Gadgetory

there's nothing fun about shopping for a new phone especially when you're on a budget your heart says iPhone but your wallet says previously owned flip phone so if you find yourself looking at low-cost phones you know nothing about just know that it's a dangerous position to be in and thankfully Sina can help you spot the duds Donal Bell and in this top five we're counting down the top five cell phones to avoid for 2013 ranked by C net associate editor Lin lah starting off at number five the Alcatel authority on Cricket Wireless this is the newest phone on this list making its debut back in March which begs the question why the hell isn't running Android 2.3 maybe they thought you wouldn't notice on that crappy 800 by 480 resolution screen but more likely they couldn't get anything more recent than Gingerbread to run on their sad little processor don't let the name fool you a toddler with an iPhone 3G can wield more authority than this thing at number four the Huawei verge on MetroPCS now I actually like this phone it's a conversation starter the conversation going something like hey do you want to see my DeLorean I just traveled here from 1998 seriously it looks like you mugged someone's grandma took her phone I said I am cheap and $49 with no contract sounds like a pretty good deal if I ever needed a phone to smuggle into prison or organize a meth lab the Huawei verge is at the top of my list I can't say the same for number three the pancake hot shot on Verizon this guy's a holdover from last year's list but people are still buying it so let's go over this again even if they pay you to take this phone you're still paying too much for it when you factor in the two-year contract with Verizon for a phone that can't even use Verizon's 4G network the processor is ancient the operating system is this weird proprietary thing that's void of any app that you might want and the screen aside from being laggy and sometimes totally unresponsive has a resolution lower than the first Apple Newton this thing is a disaster and we're only halfway through the list coming in at number two the ZTE anthem for Jian MetroPCS if the thought of a no-contract 4G Android phone for $200 sounds too good to be true you're right the spoiler here is that the whole thing is bottlenecked by a slow 1.2 gigahertz processor and 512 megabytes of RAM so it might be 4G coming to the phone but the overall speed is still stuck in 2010 and so is this operating system here's another recently released phone that's still running Gingerbread on the upside it does come pre-installed with Kung Fu Panda 2 you can tell your kids that star wars episode 7 if you want since they'll be wincing at that 800 by 480 resolution screen now before we get to our number one worst phone of 2013 let's remind ourselves what good phones look like our current top pick over at seen its list of the best five phones is the Samsung Galaxy s4 $200 on contract available everywhere stunning screen and it runs the latest greatest version of Android instead of Kung Fu Panda 2 this thing comes with Dignity alright and now for the number one phone in 2013 that you should avoid like the plague the ZTE groove on Cricket Wireless when we first got this phone we assumed that it was one of those slide-out keyboard deals but no turns out that this phone is just big and ugly it's also like a greatest hits of everything we hated about the last four phones a stale version of Android crappy screen slow processor ugly design and bad call quality to this groove is one that I would be happy to lose alright that's it you've been warned five phones that will make you sad and curse your life for a phone that you're going to love check out CNS reviews over at phones cnet.com for more top fives from me top 5 dot cnet.com i'm donald bell thanks for watching you