Review: LG Spree for Cricket Wireless
May 12, 2016, 2:30 PM by Eric M. Zeman
LG's latest low-cost Android smartphone for Cricket Wireless is compact and well made, but it misses the mark in more ways than one. Here is Phonescoop's full review of the LG Spree.
Hardware
Is It Your Type?
The LG Spree is a bottom-of-the-ladder phone. Cricket is selling the device for $40, which means it's aimed at those on strict budgets, or your kids, for example. Phones don't come much cheaper than this. The Spree is a simple smartphone that skips the thrills in favor of lower bills.
Body
This inexpensive Android smartphone adopts some of the design language of LG's pricier handsets. The appearance is straightforward and minimalistic. Importantly, it doesn't look cheap, at least not from several feet away.
The Spree has conservative styling. Black colors the front and back surfaces, and a gray frame borders the outer edges. It seems to me a phone that goes by the name "Spree" should have a bit more whimsy in its design. The gray frame has a brushed metal-like finish, but it is made from polycarbonate. The general shape of the phone is basic; it has nicely rounded edges, but without any odd lines or swoopy curves.
People who have small hands — including pre-teens — will appreciate the compact footprint. The Spree has a 4.5-inch screen, and the overall dimensions are very kid-friendly. At 4.23 ounces, it's incredibly light, too. Everyone should be able to use this phone with no problem. My thumbs easily reached the upper corners of the display.
I found the Spree comfortable to hold and use. The combination of small size and light weight makes it a snap to carry about. In fact, using the Spree was a welcome break from carrying around a much heavier flagship phone. The Spree will fit into the majority of pockets without issue.
The display glass is seated firmly into the polycarbonate frame. The frame forms a very small rim; it's just enough to protect the screen when the phone is placed face down on a flat surface, but not so much that it snags your skin. The rear panel is attached to the phone firmly and forms a tight joint against the back half of the frame. The phone is put together well for this class of device. LG didn't use the highest-quality materials on earth, but the phone manages to avoid feeling cheap
.
Most of today's phones have a display that's black when off, disappearing into a black glass front. It makes for a sleek look. The Spree's (cheaper) display, however, is grey and very visible when off. It's one of those things that tells you you're looking at a cheaper phone. The user-facing camera is just barely visible, but the chrome LG logo always seems to catch your eye. There are no buttons on the front of the Spree, as it uses on-screen controls.
LG skipped its usual rear-mounted buttons and gave the Spree a standard set of side buttons and ports. The volume toggle is positioned on the left edge. The profile is adequate, as are travel and feedback. It sounds a hair cheap when pressed. The screen lock button is on the right edge, closer to the top. The profile is better than the volume toggle and so are travel and feedback. I was pleased with the screen lock button's action. The micro USB port and stereo headphone jack are both built into the bottom edge of the Spree. There are no controls along the top. You won't find a dedicated camera button.
The back surface is rather boring. A ribbed pattern in the black plastic provides some texture. The camera module, which protrudes noticeably, has a chrome rim to help set it apart visually. The basic LED flash is placed next to the camera. Both Cricket and LG saw fit to paint their logos on the back panel. Some small holes cut near the bottom of the panel reveal the grille for the speakerphone. The 2-by-2 pattern of holes is classic LG.
A notch in one corner provides the leverage your thumbnail needs to pry off the rear shell. Once removed, you have access to the battery, SIM card, and memory card. You have to pull the battery to swap out SIM cards, but the memory card slot is accessible any time. Some people prefer removable batteries, so count that as a positive for the Spree.
Taken as a whole, the LG Spree is a respectable little phone. It's clearly not cut from the finest cloths, but it's not dressed in rags, either. The Spree is small, functional, and put together well. Surely that's all a phone need be for some people.
Screen
I'm not that impressed with the display. It measures 4.5 inches and includes a fairly low resolution at 480 by 854 pixels. (In case you're wondering, that's the same screen size/resolution we were seeing on Android flagships about 6 years ago.) LG didn't have much choice, mind you. The inexpensive display helps to keep the Spree's price point down. Nothing on the Spree's screen looks sharp and colors are a bit dull. Brightness is acceptable when set all the way up, but nothing can help beat back glare and fingerprint issues. LG apparently skipped the oleophobic and anti-glare coatings on the glass, and boy can you tell. It's almost impossible to use this phone outdoors.
Signal
Cricket operates on AT&T's network and in that respect the LG Spree performed on par with other phones I've tested on Cricket/AT&T in the New York City region. It demonstrated a good connection to the network and was able to make calls and send/receive messages in both strong and weak coverage situations. The Spree maintained calls when traveling at highway speeds, but did miss some calls when on the road. Data speeds were decent, but far from impressive. Weak coverage definitely impacted data speeds. I often saw 4G drop down to 3G when coverage was at its worst.
Sound
Call quality is a mixed bag. The earpiece delivers calls at incredible volumes when cranked all the way up. It's loud enough that it borders on painful. I was able to hear calls in very noisy environments. The loud volume comes with a heavy cost: the earpiece suffers from distortion in a really bad way. You can drop the volume to the 60% mark and still hear it in most places. Moreover, doing so helps reduce distortion and improve clarity, but there's still some distortion. People I spoke to through the Spree said I sounded far away.
The speakerphone offers similar performance. It's quite loud when set all the way up, but the distortion is so bad as to make the speakerphone unusable. Turning down the volume clears up the calls a bit, but then it's harder to hear them in spaces such as a moving car. There's no sweet spot to balance things out.
Ringers and alerts are eye-poppingly loud. The vibrate alert just barely strong enough to get my attention.
Battery
The Spree includes a 1,940 mAh battery and it does all right. The smaller, low-rez screen and conservative processor don't require as much energy and likely contribute to the phone's full-day battery life. The Spree managed to stay alive from breakfast to bedtime most days with average use, but it usually had less than 10% remaining. If you use the phone heavily, you'll see it peter out earlier in the evening.
LG's software includes a basic battery saver tool. It can be turned on manually, or automatically when the battery reaches 15% or 5%. Users can restrict background app processes and set a few other parameters to help conserve power. It's modestly effective.
The Spree doesn't support rapid charging, nor wireless charging.
Bluetooth, GPS, NFC, WiFi
Some Bluetooth devices paired with and connected to the Spree without issue, but some were problematic. Items such as headphones, speakers, and PCs worked, but for whatever reason Spree wouldn't talk to my car's hands-free system. Calls routed to a Bluetooth headset were downright miserable, choppy and distorted. Music pushed to a Bluetooth speaker was good enough for casual listening while I painted my porch, but I've heard much better.
The phone's GPS worked, but not well. Google Maps often took 10 or more seconds to locate me, and accuracy was never better than about 40 feet. This was a real problem for real-time navigation, as Maps was painfully slow and often lagged behind my actual location.
The Spree doesn't have NFC.
WiFi worked just fine.
Software
Lock Screen
LG was sure to include KnockON and Knock Code for dealing with the Spree's lock screen and security.
Gently rap on the screen two times to wake the phone. This reveals the lock screen, clock, notifications, and four app shortcuts at the bottom. It's a shame the clock is so darned small and hard to read. It's hard to read under ideal lighting conditions and is practically invisible when using the Spree under bright light.
As per the norm, notifications line up in the order they were received. You may choose to view notification content on the lock screen or hide it. The app shortcuts will show badge counts for missed/unread notifications.
The Spree offers a standard set of lock mechanisms, but Knock Code is unique to LG phones. With Knock Code, you can set your own, individual pattern of taps on the display to wake and unlock it in one step. Alternately, you can stick with a PIN, password, or pattern.
Home Screens
I hope you prefer Lollipop to Marshmallow. The Spree ships with Android 5.1 and not Android 6, which is a bummer as far as I'm concerned. Along with Lollipop, LG loaded the Spree with its light set of customizations to Android.
Typically, I discuss interface performance at the end of this section, but I'm going to lead with it here. The Spree is severely handicapped by its processor and RAM. The phone is powered by a 1.1 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 210 (MSM8909) processor — the same chip I just tested in the Kyocera Hydro Reach — with 1 GB of RAM. This combination should be enough to deliver good-enough performance, but it falls far short. The phone is slow to respond, apps take forever to open, and I often had to press the screen two or three times to get the device to recognize input. It was slower than the already-slow Hydro Reach. The sluggish performance really holds the Spree back. It's like I'm testing an Android phone from 2009 all over again — something I'd rather not ever do again.
Beyond the crummy performance, the user interface acts like most other Android phones.
The home screen panels can accommodate widgets, shortcuts, and apps, but you'll have to remove the junk installed by LG and Boost, first. Unlike other LG handsets, the Spree does not include themes. The app drawer is arranged with side-by-side pages, meaning you swipe left or right — rather than up and down — to view your apps. Users can sort apps alphabetically or by when last used, can pick from small or large icons, and can hide and uninstall select apps. The settings screen can be viewed in tabs or a list. The list view is more useful in my opinion. It's arranged about the same as a stock Android device, but LG used its own fonts and colors.
The Quick Settings drop-down shade includes access to radio toggles and other controls. The shade also lets you adjust brightness and volume profiles, and customizing the toggle layout is a breeze.
Capture+, the new version of LG's QuickMemo, is present and accounted for. A press of the button takes a screenshot and then opens a basic editing tool for adding comments and sharing.
LG's EasyHome (a simplified home screen experience for novice users) is aboard. I thought perhaps EasyMode might perform better (speedier) than the standard UI, but it does not.
Camera
The Spree doesn't have a physical camera button, but LG was smart enough to provide a shortcut: Press the volume-up button twice to launch the camera, even when locked. It's a shame the camera is so slow to open. You can forget about whipping out the Spree to catch fleeting moments.
The camera has almost no features to speak of. A strip of controls along the side allows you to open the settings menu, toggle the flash on/off, and switch to selfie mode. That's pretty much it. There are no advanced shooting modes, nor even any advanced settings tools. Users can adjust the image aspect ratio and size, turn on/off a timer, and initiate LG's voice-activated shutter tool.
It's a shame there are so few features on the camera, especially ones that are common to most phones, such as HDR and panorama. About the only really useful tool is the touch-to-focus option.
The worst part of the camera is of course the performance. It's frustratingly slow to do anything. If you're shooting landscapes or other static scenes it doesn't matter much, I suppose, but the LG Spree fails miserably at catching action or moving subjects.
Photos/Video
The Spree is pretty darned bad at taking pictures. I wasn't expected much from the 5-megapixel sensor, but even then it somehow managed to fall short. Focus is soft throughout. I didn't capture a single sharp image with the Spree. Exposure is all over the place. You can see a lot of overexposed areas in the images below. Under-exposure was less common. White balance is the one area the Spree managed to get more right than wrong.
All of these issues are compounded by near-universal grain. Indoor shots, in particular, suffer horribly from grain. Using the flash does actually help clear up the grain a bit, but it can't help improve focus.
The selfie camera is barely worth using.
The video camera is capable of recording video up to 720p HD. It produces adequate results. Focus is better with video, but footage still suffers from exposure issues. Grain is also still a problem, but at least white balance is on target.
The Spree barely suffices as an everyday shooter. It's definitely not a replacement for any standalone camera.
Cricket and LG Stuff
The Spree has just 8 GB of internal storage, of which only 3.3 GB is available to users. I highly recommend you add a memory card, and fortunately, you can. Bloatware isn't overly awful. Cricket's account management app is included, as is its Deezer music service. There are several games preloaded, including Candy Crush, Gummy Drop, and Yahtzee. These are the only apps you can uninstall to make more room, but we're only talking about a combined 200MB.
Wrap-Up
With the LG Spree, it's a case of "you get what you pay for." At $40, the Spree is as cheap as they come. The hardware is adequate for young people or those with small hands, but the software simply isn't able to keep up.
The design may be a bit simple, but the Spree is well put together. I wasn't that impressed with the screen, but battery life is sufficient and call quality is loud, if not entirely clear. Data performance was a bit slow.
The Android 5.1 OS is getting a bit old and the Spree's anemic processor doesn't provide enough juice to get Lollipop licking. The sluggish performance drags down apps like the camera and Google Play Store so much they become frustrating to use. Speaking of the camera, the Spree's is not good enough.
Cricket Wireless offers a decent selection of phones under $100. If you must spend less than $50, the Motorola Moto E is a far better choice, and if you can manage $80, the Alcatel Idol 3 is another winner.
About the author, Eric M. Zeman:Eric has been covering the mobile telecommunications industry for 17 years at various print and online publications. He studied at Rutgers Newark and University of Kentucky, and has a degree in writing. He likes playing guitar, attending concerts, listening to music, and driving sports cars.
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LG Spree
Comments
LG Spree
With all due respect, you need grammar check installed before you write another review; and do make sure to keep things consistent (Cricket is not Boost). Your review is entirely negative and you are comparing a phone that can be purchased today for under twenty dollars to one that is six hundred. I personally would not have paid you for this copy/paste review. Unbelievable.
What a waste of my time to read such dribble.
