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The squarish Loft looks like a poor man's BlackBerry. It measures 4.1 by 2.6 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 3.5 ounces. It's made mostly of shiny black plastic, although the back panel is covered in hard rubber. The 2.2-inch, 320-by-240-pixel LCD looks a little small and lost in the Loft's plastic frame. Six function keys bracket a square, five-way control pad; all were easy to press, although the Send and End keys were recessed. The four-row QWERTY keyboard features oddly shaped keys; the top half of each key is flat, while the bottom half is raised prominently.
The Loft is a single-band 1xRTT (1900 MHz) device with no Wi-Fi. Virgin Mobile offers very inexpensive prepaid plans on Sprint's network (Virgin is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sprint.) In testing, call quality was clear and hiss-free, but voices sounded a bit too warm and muffled. The earpiece also didn't go very loud, even when cranked. Reception was average.
Calls sounded fine through an Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99, ) Bluetooth headset. Voice dialing worked well over Bluetooth without training. While it took three steps to dial numbers instead of two (like with Nuance's simpler setup), this is powerful stuff for such a cheap device. The speakerphone sounded fine but was too quiet. Battery life was poor at just 3 hours and 26 minutes of talk time.
Apps, Camera, and Conclusions
The main menu consists of 12 almost identical red icons in a grid pattern; switching to List mode makes it much easier on the eyes. The e-mail and IM client is exceedingly basic; at least the e-mail client picks up Gmail and Windows Live now, and can deliver all messages in a unified inbox. Virgin Mobile offers a custom WAP page for Facebook and MySpace updates, as well as hooks for YouTube and Flickr. The Networks In Motion-powered Virgin Mobile Navigator is on board for voice-enabled GPS directions, while Google Maps serves up directions without audio prompts, but with a more attractive map format.
Aside from the aforementioned apps, the Loft is pretty stripped down. The Openwave 7.2 browser delivered decent WAP pages, but can't handle desktop Web pages. To personalize the phone, you can select from various themes, wallpapers, and ringtones. There's no music player, video streaming, or camcorder. The non-standard 2.5mm headphone jack is mono, for hands-free earbuds.
There's 64MB of free internal memory—good for just over 100 photos—but no memory card slot. To get photos off the phone, you must either upload them online, or send them individually as picture messages. The Loft is a decent all-around choice for messaging and phone calls.
Design
At 4.06 inches tall by 2.6 inches wide by 0.59 inches deep, the Kyocera Loft is so stocky that it's almost square. Make no mistake that this is a phone built for messaging; it doesn't try to hide its keyboard behind a sliding face or distract you with a curvaceous design. The soft-touch material on the rear cover gives the phone a comfortable feel in the hand, and the lightweight build (3.49 ounces) won't slow you down.
The 2.2-inch TFT display supports 262,000 colors. Compared with previous phones from the carrier, it has a bright resolution with decent graphics. We also like the user-friendly menu interface. You can choose from grid or list formats; you can adjust the backlight time and brightness; and you can change the wallpaper, screensaver, greeting message, and color theme.
The navigation array is spacious and we appreciate the raised buttons. You'll find a four-way toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, Talk and End/power buttons, a speakerphone control and a Back key.
Completing the phone's exterior are the camera lens and speaker on the rear face and the volume rocker and camera shutter on the left spine. The shutter is thin, but you can find it easily when you're on a call. On the top of the phone are a 2.5mm headset jack and a standard micro-USB charger port.
Features
The Loft has a 500-contact phone book with six phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, two instant message handles, two URLS, two street addresses and notes for each contact. You can save contacts to groups, but only groups can be paired with a photos and one of the five polyphonic ringtones.
Performance
Call quality was decent, though not without problems. We had no issues with the volume or signal strength, though occasionally we heard static during calls.
The Loft has a rated battery life of 5.5 hours talk time and 12.5 days standby time. Our tests revealed a talk time of 5 hours and 2 minutes.
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