ZTE Altair 2 (Z432) 3G QWERTY Keyboard Phone - AT&T

This phone works great! I'm a student in college, and I was getting tired of using a smartphone ineffectively. AKA being distracted. For real, I haven't had a phone like this in almost 10 years, and this is just great! Does all the basics you'd expect a phone to do. I've had this for almost a month. I switched over from Sprint, and AT&T's customer service was very helpful in getting everything switched. If you're converting from an iPhone, you may need to call customer service, because iMessage gets all weird with your texts, and you will still receive texts on your iPhone. AT&T will do something on the back-end to resolve this. The pre-loaded wallpaper is eh, but I got a prepaid plan that came w/ 1 gig so you can easily download an image that fits your style. The texting was strange, but fun to use! It's strange because pushing physical buttons is something I've had to get used to. Another thing about texting is that when you are in a group text, you will not receive the messages in a group. The messages will come in from each individual person in a separate text. I've just let people know that I will reply to them individually from group texts. Another downside to the texting is that you can't see picture texts clearly. The screen is too small to read screenshots people send, but one way to fix this is to save the photo to your phone, and then view it in your pics. Of course that's a pain, but it works most of the time. Another strange thing I've had to watch out is BUTT DIALING. I've butt dialed/texted people about 3-4 times this month, so you have to be conscious of where you're putting your phone. Overall, this phone is great. The call quality is GREAT. I've asked my friends if they can hear a difference, and they have all said no. There aren't any games on this phone (why would you need them anyway?), but it does have useful tools like a calculator, tip calculator, stop watch, notes, and a world clock. You can have different profile settings, such as silent mode, or low-high volume alerts. OH, and the battery is GREAT. I can make multiple phone calls, text a lot, and use other things and I go 3 or 4 days in between charges! Highly recommend this phone if you're tired of being distracted from a smartphone, or you just need a simple phone.

This phone is working well for my 9th grader. Even though it is marketed as a prepaid phone, I was able to add it to my existing AT&T plan as a second line. I like that my child can call or text me as needed since now that he is in high school sometimes his after school plans change and he needs a ride at a different time. However I did not want him to have a full featured smart phone that would allow unlimited access to internet browsing and downloading apps, as we restrict his usage to certain times and content. While this phone does have a web browser as a feature, the screen size and usability are such that he is not interested in using it. He also can't download apps we'd rather he not be involved with (Snapchat etc.). Imo this is a great phone option if you are strict in your family about internet usage but you need to provide your child a way to call & text. And finally, at this price point it's not that painful to replace if it gets lost or broken. UPDATE: This phone is still working out great for us. It was lost about halfway through the school year and we replaced it with the same model. I also stuck a Tile Mate on the back of it which has helped a LOT with keeping track of where it is. Granted the Tile costs almost as much as the phone but it is well worth it in the daily "where's my phone" aggravation it saves. I've attached some pictures of the phone with the Tile. My son didn't like the "bump" in the profile much at first, but then he really liked how easy it is to find.

This phone looked good for our needs, but it failed almost immediately when my daughter finally got around to using it. Battery ran out after 10-15 minutes and needed a recharge, and then failed altogether after very few uses. The seller, Abilee Enterprises, cited the 30-day Amazon return policy when informed that they had sold us a defective product -- fair enough, as we had waiting longer than that to even open the product, but I won't be purchasing anything else from them given that they are sending out broken stuff and taking no responsibility for it. :-(

I bought this phone (ZTE Altair Z432) about a year ago because I wanted to disconnect... you know, from the internet and so forth. Smart phones can make you feel tethered to the internet and it's an awful feeling. I also really liked the appeal of having a small phone with a large battery life. Based on my goals, this phone succeeded. It was, in fact, the perfect phone for those goals. The phone is tiny and feels great in my pocket. The battery lasts for 4-7 days, depending on usage. And, while apps are technically possible (Java programs will run on this phone, for you nerds out there who understand that), you're pretty much going to be living life with what it gives you. There's no app store, anyway, so if you do want more than what I list below, it'll be a hassle to try to get it. But, if you're like me, you don't want an app store, and you don't want more. Anyway, without further ado, some features and my review of them. Calls: yeah, it's a phone, you can make calls. Huge surprise, I know. The quality is completely reasonable. That is, unless you're using a bluetooth headset. While the phone does have bluetooth, it seems like using it while on a phone call is just a little too much for the phone to handle. The bluetooth itself is fine, I'll touch on that later. Texts: also works well, with a few caveats. - No MMS group messaging. You can receive them, and it's possible to check details and see who all received the message, but you can't send group messages. You can, however, send mass SMS to as many people as you'd like. - Pictures (also MMS) will send and receive just fine, though you may have to save a picture to your phone and then navigate a couple menus to be able to zoom in enough to make out pictures you receive. - Texts save to internal storage. No changing that. - This phone has conversation view, but someone overlooked the fact that you can create multiple conversations with 1 person, if you forget you already started one before and create it again. Then, when they reply, it'll probably go back to the original conversation. Confused yet? Don't worry, you probably just have 1 misplaced message. - Emoji don't exist. Receiving one will show you a rectangle. Or 2. It depends on the emoji. - Emoticons automatically convert to weird looking emoji that other people can't see. I disabled this. Internet browser: exists, and can load some pages. To give you an idea of its limitations, Bing will not load. Not sure why you would try, anyway, but it won't work if you do. Google, however, loads fine and is well-optimized for this phone. Email: mostly doesn't work thanks to recent security improvements by most email providers. Music: actually really good. This works very well. I have bluetooth headphones that are more expensive than this phone, but the quality was just as good as using a computer with my headphones. The music controls on my headphones work as expected. And you can put music on an SD card in this phone, so yeah, plenty of space. Camera: exists, and is functional. Completely usable. Obviously don't expect much but if you need a picture of something this will get it. Sound recorder: also works as expected... and you can record your phone calls if that's your thing. Notepad, calculator, stop watch, alarms, calendar, contacts... standard assortment of useful tools. Useful settings, including the ability to set each direction on the directional pad to a shortcut for use on the main home screen. Options for those shortcuts are None, Recent calls, Create new message, Calendar, Address book, Alarm, Bluetooth, Email, Tip calculator, Profiles, Calculator, My stuff, Settings. (Profiles are the 5 setups you can create with different volume levels, vibration, ringtones, etc; My stuff is a file explorer that works fine) There's also AT&T Navigator. Don't use it. It costs money to use it and it's pretty bad. It does technically work though. In the end, I just got a smart phone a week ago... with everything being online for covid, I felt it was important to have that quick connection back. Still, this phone served its purpose and I am very much a fan. I may use it again someday.

This has two real improvements over its predecessor. You can dim the display like a smartphone, and a micro sim can be positioned to work without using an adapter. Otherwise the previous Z431 has a higher capacity battery and its less glossy keyboard is more readable. But either are a nice alternative to a smartphone--better than earlier similar ones from ZTE as java apps can be installed. Before I broke down and got a smartphone, I had several phones like this, and the ZTE Txtm8 3g was the best. The Altair and Altair 2 are good successors. One quibble I have is that the Amazon entry calls it the Altair 2, but I don't see any reference to the AT&T version by that name, just the Cricket version. That led to some confusion where a vendor listed a Cricket Z433 on this ad.

Cons: It lacks wi-fi unlike what some have said. Small buttons and clumsy keypad lock if you don't want any butt dialing. Barely big enough screen. Pros: It feels sturdy in the hands and has a decent keyboard with satisfying to push buttons. It doesn't require a data plan and texts pretty well. Screen size is adequate, but wish it were larger. It's super affordable. My parents want a smartphone without a data plan. They have flip phones and "candy bar" phones without no keyboard or touch pad. So when I'm in the middle of an assignment, I'm a grad student studying statistics, I have a mini panic attack when they ask me to help them text. Not that it takes long, but it's so gosh darned inconvenient. I'd say some strong four letter expletives, but I'll leave that to imagination. Packaging was a blisterpack since it's a go phone, but I took the sim card from their old phones and put them into their new phones. Watch out world, my parents can text!

I got so tired of spending good money on phones that inevitably would suffer software issues or I would accidentally drown them. When my blackberry went loco, I was so frustrated that I refused to spend more then $30 on a new phone! I checked this one out at Walmart (for that price), then ordered it here for half the cost. I use mine for music more than anything, and it works very well for that except it is VERY slow to rewind or fast forward (frustrating for audiobooks.) I don't text, but I do make notes for myself and the qwerty works fine for that. The battery lasts me MOST of the day if I'm using the music function constantly. Otherwise if I just use it to talk, I get a few days out of it. The alarms work very well, and I had no trouble setting up different ring tones and setting pictures for my contacts. One word of warning, though...I could never get it to communicate with my computer without a micro-sd card! I hooked it up and it downloaded some device driver, but it would never do anything else (wouldn't show up to my computer at all.) So I had to buy a micro-sd card for all of my music and my ringtones...but I literally plugged in the card and the phone immediately recognized it. I don't have data, so I don't know if I could have downloaded music or not, but you can't transfer files from your computer to your phone WITHOUT a micro-sd card in the phone. I had an AT&T SIM card, and I plugged it into the phone and was immediately up and running. I highly recommend this phone if you're tired of breaking the bank for new phones all the time!

I bought this to replace a dying iPhone 5 because I wanted smaller size, longer battery life, fewer distractions and convenient texting with my Airvoice account. It should meet my needs but has a few glaring faults and I am planning to get a flip phone or smart phone. PROS: Good sound quality Put in your Airvoice SIM in and it is ready to go - no fussing A nano-SIM works fine - it wedges in tight enough that I've never had to adjust it Full keyboard is good - keys are at the minimum useful size and font I do not waste time on this phone! CONS: Latest texts are displayed out of order in conversations! This can be confusing because you can't instantly see whether you replied last or the other party did. Plus, when a text is split into multiples and has long parts they are not completely displayed, so you get odd jumbles of sentence fragments and have to click into them to see what they say. LOCKING IS IDIOTIC: I sent a bunch of blank or meaningless texts to people because the keys are easily depressed when it's in my front pocket. On the home screen it also accepts any # presses, so eventually it butt dials. Think the solution is to turn on locking? Get ready to butt dial 911. When locked it still allows emergency dialing. Not a problem - what is the chance you will randomly dial 911 or 112? Turns out it's 100% because the only key presses it accepts are 9 (followed by 1 and then 1) or 1 (followed by 1 and 2). So if it's locked in your pocket and eventually accumulates "soigh9hgh4w5hj463h j kj1ji41" it will dial 911. (Thanks to this phone I learned that if you hang up on 911 before they answer they will call you back.) I turned locking off - I'd rather look like an idiot to my friends than waste the operator's time. Battery is mediocre - lasts a few days with an hour or two of talking, even when left at my house and I haven't set up wi-fi. MVNO use is tricky - apps (e-mail, address book, navigation...) are set up for AT&T so they don't work and cannot be removed. I haven't figured out how to use Airvoice data or wi-fi. Notable delay in receiving key input - so you need to type slowly or you'll double type because you think it wasn't received. Not all incoming calls show up on recent calls list. T9 texting seems slower than just typing it all out. It doesn't even add a space after you choose a word, so you need to switch between the cursor and keyboard too much. Looks like you need to use an SD card and card reader to transfer files (photos, music) to and from a Mac - it's not set up to communicate through USB. I want a small Airvoice-compatible phone that I can keep in my pocket, don't need to recharge frequently, is good for texting. This phone is marginal on all those counts, so I need to look for a replacement.