Those of you who are more into conserving their finances than having the absolute best pieces of technology at their disposal might remember a little guy going by the name of Kyocera Rise. The entry-level phone was first leaked more than a month ago, popping by again at the beginning of August with a rumored release date for both Sprint and Virgin Mobile.

One of Kyocera’s most decent offerings in a while “rose” right on cue at Sprint, and, also on schedule, the phone is now available through Virgin Mobile. The Rise is this time around up for grabs for a slightly higher price, but you’ll be glad to know you don’t have to sign up any kind of contract up front to be able to buy it.

The “texty beast”, as Virgin calls it (pretty clever, eh?), is obviously not a high-end gadget (not even high-end-ish), but has a decent shot at drawing the attention of certain groups of people that have started to not have that many options. In fact, it’s certainly not a coincidence that Virgin has made the Rise available right before the school year starts, with students of all ages being bound to get drawn by it.

And what’s there not to like if you’re a “texty fanatic”? The Rise has a sleek and very functional slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it’s elegant and portable and, while it doesn’t pack much raw power, it can get the job done with some light browsing, multimedia playing and gaming.

The Kyocera Rise, available only online for the time being at $99.99, can be coupled with Virgin Mobile’s very lucrative unlimited prepaid plans, starting at $35 monthly. You can get more details at this link, where you can also check if Virgin “has you covered”.

And to be sure you're going to make as informed a decision as possible, here's a quick rundown of all of the phone's specs and features:

• 3.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 320 pixels resolution and 165 ppi pixel density
• Single-core 1 GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor with Adreno 205 GPU
• 512 MB of RAM
• 2 GB of on-board storage + 2 GB microSD card included
• 3.15 MP rear-facing camera with autofocus
• Android 4.0 ICS with access to Google Play and Virgin Mobile Live
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
• 3G
• Bluetooth 2.1
• MicroUSB 2.0
• Standard Li-Ion 1,500 mAh battery capable of running for up to 8 hours in talk time between charges
• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• 158 grams weight
• 113 x 60.5 x 14.3 mm dimensions

Anyone getting the texty beast?