Cricket MSGM8 (black)

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Cricket MSGM8

Just like its nationwide brethren, regional carrier Cricket Communications has added a number of messaging phones to its stable this year. They include the Cricket TXTM8, the Motorola Hint QA30, and last but not least, the Cricket MSGM8. While both the Hint and the TXTM8 are slider phones, the MSGM8 has a simple slate design with features to match. It's not a high-end phone by any means, but if all you want is a basic texting phone with a camera, the MSGM8 is not bad. The Cricket MSGM8 is available for $119.99 without a contract.

Design
The MSGM8 reminds us a lot of other candy-bar messaging phones like the Pantech Slate and the Sanyo SCP-2700. Measuring 4.2 inches long by 2.3 inches wide by 0.5 inch thick, the MSGM8 has a very simple straightforward design with straight lines and rounded corners, plus it's only available in black. It is clad in a soft touch plastic material and is comfortable to hold in the hand. It's also quite lightweight at 3.7 ounces.

The Cricket MSGM8 has a simple slate design.

The 2.2-inch display is quite colorful with support for 262,000 colors and the text is large enough to be legible. However, it only has 220x176-pixel resolution, which results in rather blocky images and a lackluster look overall. You can change the menu style, the clock format, the brightness, the backlight time, and the image that appears whenever there's an incoming call. Like most Cricket phones, there is a series of widgets along the left side of the screen. You can add more by accessing Cricket's widget catalog.

Underneath the display is the navigation array, which consists of two soft keys, a square toggle with a middle select key, a Talk key, a Speakerphone key, a Back key, and the End/Power key. We found the two soft keys to be a little skinny for our tastes, and the rest of the keys felt quite flat and squishy. The QWERTY keyboard beneath feels cramped as well, but at least the keys are all raised above the surface for easy texting. The keyboard also has a dedicated text messaging key and a dedicated calendar key. The number keys are marked in red.

On the left spine are the charger jack, the 2.5mm headset jack, and a jog dial, while the camera key is on the right. On the back is the camera lens.

Features
The Cricket MSGM8 has a 1,000-entry phone book with room in each entry for five numbers, an e-mail address, a birthday, and a memo. You can place them into caller groups; pair them with a photo, or one of six polyphonic ringtones. Other essentials include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, a calculator, a schedule, an alarm clock, a memo pad, a world clock, a tip calculator, a stop watch, and a unit converter. Advanced features include voice command, e-mail, a voice recorder, a wireless Web browser, and Bluetooth.