We bought Boost Mobile’s Celero 5G almost three years to the day back in 2022 for my dad. We were very pleased with our purchase. It was a great phone. A beautiful phone. But it ended up with a cracked screen after my dad dropped it a few weeks later. Instead of replacing it, he decided to just live with the cracks. It has worked fairly well this whole time.
The time has come, however, to retire the Celero 5G. The original cracks have significantly deepened, and the back of the phone has lifted away from the seams at the bottom. On top of that, the headphone jack is blocked. It’s unsafe and losing its usefulness.
Dangerous Dents
While the cracks on the screen have always been unsightly, they have become a full-on hazard. If you look at the crack in the screen’s top left corner, you can see the phone’s actual frame showing through the holes left by the missing “glass” (I’m calling it glass, but it’s probably some other kind of material.)
Meanwhile, the glass that is still there juts out jaggedly. In fact, it will poke you in the side of your face when you put the phone up to your ear to talk. We make all of our calls on speakerphone now to avoid getting scratched. Honestly, I don’t trust it that close to my eyes either.
The top right corner is in much the same condition, with the phone’s frame visible and the glass jutting out. The only difference is that the crack’s overall size is smaller. It will continue to grow, though. I can already see the web-like cracks growing from the big crack.
Back Panel Catastrophe
As if the situation wasn’t bad enough on the front of the phone, the deterioration of the back side is possibly worse.
First, the back panel is slowly coming unglued along the sides. You can literally grab the flap and lift the panel up to see the battery and the other innards.
Moreover, the back panel is basically ruined. My dad came home recently and told me how he heard the whole bottom part of the panel shatter in his pocket. It’s cracked worse than the screen now. The paint on the panel has also peeled off along the edges around the cracks.
No Tunes
One minor problem with the Celero 5G is that we can no longer plug headphones into the headphone jack. Something is blocking the port so that the charger doesn’t fit in snugly. If we lay the device down on a table and don’t move it, it’s possible to slide the charger in and it will charge the phone fine. I don’t feel comfortable with this.
We thought about sticking something in there to clear out whatever’s clogging the port, but given the state of the back panel, we didn’t think that was a good idea.
Now What?
So, the Celero 5G didn’t age well. There are a million possible causes for these damages. As I mentioned in my previous post, my dad tends to be rough on phones. He has probably dropped the phone more times than he’s disclosed. He could have left change in his pocket that struck the screen or back panel. His pocket is likely full of lint that lodged in the charge port. The weather could have contributed to the problems, as we live in a state whose temperatures have been both hotter and colder than in past years lately. Who knows?
The fact that it has continued to work despite these issues, however, suggests to me that it’s probably not a manufacturing issue. I think we should have found a case to put on the phone. It was too delicate a device to entrust to my dad without protection. We won’t make that mistake again.
With all of these issues in mind, we’ve decided that the Celero 5G is too dangerous to continue to use much longer. I’m afraid that at any moment the phone will catch fire or explode. We will be replacing it ASAP.