apps, including Visual Voicemail, which manages your voicemails, and My Account, where you can see your account activity.
Camera and video
The Hydro Life is equipped with a 5-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. I've found that in low-end Android phones, the camera is often a weak spot, and that's especially true here.
The good news is that photos taken with the Hydro Life look natural and bright, (though often overexposed). In many close-up shots, you can capture fine details easily, and autofocus works well. The bad news is that colors look flat and dull, and many photos aren't crisp.
Though the camera isn't remarkable, it does include several cool features that help you take fun or interesting photos. The most interesting of them are the live filters, which show you different photo effects, such as black-and-white or cartoon-style, as you're shooting. Most camera apps can only show you those effects after you captured a photo.
Video recording with the Hydro Life is easy, and, again, the camera's autofocus feature works quickly to fix any blurry shots. You can shoot video up to 720p resolution, but even at the highest resolution, my test videos looked flat and dull. I also noticed a lot of shaking, even if I moved the camera slightly while shooting. One neat feature is the digital zoom that lets you zoom in while recording.
Call quality
Overall, the Hydro Life (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) fared fine during my call quality tests. On both ends, the calls were easy to hear, even in high-noise areas, as the phone managed to cut out background noise quite well, thanks in part to Kyocera's sonic receiver. My only complaint is that voices could sound much more natural. My calling partner said I sounded clear and understandable, though at times robotic-sounding. On my end, his voice was a bit staticky and muffled.
Speakerphone performed about the same, with mostly clear audio. My calling partner could hear me without any issues both when I held the microphone close to my mouth, and farther away. His voice was clear and loud, without any distortion, and he said I sounded just as clear.
Podcast
Performance
The Hydro Life's internal specs are a bit of a letdown, especially because the phone often feels lethargic. It's running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1.5GB of RAM. There's also 5GB of internal storage and you can add up to 32GB more with a microSD card.
| Kyocera Hydro Life | Peformance testing |
|---|---|
| Average 4G download speed | 2.04Mbps |
| Average 4G upload speed | 0.85Mbps |
| App download (Temple Run 2) | 45.8MB in 2 minutes and 33 seconds |
| CNET mobile site load | 5.6 seconds |
| CNET desktop site load | 16.7 seconds |
| Restart time | 54 seconds |
| Camera boot time | 3 seconds |
Most of the time during my testing, the phone felt sluggish, and it was often slow to respond to my taps on the screen. Apps take several seconds to open, and webpages take a little while to load. However, moving through the phone's menus and interacting with games felt snappy.
The Hydro Life is 4G-enabled and runs on both T-Mobile and MetroPCS's GSM networks. Kyocera has traditionally only produced CDMA phones, but this is one of the first to run on a GSM network. I found that phone was speedy enough at loading websites and downloading apps, even though my Speedtest results were quite low, averaging download speeds of 2.04Mbps.
Powering the phone is a 2,000mAh lithium ion battery, which promises up to 20 days (480 hours) standby and 13.5 hours of talk time. While reviewing it, I noticed the battery held up well over the course of a day of playing games, checking email, and downloading apps, and I was even able to go two days before needing to charge it with light use. During our own battery drain test for continuous talk time, the device lasted 11 hours and 16 minutes.
The Hydro Lift has two built-in features that help extend battery life; MaxiMZR and Eco Mode. MaxiMZR limits certain app's background data use, while Eco Mode reduces brightness, turns off the screen faster, turns off haptic feedback and turns off GPS and Bluetooth when you're not actively using them.
Conclusion
Priced at $150, the Kyocera Hydro Life is the least expensive water-resistant device available from T-Mobile or MetroPCS. It's also compact, making it easy to take with you wherever you go.
However, the Hydro Life's water-resistant, rugged build is its best feature. Everything else, from the subpar camera to the cluttered interface, is forgettable and falls short. Unless you really need your phone to stand up to water and dust, it's not worth picking up the Hydro Life.
Instead, check out the other prepaid offerings from T-Mobile and MetroPCS, and you'll find that for close to the same price as the Hydro Life, there are a few handsets that are a better value. One is the LG Optimus L70 ($50 at MetroPCS, or $99 for T-Mobile), and the other is the $230 Samsung Galaxy Avant (T-Mobile prepaid). Mind you, neither is waterproof or rugged, but both have specs that are slightly elevated above the Hydro Life.
If you're seeking a rugged, but not necessarily water-friendly phone, there's also the prepaid LG Optimus L90 , which cost $228 from T-Mobile. It ships with Android KitKat, and has a protective coating that makes it resistant to scratches and dings.