Thanks to a rather poor economy, pre-paid carriers have enjoyed a pretty steady stream of new customers. Thanks to Android, these days most pre-paid carriers offer some decent smartphones and Cricket can even sell you an Apple iPhone 4S. But if you're looking for an entry-level model for the back-to-school student or the new convert to smartphones, Cricket Wireless is now offering the Huawei Ascend Q.
The form factor is unlike what you might find on a traditional Android model, resembling more of a BlackBerry model with the portrait QWERTY underneath the 3.2 inch display (with a resolution of 320 x 480). The pixel density is a rather poor 180ppi. Under the hood is a single-core 800MHz processor and the device offers a 32GB capacity microSD card. A 3.2MP camera adorns the back of the unit. This unit supports the Cricket Wireless 3G network while a 4GB microSD card is included out of the box. 3GB of that is needed for Muve Music.
The Huawei Ascend Q is $139.95 from Cricket and can be used for the carrier's $55 a month unlimited talk, text and data plan. Add another $10 bucks and you can get unlimited talk, text data and Muve Music. The latter is a service that allows users to download tunes from a library of millions.