Gadgetory

hi I'm Ken Sherman's senior managing editor here at cnet.com and today we take a first look at the ZTE overture this is a new phone for AO wireless now AO is a T's prepaid brand but you don't have a contract you just buy the phone outright you have a month-to-month and you can leave whenever you want it looks like a lot of other Android phones it's the basic black rectangle but it's got some touches which I like there is a 4-inch display it's pretty bright colorful you know it's not gonna knock your socks off of course but I think it certainly does a job it is Android 4.1 so a little bit of an older Android OS there are three home screens which you can of course populate as you want with folders with widgets has the same virtual keyboard as you see another Android handset same keypad down below you see those standard touch controls for back for home and for the menu or sub menu key one thing I like though is when you're coming off the lockscreen now this only works if you don't have a PIN code or the pattern is you see this little green dot if you pinch out like this you'll see six shortcuts that actually take you directly to those functions so you can change these as you like but I just thought it was a nice touch likes the visual effect of it like that you could just jump directly to those features without having to get into the menus here on the side we have a volume rocker it's really nice and thick so I could definitely find it when I was on the phone on the side there's a microUSB charger port here on the top there's the 3.5 milimeter headset jack and the power control on the back there's a camera with a flash now there is this textured surface on the back it kind of looks like leather of course it's not leather but I did like the feel of it just made the phone a little more interesting it does have a 5 megapixel camera it is pretty well stocked with editing features photo quality is about average for this kind of phone certainly does the job for quick shots you know you're on the go you just want to share something course the phone does come a bunch of Google applications so you'd expect you can go to Google Play to download a lot more apps as I mentioned the overture does have a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor that makes it actually pretty fast one annoying thing though is when you turn on the phone you get this little jingle that promotes the carrier's name it's kind of annoying I really couldn't find a way to turn it off so just when you're starting up the phone and you don't want anybody to hear it you might want to put it against your hand or just turn down the volume it does have 18 T's LTE service so web pages loaded quickly I could download applications so really on the speed portion the phone does well call quality was bit variable some voices sound a little high-pitched volume could have been a get louder for $150 this phone really isn't a bad Buy the overture has a good processor it has LTE it has enough features to keep you busy and it has the design it's easy to use I just wish the call quality can be a little bit better and there are new Android version I'm Kent German and this is the ZTE overture with AO wireless