Huawei

Beginning today, the Huawei Ascend II is now available for Cricket customers. We first saw the successor to the original Huawei Ascend at CTIA last March, and immediately noticed some differences.

Huawei's second Android smartphone with Cricket is sleeker, without the physical buttons and trackball. It's also slimmer, lighter, and more up-to-date, running Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Like the original Ascend, the Ascend II has a 3.5-inch HVGA screen (we were hoping for more advancements here), a 5-megapixel camera with camcorder, and a 600MHz processor (we had hoped Huawei would bump this up as well.)

The Ascend II costs $179.99 without a contract, with a $55 unlimited monthly talk, text, and data plan.