There is noticeable lag when switching from landscape to portrait orientation. App, game, and music downloads from the Google Play store were laboriously slow (about eight to 20 minutes). Mobile gamers might want to shy away from the Rise, as I noticed some lag when I played Temple Run and Angry Birds, which definitely impacted my performance.

Call quality on the Rise varies depending on your environment. From my third-floor apartment in San Francisco, I had no trouble hearing others speak, but sometimes voices sound slightly fuzzy. I also tested call quality while walking down a busy street, where reception was still good, but I did experience one dropped call. I turned the volume up to hear people on the other end, but this caused the slight fuzz to increase as well. Callers on the other end commented that my voice had a faint echo, even when I moved to different areas of my house or went outside.

The Rise runs on Sprint's 3G network, which doesn't have the fastest of data speeds. When I tried to test the phone's upload and download speeds, the FCC-approved Ookla Speed Test app crashed almost every time I ran it, so I wasn't able to conduct a proper speed test. The one successful test I was able to run had abysmal results: 127 kilobits per second for download, and 103 kbps for upload.

We have yet to run the Rise through our official PCWorld Labs battery tests, but I was able to use the Rise for six hours of heavy use (downloading apps, listening to music, texting, making calls, Web browsing, and so forth) before the battery maxed out.