After a few weeks, I am now able to present you my review of the Cherry Mobile Ultra, the 2nd LTE smartphone from the local mobile phone brand. Upon using it, I discovered something functional that you’ll not even see yet in other websites and forums.
Phone, messaging and connectivityConnectivity is one big thing for this smartphone as it has really 4G LTE capability for both Globe and Smart. While my fellow tech bloggers had some evidences that it can connect thru the Smart LTE network, I tested it thru a Globe LTE sim in 2 areas, my residence and somewhere in Alabang. In 15 minutes, I already got almost a GB worth of files which is something great. I got clear calls when I had a few tests with the help of my sibling either while I’m moving or at standby mode. It got a bit bigger keyboard which is a big help for my big fingers
Battery Test:
I ran some 720p videos in loop mode using MX Player at 12% phone brightness, MX Player brightness at 6, Volume at 11, no Bluetooth and WiFi and at GSM mode using the stock earphone, I got it at 8 hours 16 minutes which is not that bad but not that good either specially when I compared it to a more powerful phone with the same 2000 maH battery which will be soon on my review
Music
The familiarity is like the one that we usually saw in stock music player like there are 4 panels: albums, artists, songs & playlist. There is a Snapdragon+ equalizer which based on this unit, I’m not a big fan as I’ll just gonna stick to the default settings. I had a difficult time on refreshing the list when I put up another micro SD with some songs
Performance
The Snapdragon 400 chipset showed me a unique kind of fluidity compare to today’s quad-cores from Mediatek specially in switching to different apps and settings.
Camera
One thing is that I like on the camera feature is the digital zoom which is by increment of 0.1 from 1.0 to 4.0. The panorama feature is the easiest to use that I encountered so far. The simple controls is a plus as you can make the settings appear by either pushing the “3 line” button or press and hold any part of the screen. Two drawbacks for me, one is less camera controls and the slow processing of picture as it took me about more than a second, quite unacceptable specially with a quad core chipset and it might be the phone for me for photo shooting purposes for my blogging events. I hope that CM will have an update for this. Here’s a tip that you’ll gonna see somewhere else: The “Volume Up” of the volume rocker is the key physical button if you want to take pics aside from the capacitive shutter button. Just press, hold and release. Once you already released the said button, it’s done. Despite of some of it’s weakness, it produces nice pictures either day or night. Here are my camera samples from the 13 MP rear camera
Extras:
It’s stock earphones is one of the best that I used so far from any of the local smartphones that I tested. The default volume for music and video is a-ok. Sadly, it is not USB OTG capable. It’s rear camera has the same case of their previous models Omega HD and Omega HD 2.0 which is not aligned to the actual thickness of the unit. A jelly case will solve this problem as up to this day, it is still not available. The unit has a different kind of white which reminds me of a beauty soap and I like it’s unique matte finish. The speakers are kinda large and no problems in it even you put it in a maximum volume.
Verdict:
The specs/ratio of Cherry Mobile Ultra for me is at high level for me even though for no USB OTG support and slow camera processing compare to the W900 LTE as currently is the most affordable LTE handset in the country. What’s more that an international mobile phone brand released their version with the same specs but more expensive at around P5,000. The big factor is at the LTE department which can connect to 2 leading telcos. The Cherry Mobile Ultra is available at P8,999
