Kyocera Torque Review with Waterproof Test By Danny Winget

And, what's up everybody, and this is Danny, and this is the Kyra Sara torque, and this is meant to be a rugged device and also waterproof, but we've seen the galaxy s4 active we've seen Xperia Z, so this kind of devices don't look like this anymore. This really looks like maybe something made 10 years ago, but this is probably meant to be for somebody like a construction worker or somebody that lives a rugged lifestyle. It also needs sprint. Direct Connect is this the phone for you, let's find out. So let's go ahead and start with the hardware in this rubberized enclosure. Up top, you will find a DC speaker button, a power button and an enclosed 3.5, millimeter, headphone jack, and on the bottom you will see the covered USB port and the primary microphone, and on the other side, you will see the dedicated camera button, and you will also see on the opposite side, a yellow, Direct Connect button, along with the volume rocker and those two grilles are the speakers by the way, and they are extremely loud, and you have the 3 button layout back home and menu and a top. You will see the front-facing camera with the LED notification light and your appropriate sensors, but wait.

There is no speaker grill there. That's because this thing uses a sonic receiver technology that uses tissue and air conduction to deliver sound right to your eardrum, weird huh. I. Don't think this is the first phone. That's ever had this internationally, but this is definitely the first one ever in the US and on the back is a typical little key pattern where you can just stick your finger into it, and it will just unlock the backplate, and you can take that right off and that exposes the battery and the micro SD card slot.

Thank God cause. It's the only has four gigabytes of internal storage and up top on the back, you will see the 5 megapixel camera with a single LED flash, and we'll go over images and video later on. Alright, so let's go ahead and power. This thing on this has a 4 inch 480 by 800 IPS display and yeah. That's a little low res, but it's 233 PPI 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor, with 1 gigabyte of RAM 2500 William battery. That's not bad, but this does have the older Arena 225 graphics chip.

So this is not like a Snapdragon 400 where it has a more modern GPU. So this supports sprint 4G LTE in the United States, but does not have GSM capabilities. So looking at the software here, it's moving pretty quick for an older chip, and this is pretty much stock. Android that you're very looking at you got the three buttons down here with the menu button and I found it a pretty big pleasure to use since I am a fan of stock Android and what's great as this phone has been updated to Android 4.1.2, and this was running Ice Cream Sandwich when I opened the box and that's great, that they upgraded to 4.1.2 for performance reasons, and it seems to help this phone out. A lot for I saw some older reviews on Ice Cream Sandwich, and it definitely had some performance issues.

So there's that big, yellow Direct Connect button and if you hit that it will take you right to the DC, but I couldn't test this out because I didn't know anybody with DC in this area, but it does disable itself when you're on the 4G LTE network, and it tells you right on the status bar, so that is kind of funny. But if you need to use this, then this is only one of the phones that supports this. So this thing is IP x, v, ipx7, IP, 67 and mil standard 810g certified. So this thing supposed to shockproof waterproof everything-proof. So let's go ahead and test it.

I was just kidding. Nothing is everything proof, but anyway, let's go ahead and start with the water. Here, let's take a big cup of water and just throw it all over this thing, and we're going to have also put it in slow motion. So it just looks more dramatic, and it looks crazy. Alright enough of that, so let's go ahead and just dump the rest of this water on there and of course all the ports have to be closed.

There are flaps for the headphones and the USB make sure all that stuff is closed and there it is a bunch of water on there, and it was sitting in a little of water, and it works. Just fine screen is operational and everything looks good so far, so let's go and check the back for the Galaxy s4 active was letting in water throughout the gaskets, and it was not sealing right, but this seemed to be just fine, no water. In the battery. All right, let's drop it in the pool, so as you can see that this does record underwater, and here is me just picking it up and pointing it towards the pool there, and it does still record underwater I, just don't know for how long, but it does record underwater without a problem. So if you want to do a little of underwater recording, then you could do that with this device.

But the one thing that I did notice is that it muffled the microphone after I dropped it in the pool, and actually my spear is II. Did this one time, but after it dried out, it worked out just fine, and it did the same thing here after I dried out for about 20 minutes. This also worked again. So don't worry about that, but here's what the microphone sounded like so from here we're going to jump onto the 1080p video. It can record in 1080p, but I cannot find focus anywhere.

There's no autofocus, there's no tap to focus I couldn't find it. So if you guys know of it, if you find it in the software, then let me know I could not find it anywhere, and it just does not focus, but it takes mediocre.1080P video, the big thing I didn't like was that the camera key is not a two-stage shutter key. You hit it once it just focuses and takes the picture, but you do have a little of option here in the camera software you do have panorama and HDR, and you have a little of focus settings and things like that. But it's pretty basic, and you know I, don't think most people are gonna, do any kind of on this 5 megapixel, camera I. Think most people are just going to point and shoot.

So, let's take a look at the images, so the quality of the images were just alright. Nothing too special. It's pretty mediocre. Actually the color replications a little weird, but I mean it's not too bad, I! Guess if you're in a pinch, it's not really a problem if you're just taking casual pictures, but you know in good lighting conditions. It actually takes some good pictures, but you know a lot of times: it's either too soft or it's definitely overexposed, and I've had some macro focus issues for sure with this camera, and it just takes mediocre pictures, but then sometimes it takes some decent pictures like this one.

So you know don't bet too much on this camera, but this is a pretty rugged device. So if you drop it from any height, you probably should be okay, okay, so dropping it from normal operation height. It really didn't, do them very much. It scuffed it up a little on the sides, but a lot of that I was able to just wipe off, and you definitely didn't get any kind of real damage to this thing. At all, I mean you flip it over, and the screen is just fine.

It's fully operational, and I think that this is probably one of the most rugged devices out there. Don't you have to put a case on it? Alright, so let's go and talk about the call quality a little. This is exclusive to the sprint 4G LTE network and that sonic receiver thing is kind of cool. Actually, you kinda are a little freaked out by it, because you just got to make sure it's to your eardrum, but it does work and the sound is pretty clear. It's not the clearest I've heard, but it's very interesting, and it does work fairly well and the people on the other side said: I sounded.

Ok, it was just not the best call quality I've ever had on a phone, but I didn't really expect it to be the best anyway, and the network definitely performed like it should. In some of my rural areas. I did drop a few calls, but in the metro, Nashville area no drop calls and the network performed like it should have I found signal to be a little better than even the 8xt. That I was used for a prior of unit. But lets what look at gaming real, quick? And you would think that his thing wouldn't game very well, but it does game fairly well, but man.

The speakers on this thing are ridiculously loud. You have to listen to these. The camera and the microphone are doing no justice to these speakers. They are so loud, even vibrates, the back of the phone. While it's going off, it is extremely now it's louder than the one I mean it's not as clear as the one or as full as the one.

But man these speakers are the loudest speakers on any smartphone I've ever heard the downside is they distort heavily at high volume. So definitely kick the volume down a few notches, but synthetic benchmark wise, not even 5000 on quadrant. So you can tell that this is an older chip, but it doesn't lag like you think it would. It's not as bad I've had a few random restarts and some firmware issues, and if you open up a lot of apps, it does start to crawl some, but it's definitely not as bad as I would have imagined, with just one gigabyte of RAM, so the Kyocera torque I'm not sure what to think about it, because it's definitely one-sided. It's for people that are maybe in military or people that hike all the time or people that just want a rugged device, but even devices now, like the galaxy, s4 active and Sony Xperia Z, and even these other flagship devices, you can just throw rugged cases on them and that's what this feels like.

This feels like a mid-range phone with a big old case on it. I mean it has its advantages. Its waterproof is dustproof shockproof, but in the end it's just the mid-range device and has a definitely lackluster camera and the battery life is actually not too bad. I was able to get through a full day of battery life if I didn't use the screen on high. But what do you guys think about this Kyocera torque I personally, think it's pretty ugly and if I had a two-year contract, I probably would not appear to this device, but it's not as bad as you think.

So what do you guys? Think that does it for me? Please leave your comments in the comment section below for I want to know what you think about this device make sure you subscribe to. My channel for a lot more tech videos, and please follow me on Twitter at super-scientific. I- will see you guys in the next video, and thanks for watching.

Source : Danny Winget