Kyocera Rise Offers QWERTY Android On A Budget

Kyocera has outed its latest Android smartphone, the Kyocera Rise, a four-row QWERTY slider targeting the budget market with Ice Cream Sandwich on a 1GHz processor. The Rise has a 3.5-inch 480 x 320 IPS LCD touchscreen and 512MB of RAM, and uses Qualcomm's Snapdragon MSM8655 with 2GB of ROM space. There's also a 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash and 30fps video recording.

Connectivity is for Verizon and other CDMA carriers, with the Rise having EVDO Rev.A support along with WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. There's also USB, a microSD card slot and the usual gamut of sensors – accelerometer, digital compass, proximity, ambient light and GPS – though no GSM support for international use.

It measures in at 4.44 x 2.38 x 0.56 inches when closed, tipping the scales at 5.54 oz. Aesthetically, there's something of Sony Ericsson's Xperia Mini pro to the Rise,  at least to our eyes, but the Kyocera is a little larger than the tiny Sony.

Kyocera isn't saying how much the Rise will cost, and nor has it confirmed which carriers might be offering the QWERTY smartphone in the US. It will go on sale in the second half of 2012, however.