Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) offers many unique features including improved operating speeds. ICS builds on the things people love most about Android – easy multitasking, rich notifications, customizable home screens, resizable widgets, and deep interactivity with new ways of communicating and sharing. Rise has been designed to optimize ICS for the best possible experience. More details on ICS are available here: www.android.com/about/ice-cream-sandwich/

IPS refers to In-Plane Switching (IPS) display technology, which offers better viewing angles and high-resolution colors on the handset. Rise features a HVGA IPS LCD display with 480 x 320 pixels for a wide viewing angle of up to 178 degrees.

3. Rise also features “Eco Mode,” which is a proprietary Kyocera battery- management application that helps conserve power. Eco Mode is a pre-loaded application that lets users set a percentage of the battery’s remaining charge at which to automatically adjust or disable phone features known to draw a lot of power. These include things like faster screen timeout and lower brightness on the display, along with disabling non-essential features like automatic synchronization of applications, haptic feedback on the touchscreen and the auto-rotate screen feature. Eco Mode can be set to activate at or near 100% battery life to make the phone always more battery-efficient, or can be set nearer to 0% to prolong the life of a dying battery until the phone can be charged.
In addition to using Kyocera’s Eco Mode, it’s also helpful to manually turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS connections when you are not using them to help conserve battery power.

Whether you're app crazy, a workaholic or a pop culture junkie, Rise has you covered. The swiss army knife of smartphones, Rise features both a touchscreen and slide-out QWERTY keypad with large separated keys for easy typing. In addition to its Android 4.0 ICS OS and 32 GB memory support, Rise has a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, full HTML browser, and it's GPS, and Wi-Fi® (802.11 b/g/n) capable. Swype® enables a faster and easier way to type and Rise's dedicated menu key gives you quick access to applications.

There is a huge, and largely underserved, population of mobile users who simply prefer inputting text with real keys instead of a touchscreen. These can be former feature-phone users who are accustomed to having keys, guys with man-sized hands, women with long nails, people on the move, auto-correct and typo haters, or maybe just those who love the tactile feel of real keys. Industry analyst firm Yankee Group was quoted in the media as saying 70% of mobile phone users preferred real keys. Despite this, phones with QWERTY keypads are few and far between. Rise delivers the best of both worlds, with touchscreen and full QWERTY, at an incredibly affordable price. For many people, keys are the key feature on a new phone.

Of course! In addition to Gmail, Rise can sync with corporate (Exchange ActiveSync) and personal (POP3 & IMAP) email. Simply follow the set-up prompts after launching the phone’s email application. Rise also can integrate your address book with Gmail, Exchange and Facebook. And with both a touchscreen with Swype and slide out QWERTY keypad, Rise delivers the best of both worlds for easy email and messaging.

Along with generous internal memory, Rise comes with a 2GB microSD™ memory card already installed. The phone supports up to a 32GB card, enough for hundreds of apps, songs, music videos, movies and more.

The Google Play™ Store, formerly called Android Market, is where Android users can find hundreds of thousands of Android apps, music, books, magazines, movies and TV shows, games and more.

Android™ is your phone’s operating system (OS). Whenever you make a call or send a text or launch an app, Android™ is behind how it looks and how it works.

Android™ is currently the world’s most popular mobile OS. Why? Because it’s totally sweet. It’s intuitive. It’s powerful. And it supports over 500,000 unique apps that anyone with an Android™ phone can download directly from Google Play™.

Google Play™ is the Android™ store and it’s available online at http://play.google.com. Your Android™ phone will include a direct link to Google Play™. With over 500,000 apps, plus music, movies, games and books, it’s safe to say that it just might blow your mind.

That’s the fun part. With over 500,000 apps available and new ones being added every day, you’re sure to find plenty of options.

We’ve collected some of our favorites in the Hot Apps featured on the Features tab of our Android™ phones. From handy apps to help you remember where you parked your car, to music streaming apps, even to apps you can use to order a pizza while you zone out on the couch, the best advice is to just keep exploring. You never know what will pop up next.

That’s the best part! With our Beyond Talk Unlimited Data & Messaging Plans, all of your data, web, messaging and email is totally unlimited. So whatever plan you choose, you never have to worry about putting all those apps to work. Never. Not Ever. Like, really. NEVER.

Like all software, Android™ developers are constantly working to update what it can do. When you see Android™ 2.2 versus Android™ 2.3, that just means that Android™ 2.3 is the next generation of software in the Android™ series. For the most part, the basics of the software stay the same. Newer generations sometimes feature somewhat heightened capabilities, or new features, or revisions to improve speed and performance.