Others may not notice, but local smartphone companies are doing their best to catch up with the famous companies. Sometimes, they offer better specifications but miserably fails because of our mindset on brand names. Cherry Mobile again attempts to fascinate us with their Flare X – a mid-range smartphone that includes a decent hardware and an affordable price.
Specifications:
- 5.5-inch Full-HD IPS OGS display, 1920 x 1080 @ 400ppi
- Corning Gorilla Glass 3
- 1.7GHz MediaTek MT6752 octa-core processor
- Mali-T760 GPU
- 3GB RAM Expandable
- 16GB internal storage
- Supports up to 64GB MicroSD card
- 13-megapixel rear camera with LED Flash
- Sony IMX 214 BSI sensor
- 5-megapixel front camera
- Dual-SIM, Dual Standby
- 4G/LTE
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.0
- NFC
- 3000mAh battery
- 152 x 75.6 x 9.1mm (dimensions)
Design and Body
From the front and back, it’s an average looking smartphone. Too average maybe. You won’t notice anything special in it. It has a plain and minimalist design coupled with buttons positioned in places that you will expect. Although when you hold the handset itself, you’ll notice its strong and solid build.
The power button and volume rockers are located at the right side of the smartphone. On the other hand, the audio jack is located at the top and the charging slot is at the bottom.There is nothing really special about it and there won’t be any “getting used to” process when you are holding the phone.
Behind the body, you’ll see the 13-megapixel camera located in the middle, under it is the dual-LED flash and the speaker grilles at the very bottom.
Upon opening the back cover, you” see two microSIM card slots and a microSD card slot. As always, you will need to first take out the battery before you can insert both the sim cards and SD card.
Display
As always, the display has a standard size of 5.5 inch with full-hd display. Its very bright, has great colors, has nice viewing angles and since it still has a 5-inch display, the pixel density is still excellent that you won’t see any pixels from a normal viewing distance.
With that kind of display combined with a large and loud speakers make for a satisfying media experience for your gaming and watching youtube videos.
Software
Cherry Mobile made it nice and clean with a standard Android UI matched with some design that you won’t probably notice (except for their signature wallpaper which is not pleasing to the eye).
It is still built on top of Android Kitkat, we are not sure if it will be upgradable to Lollipop but we’ll keep an eye out regarding this. It’s not exactly a disadvantage, but Cherry Mobile is known for late software updates so best if you don’t expect an upgrade at all.
The phone also has their usual pre-installed apps like (Pinoy App Store, Wireless Update, Cherry Fun Club and Cherry Play, Kakao Talk) which can be very annoying if you don’t really use those apps.
Performance
Under the hood, the Flare X is packed with an octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, and a Mali T670 GPU.
Although you may experience some hiccups, the phone stood on its own when it comes to everyday use. It can handle multitasking efficiently and you won’t be disappointed when it comes to gaming. Just don’t expect too much.
Camera
There are a lot of 13-megapixels phone nowadays and this phone did not stand out that much. Although there is nothing special about the camera, it really gets the job done, it can deliver satisfying shots in broad daylight to good lighting environment. Check out some sample shots below.
Image processing, sharpness and autofocus speed are very average, it’s not something that you should look forward to if you’re expecting an amazing camera.
Performance
What I noticed in the battery of the Flare X is that it takes too long to charge. It took me more than four hours to fully charge the smartphone from 0%. From regular use, it will give you about 5-10% to get through the whole day which is impressive considering I played games and had mobile data turned on all the time.
Using the battery test the Flare X got a score of 6 hours and 23 minutes but that is with heavy use, a pretty good score.
With the Flare X’s configuration of 3GB RAM, octa-core processor and the Mali T670 GPU, almost all of the apps that you are going to use will run smoothly and multitasking won’t be a problem. It won’t heat up too much when you are playing heavy-duty games.
AnTuTu benchmark resulted to a score of 35,745. A pretty average score, not too low but not on par with the latest flagships of international companies.
Conclusion
There are so many smartphones out there with high-specs for a low price, especially local companies andCherry Mobile’s Flare X is one of them. Rest assured that if you’re getting one of these, you’ll get your money’s worth in specs.
The Flare X is priced at Php 6,999.
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