The latest greatest flagship phone can sometimes cost an arm a leg, especially if you don’t qualify for subsidized pricing from your carrier. so, maybe you’re not really aching for all of the latest specifications features that manufacturers like Samsung HTC pack with their hsets. That’s where low-end mid-range phones come in: they’re typically solid smartphones packed with one or two premium features, all rolled up into a cheaper package.

The Kyocera Hydro Vibe has some premium elements to it, like the fact that it’s waterproof shoots 1080p video, but it also falls short where phones in its class can’t afford to. That’s a shame, because the competition among mid-range phones is heating up. 

A little more of the same

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The Kyocera Hydro Vibe is a bit smaller than other phones in its class, about the size of the Moto X. It sports a simple black gray design with a grippy plastic backing a removable 2,000 mAh battery pack. Its 4.5-inch D display is bright fairly usable outdoors, but it’s not a high-resolution display. Its viewing angles are passable, but not perfect, the colors appear a bit faded on some applications. 

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On the left there’s a volume rocker, with the headphone jack power button residing at the top. There’s a button on the bottom left for quick camera access, which is neat but a gesture would have sufficed. It’s also waterproof can withst up to 3.28 feet of water for up to half an hour as long as the back is tightly secured. Unlike many other waterproof phones, it doesn’t have any annoying flaps you have to deal with. You can’t use it while it’s dunked, however, which is the only time that the physical camera button actually comes in hy.

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Struggling to keep up

Inside, the Kyocera Hydro Vibe is powered by a quad-core, 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 processor 1.5GB of RAM. That puts it on par with phones like the Motorola Moto G, HTC One mini, Samsung Galaxy S4 mini.

Android 4.4 KitKat may require fewer resources than previous versions of the OS, but I question whether the Hydro Vibe will last to the next version since its interface lags as you pan through screens. It’s also still on lly Bean, which likely contributes to some of the lag, but it’s just jerky enough that you can tell it’s struggling to keep up. It did just alright with intensive apps like games once you load them up, but there was still a bit of waiting time while multitasking between apps, too.

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The best feature of the Hydro Vibe is its long-lasting battery life. It lasted for five days on stby with Airplane Mode on, managed a bit more than 8 hours in our video playback test. There’s also an EcoMode to squeeze out a bit more life out of it. 

A slow, capable camera

You may not care for a high-throttle processor or a high resolution display, but if you’re on the prowl for a low-end to mid-range phone, the least you should have is a decent camera. 

The Kyocera Hydro Vibe’s camera capabilities are about average, which makes it good enough for posting photos to social media. Its 8-megapixel camera lens takes better photos than the Moto X’s 10-megapixel camera, but its focus time shutter speed are painstakingly slow. Even the panorama feature is difficult to use; the slightest shake will blur the end result.

Close up, the photos also suffer some EG distortion. There are a few different scenes white balance modes you can utilize to get a better photo, generally the Hydro Vibe took better photos outdoors than indoors.

Not stock Android

In a perfect world, every manufacturer making a low-end or mid-range hset would stick with stock Android add a few of its own little apps here there. Kyocera not only stuck with its own custom interface, it pasted it on top of the aging Android 4.3.

There are still elements of Android sprinkled throughout—the Notifications shade remains untouched, for instance, all the apps are all there—but the icons other custom user interface elements speckled throughout make the phone feel outdated. I’m also curious about how quickly software updates will happen with each new iteration of Android.

At least you can dunk it in water

Homnick

The Kyocera Hydro Vibe wouldn’t be my first choice for a mid-range hset. I’d much rather go for the phablet-sized ZTE Boost Max even though it’s much bigger. But it is waterproof, which not many low-end or mid-range phones are, its long-lasting battery life would be great for the Bear Grylls-types who are always out hiking don’t care too much for a high-end phone. 

Of course, if you do have subsidized pricing with your carrier, you could also consider one of last year’s rugged phones for purchase, like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active. Basically, don’t set your sights on the Hydro Vibe until you’ve seen what else you can get for your cash.