TracFone ZTE Valet Android Cell Phone with Triple Minutes for Life

I bought one of these phones a little over a year ago. It's a nice looking phone, but that's where the virtues end. Had consistent trouble with dropped calls, which was really aggravating. The phone has no automatic notice when you are running out of airtime, so when the minutes end, so does your call, without warning. Google downloaded an Android update that got corrupted, which rendered the phone functionally useless. I did a factory reset as a last resort, and found out this model has a glitch which causes it to be unable to connect to the wireless network after a reset. Fixing the problem requires extensive time on the phone (a working one) with Tracfone to correct the issue. And let me say this, Tracfone customer service is among the worst I have ever encountered. They are abysmal. This company has little interest in helping consumers. After years as a customer, I'm going to Nokia and TMobile.

i bought this phone two years ago to use to control my home security system (iris from lowes). when the app would not work, i contacted the iris developer and asked for help. after several updates the app still did not work. I took the phone back to best buy and asked them to check it. they demonstrated that the app worked on another phone but could not get the zte valet to work the app. best buy exchanged my phone assuming that it was just a defective model. the new phone did not run the app either. for another year i struggled to find out why the app would not work. finally i bought another phone to test for myself. the app worked fine on the new phone. the zte valet phone is purposely limited in functionality and should be avoided.

This is definitely a starter/lower end smartphone. It will handle the basics, but if you like apps you'll quickly run out of space & phone will be very slow. (Tried moving some to the SD card & then they wouldn't work properly.) Even when it indicates that Wi-Fi is available I have a very hard time connecting/staying connected. The camera doesn't take good enough quality pictures to use for submitting receipts, etc. I wanted a Smartphone to take advantage of money saving apps, but many are not compatible with this phone. I can't receive or send photos in texts nor can I upload photos to Facebook - not enough memory. About once a week I have to remove the battery because it won't power on. I wish that talk, text & data weren't in separate "buckets" - would prefer if talk & text were counted together & data separately. Your remaining balance doesn't show on the main screen, you have to go to the Tracfone website to check balances - kind of inconvenient. Battery life is very short, have to charge nearly every day...& I'm not a heavy user. On the plus side, this phone has very good sound quality. Calls are much clearer than on my previous Tracfone.

This product is easy to function. It's a great phone for those learning the android program. The options that the phone carries are excellent. The fact that it comes with a (small but good) disc also makes it desirable for those new to phones who are learning it's expandable capabilities as well.

Generally speaking, this is a 3-star phone at best. It's not because of the low-end specs you'd expect at its discount price point -- 3G, 3.5" screen, 1 GHz single-core processor, blurry 3 megapixel camera with no autofocus -- all of which are fine with me. Actually, having Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and 4 GB of internal storage is kind of impressive. But a couple things are broken out of the box. The touch screen is insensitive and inconsistent, sometimes registering your fingers and sometimes not. The Wi-Fi is weak, barely able to see the router in your own living room. Apps and the camera sometimes crash, requiring a reboot to get them working again. There's also this quirk that causes it to randomly add extra home screens that I have to delete every few days. Annoying. Then after a while, stuff starts to break for real. At some point it starts spontaneously forgetting your settings (sounds, ringtones, vibration, screen rotation). Then the in-call menu starts being unstable, making it impossible to use the dialpad or speakerphone, or even hang up. For me, the final nail in the coffin (literally) came at the 8-month mark -- I stopped being able to speak into the phone. No matter who calls who, I can hear the other person but they can't hear me. So as far as being a phone, this one couldn't even make it to the 1-year mark. Pathetic. If you're thinking of the other three Tracfone models, keep in mind that two of them are even worse: -The Samsung Galaxy Centura ($130) has decent specs (Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 1 GHz processor, more memory) but everyone says it's prone to randomly crashing, freezing, and forgetting what time it is. -The Huawei Glory ($100), which is even more broken. See any review for details. -The third one is the LG Optimus Dynamic II -- the only one that's worth even looking at. I replaced my Valet with it and am happy so far.