Unbearably slow to use. Randomly dialing people. Screen going blank during calls.
I immediately recognized the signs of impending failure for my dad’s phone, the Coolpad Legacy Go (aka the CLG). I had seen them happen to all of our previous Android phones. It was time for something new.
Just as I came to that conclusion, we started getting flyers in the mail from Boost Mobile telling us that we would have to upgrade our phones because our current ones wouldn’t be supported on their new 5G network. One of the flyers offered an early crack at their new flagship phone, the $230 Celero 5G, for $49. While we went a different, ultimately disastrous route for the house phone, my dad decided to go with the Celero.
We were very pleased with the purchase…until my dad broke it.
First Impressions
The Celero 5G ships in a black and silver box to compliment the phones appearance. Besides the absence of Boost Mobile’s trademark orange and black colors, the box differs from their recent packaging because it opens from the side instead of the top. It has two flaps that pop up and a tab that slides out.
The top lifts up to reveal a tray with the phone, charging cord, wall adapter, and SIM card ejector laid out. Underneath the phone, which is wrapped in some sort of protective tissue paper, is a rectangular box that contains the starter guide and other documentation.
The Celero itself is rectangular with rounded edges. This thing is heavy and thick at 7.15 ounces and 0.33 inches respectively (according to the specs sheet). The front, which has a thin-bezeled screen and a small camera notch, slightly protrudes up from the back half. The sides are banded with silver metal, with the volume bar and power button on the right side.
Meanwhile, the back cover has a beautiful brushed metal look. It collects fingerprints like nobody’s business! The “Celero 5G” logo is written in white text towards the bottom of the back. For some ridiculous reason, they put a sticker that lists the phone’s IMEI number above the logo. I would have been more annoyed about it if it hadn’t peeled off cleanly.
The battery is non-removable, so I didn’t have to take off the back cover or any of that jazz. It was already charged to about 60%. I did have to install the SIM card, which comes attached to a card in a separate envelope. There’s a convenient little drawer on the phone’s top left side that slides out for it (and a microSD card). I’ve never had to do that before. The SIM card is usually preinstalled when I buy the phone.
The activation process took some time. I had to put in several long sets of numbers to validate the swap between the Celero and the CLG. Of course, I kept accidentally skipping numbers in the sequence, which would cause errors. I thought my eyes were going to cross.
Setting up the phone itself, however, was easy. For the first time, I used Google’s backup system to transfer everything over from the CLG. I put in my dad’s Google address and that was that. It restored the apps, alarms, ringtones, wallpapers, and even the hotspot info. I was impressed by the seamlessness. I’ll definitely remember that trick for next time.
Screen and Sound
I had already gotten a taste of what a bigger screen has to offer from the 5.5″ one on my mom’s BLU View 2 phone. It was amazing. Well, the 6.5″ one on the Celero is even better! I love being able to see so much more text and video. Twitter, for example, looks wonderful. If the phone wasn’t so heavy, I could easily read eBooks on there. My only disappointment with the screen is that the colors are a tad muted and there’s an overall haze to it.
The Celero’s screen shares a feature with our house phone, the LG Tribute Empire: you can tap the screen twice to turn it on (LG calls this “KnockOn”). This is convenient for checking the time or glancing at notifications. Unlike on the Tribute Empire, however, the same gesture doesn’t also turn off Celero’s screen. Kinda makes it less useful, in my opinion.
The sound quality is good overall. Calls come in loud and clear on both ends. At full blast, notifications are loud enough to make me jump out of my skin. However, the speaker’s placement could be better. The speaker grill is a line of six small holes on the right side of the phone’s bottom edge. When I hold the phone in landscape mode, the speaker is severely muffled by my palm. It’s annoying.
The Fingerprint Reader
A detail that I initially missed is that the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader. Whereas the volume bar sticks out from the phone’s side, the power button sinks into it. It’s rather hard to push. Your finger has to slide into that dip just so. The design sucks for a power button, but it’s perfect for a fingerprint reader.
The fingerprint reader works well for the most part. The phone unlocks immediately when I put my finger on it. I was able to program in two of my own prints and prints from both of my parents. The process involves tapping your finger of choice on the button in a million different positions so the reader has a complete map of your print. You have to keep doing it until the progress circle is completely filled. It’s reminiscent of the way you program TouchID on iOS devices (from what I’ve seen). It was frustrating because after a while I ran out of ways to position my finger but I still wasn’t done with the process.
Unfortunately, the fingerprint reader, much like the speaker grill, is in a bad place. It should have been on the back or on the top like I’ve seen on devices from other companies, somewhere out of the way. It’s too easy to accidentally graze the power button. If you touch it with an unreigstered finger, or you don’t position your finger over the button correctly, it will vibrate a warning. Too many of these off touches will cause the phone to disable the fingerprint reader for ten minutes. At that point, you have to log in with a secondary method (password, pattern, passcode, etc.).
Half the time, the phone’s already locked by the time my dad pulls it out of his pocket. What good is a fingerprint reader that you barely get to use?
Performance, Storage, and Battery
As its name suggests, the Celero 5G runs on T-Mobile’s 5G network. This is our first phone to do so. I haven’t had any problems with the network at all. I didn’t expect to see much of a change in speed from our old 4G LTE network, but I was wrong—it’s definitely faster. When I download a song from Freegal, it finishes almost instantaneously, just like they show in the commercials. It used to take several seconds. Ah, it’s so exciting. That said, the pain of being throttled when I go over my data allotment is a lot more painful. The network speed drops to practically nonexistent. I might as well not have internet at that point.
Performance is good. The phone runs Android 11, has 4 GB of memory, and uses a Mediatek MTK5G processor. I don’t do anything intensive enough to push a phone anywhere near such limits. It works perfectly when I play Sonic Dash, which is pretty much the extent of my mobile gaming these days. Storage isn’t an issue either, nor will it be for a long time. We’ve only used 18.76 GB of the 64 GB available, with the system accounting for 12 GB. That’s fantastic!
The battery life is astounding. We usually charge it every other day. I like how Android 11 gives an estimated time of day that the battery will die along with the percentage left now. Our other phones give that info in total hours. It makes more sense to my brain to see “Should last until about 3:45 PM” though. It feels more concrete.
Also, this is our second phone with a USB-C port. My mom doesn’t have to guard her cord with her life anymore. Yay!
Cameras
I’m used to our phones having a front camera, a rear camera, and maybe a flash mechanism. The Celero, on the other hand, has an advanced setup called a “triple rear camera system.” As the documentation explains, there are three cameras working together: a 16 MP main one, a 5 MP ultrawide one, and a 2 MP depth one. The cameras are arranged in a 2 x 2 grid in the top left corner of the back, with the flash mechanism filling in the fourth slot.
Those three cameras take great photos. They’re way better than the cameras on the BV2 or the Tribute Empire. They might actually rival my point-and-shoot camera. The most helpful feature for me is the ability to use the flashlight to light up the subject before I take a picture. I don’t have as many issues with shadows as before.
The front-facing camera is 8 MP. It sits in an iPhone-like notch in the middle of the Celero’s top bezel. It takes decent, if not slightly too bright, photos. I didn’t get to test it much because it has a long crack across the lens now (more on that next).
Conclusion
I love the Celero 5G. It’s heavier than I like and some parts could be positioned better, but I like the size of the screen and the overall semi-premium feel. Sadly, we didn’t get to enjoy it for long.
A couple of months after we got the Celero, something bad happened. My dad took it out of his pocket to check the time and it slipped out of his gloved hands. It hit the pavement hard. The screen cracked into medium-sized spiderwebs on both of the top corners. There’s yellow discoloration around those cracks. There’s also a much smaller spiderweb on the bottom left corner, with long cracks that extend across the middle of the screen. The screen remains fully responsive. The metal sides surprisingly sustained no dings in the fall, not even at the point of impact.
My dad says that he wants to get another Celero. I’m not sure how feasible that is. For one thing, the Celero’s not cheap anymore. It costs $139 from Boost Mobile or $99 at Walmart now. Having the screen repaired on the one we already have costs as much as or more than a replacement. Those prices are too steep for our current budget. For another thing, I’m frankly not sure if my dad is responsible enough to have such a delicate phone, even if we put a case on it. I think he would be better off with a cheaper plastic model that can withstand more damage. I can live with assorted dings and dangs, but I almost cried when I saw that busted screen.
Oh well. It looks like we didn’t have good luck with either of our new phones this time around.