Waterproof phones used to be lumped under the category of rugged handsets in the past, and them rugged handsets tend to come in a bulky form factor without much thought put in to its aesthetics. Perhaps it was an engineering limitation that was the main cause of that, but we do know that in this day and age, waterproof smartphones with some pretty decent build quality such as the Sony Xperia Z are slim enough to pass off as an ordinary high end smartphone. Virgin Mobile has finally offered their first waterproof smartphone which comes in the form of the aptly named ZTE Reef. The ZTE Reef is IPX7-certified, which allows it to “swim” underwater for up to half an hour in 1 meter of water.
Virgin Mobile continues to maintain its affordable demeanor, where it will retail for $149.99 a pop sans contract. The ZTE Reef will be powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, carries a 4” display with 800 x 480 resolution, a 1MP front-facing camera, a 5MP rear camera with HD video recording, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Virgin Mobile Feed, Virgin Mobile ID Packs, a single-core 1GHz processor and a microSD memory card slot. A 1,650mAh battery rounds off the list of specifications, where you get a purported talk time of 9 hours.
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