6 days ago
Boost Summit 5G review: A budget phone for Boost customers
When we think of smartphone brands, we think of Apple, Google, and Samsung. Enthusiasts add Motorola, Nothing, or OnePlus to the list. However, carrier phones are another class of phones that most, including me, think about. Carrier phones are budget devices for those who want a phone that works and doesn't have many bells and whistles.
Boost Mobile's carrier phone offering is the Boost Summit 5G, which is listed at $95. New customers who port-in to the service can have it for free, and existing members can get it for $20. While $95 or less is a compelling price, this phone's trade-offs are substantial. Poor hardware and performance make this phone hard to recommend to anyone, except those who don't use their phone for much.
The Boost Summit 5G was released on November 11, 2024, for $95. Most people get it for free when porting into Boost Mobile's service, or for $20 for Boost members. You can purchase it from Boost Mobile's website or its brick-and-mortar stores. You can also get it at large retailers such as Best Buy and Walmart for varying prices.
At the time of writing, the device is sold out on Boost Mobile's website, but it is available at Walmart and Best Buy for $50 or less.
The best thing about this phone is the price. It's almost impossible to get new tech for under $100, never mind a smartphone, but Boost did it. It's a solid phone that looks attractive. It's made of plastic, which is typical at this price, but it is easy to grip and the Vista Blue color looks nice.
The Summit does a serviceable job of being a basic smartphone. It runs stock Android 14, so the software experience is clean and simple. Still, it doesn't have unique or interesting features.
Digital Wellbeing, the Security dashboard, and other core Android features are here. Making calls, sending texts, and surfing the web are easy to do and work well on the phone.
While the MT6835V/ZA Octa-Core 6nm (23E+) processor isn't the fastest or most powerful, it works well for simple tasks or light gaming. I didn't find many issues with performance until I tried to push to the phone, which is solid for less than $100.
You can do these tasks on the large 6.6-inch HD+ screen, which has a maximum 90Hz refresh rate that makes scrolling look smooth. iPhones that are many times as expensive as this phone don't have a 90Hz refresh rate, so it's nice to see a high refresh rate at this price point.
It's powered by a large 5,000mAh battery, giving the phone great battery life. I got approximately two days on a single charge, which is phenomenal for a phone in 2025. It's also wonderful that the Summit includes two features from past flagships that should never have left: a headphone jack and expandable storage.
The headphone jack is located in the lower-left corner of the phone next to the microphone, and allows users to use wired headphones. You can increase the device's storage by up to 128GB using a microSD card. These features aren't unique to the Summit as competitors like the Moto G (2025) include them, but they're welcome. The speakers are surprisingly good for this price. I found them to be loud and full and with good depth. They're not the best speakers, but they punch above their weight.
While I think this phone has a lot of value, I have some gripes. Plastic phones are not necessarily bad, as you can add nice textures to them, but this one feels cheap to hold. The plastic feels like it's plastic, and the phone creaks sometimes, making the build quality feel poor.
The haptics also make the phone feel cheap. The vibration motor is aggressive. Since the plastic build quality is poor, every vibration makes a loud noise. It's very unappealing. Another obvious issue is seen when looking at the phone's screen. While large, it's not very bright, vibrant, or crisp. It also has the largest bezels I've seen on a smartphone. They are so large on this phone that it's hard not to see them. They're not only large, but asymmetrical. They scream cheap from across the room.
The screen also has awful viewing angles. If you're not looking at the phone straight on, it gets darker and darker and is hard to see past about 25 degrees in each direction. While this is helpful for privacy, it doesn't make it easy to show others content on your device, and watching a video with someone over your shoulder is difficult.
Other phones at this price, like the Samsung Galaxy A15, include great screens, so it's disappointing how poor the Summit's screen is.
The cameras also make me irrationally angry. The phone has a 5MP front-facing camera, two rear-facing sensors, a 13MP main sensor, and a 2MP depth sensor. There is only a single camera since the depth sensor helps add depth to photos, and these take up two of the four circles on the back of the phone. Another houses the flash, but the fourth is empty.
The cameras and flash take up about 20% of the actual volume of these circles, so the camera bump is massive for no reason. I don't understand why Boost made this choice. Maybe it wanted to make the cameras look bigger and better than they are, but it comes off looking cheap and feels like a poor attempt to mislead consumers. I'm not a fan.
In the middle of the camera bump, it says "AI-CAMERA," which means there's AI integrated with the camera. However, I found no mention of AI in the software or settings. The photos didn't look like they were enhanced with AI, so I'm not sure what they're referring to.
Speaking of the photos, they're fine. In ideal conditions, the Summit takes good, but not great, photos. They look a bit washed out, lifeless, and lack detail, but they are serviceable. In less-than-ideal conditions, the photos are more of a mixed bag. They lack the post-processing you see on Samsung and Google phones.
The camera app includes night and pro modes, which are missing from some smartphones at a similar price, but it's challenging to take pro or nighttime photos with a small, 13MP sensor. The internal specs are a little rough. The phone has 4GB of RAM, which is good for single, simple tasks, but gets choked up when the phone is pushed a little.
The phone also has 64GB of internal storage, which is poor when the average smartphone starts at four times as much. It's probably a function of price, and you can expand the storage with a microSD card, so it's not awful, but I wish it had at least 128GB. Charging is slow. Boost doesn't list the exact specs, but it takes about two hours to charge from ~20% to full.
The fingerprint scanner makes it difficult to interact with the phone. It is located on the power button, which is a fine location. However, I find it unreliable, and when I use it to shut the screen off, it sometimes tries to turn it back on before I can move my finger. I found this frustrating, but it may not be as frustrating if you wait until your screen times out.
Software support is a big question mark. Boost does not list an official software support policy for the phone, but I found a few updates for the phone when I first turned it on. It looks like Boost pushes an update every other month, but I'm unsure how long these will last.
When setting up the phone, you'll run into a large amount of bloatware that helps offset the cost of this phone. I found almost as many bloatware apps as system apps, which took a while to remove.
While I removed most of them, I get notifications asking me to enter demographic information to find apps and games for me. This seems like a way to get better information to serve me ads, which I am against. This makes the software experience feel cheap, which is not a good look when paired with the hardware.
While I'm a smartphone enthusiast, I'm not against cheaper devices as long as they make the right trade-offs to make the value worth it. The Summit makes too many trade-offs to make it worth recommending to most people. I recommend the Summit to folks who do not care about their phone and want the cheapest phone to pair with the $25 monthly Boost plan. I could also see this phone being an option for those on a limited budget.
If you use your phone to game, consume content, or multitask, you'll spend a bit more to get a phone that can handle that. The Moto G (2025) or the Samsung Galaxy A15 have better screens, processors, and cameras for $200, which is a better option for many people. The Summit won't cut it for most people, even at such a low price.
