Introducing the Planet's Worst Cell Phone

MetroPCS is a cell phone carrier known mostly for its low cost—so when it announced plans to offer 4G coverage, for a cheaper price than most other carriers charge for 3G, and introduced a 4G phone, it "sounded too good to be true" to Farhad Manjoo. "And, boy, was it ever," he writes in Slate. After testing out the Samsung Craft for a couple weeks, he would say it's "the worst cell phone I've ever used, but to do so would woefully undersell the sadists who've unleashed this little gadget of horrors upon an unsuspecting public."

The Web browser is so awful, you might get "nostalgic for the early 2000s." And even when you stumble upon a rare website that looks OK, good luck figuring out the browser's interface. Sometimes tapping works, other times it doesn't ... and unfortunately, "hitting the screen repeatedly with a hammer or rolling pin ... doesn't seem to work, either." And videos, while streaming quickly, are just plain ugly: "grainy, blurry, low-res." Last but not least: It costs $299, "which is $100 more than you'll pay for an actually useful smartphone like the iPhone or the Droid. It's also at least $500 more than it's worth. The Craft: a cell phone so bad you couldn't pay me to use it."
(More 4G wireless networks stories.)