Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z

Cherry Mobile is perhaps the most aggressive of all local phone brands. This is evident with their frequent product launches and the introduction of the Cosmos series, specifically the Cosmos Z. Check our full review of the Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z after the jump.

Cherry Mobile has come a long way from creating entry-level feature phones to pushing the prices of Android smartphones to insane levels in the local market. Now, they’re doing it again but this time, its a jab at the flagship category.

By flagship handset, we mean large full HD displays, quad-core processors, and the close-to-the-latest Android flavors. The Cosmos Z is, by far, the only evidence that obviously points to that direction.

Design and Construction.

The Cosmos Z looked very simple and unassuming. Much of what it can boast are all hidden inside the 5-inch polycarbonate chassis. The review unit we got is the all-white variant with the front panel covered with glass from edge to edge, Android soft buttons at the bottom end and earphone speakers at the top end along with the front-facing camera and sensors.

The volume controls are found on the left side, power button on the right side, the microphone at the bottom end, and the 3.5mm audio port and micro-USB port at the top end. The large 18-megapixel camera is found at the back side along with the LED flash and the phone speakers. The Cosmos label is smack in the middle and another Cherry Mobile logo painted in embossed at the lower corner.

The device looks really sleek and very slim, the pearl white color is accented with silver buttons and silver trimmings around the sides. The smooth, matte finish feels a bit slippery and attracts oil and smudges very easily.

Over-all, it has a good build, nothing fancy and looking decent. Cherry Mobile’s formula for the Cosmos Z in the design department can go either way and it will boil down to personal preference.

Display.

The biggest feature that Cherry Mobile is very proud of with the Cosmos Z would have to be the full HD 1080p IPS LCD display. That basically puts it in the same league as the top flagship handsets of other global brands, like the Galaxy S4, HTC One and Xperia Z1.

The front panel is completed covered by tempered glass, the display is surrounded with narrow bezel that allows some space for capacitive buttons. If you want to nitpick a bit, you will notice a little black gap (about a millimeter wide) between the bezel and the border of active screen.

Needless to say, the screen is very sharp, clean and crisp. This becomes more evident when you’re browsing the web, viewing hi-res photos or watching a full HD 1080p video.

It is very rare for a local brand to go as high as this type of display but Cherry Mobile has proven they can do better than what the market expects of them. On that note alone, props to Cosmic Technologies for pushing the boundaries in the smartphone market.

OS, UI and Apps.

Cherry Mobile did not really touch the vanilla UI of Android Jellybean. If there were some customizations made, these were mostly light cosmetic additions like home wallpapers and pre-installed apps like Cherry Fun Club, eWarranty, Cherry Play and Software Update (OTA).

The Cosmos Z comes with Android 4.2.1 Jellybean right out of the box making it at par with most other handsets released this year. Access to Google Play gives you choice of hundreds of thousands of free apps and games. Customization is available via several themes and Home Launcher apps.

The virtual keypad for making calls and keyboard for SMS is as plain as you can get and should be familiar if you’ve tried the vanilla UI of Android Jellybean. As an option, Cherry Mobile has pre-installed TouchPal V5 should you wish to change the keyboard layout.

Multimedia and Camera.

On paper, multimedia is supposed to be a strong suit for the Cosmos Z especially with its full HD 1080p display and an enormous combo of 18MP and 8MP rear and front-facing cameras.

As mentioned earlier, the full HD display coupled with IPS LCD provides great video experience for the user. The same is true with mobile gaming. However, we noticed that the resulting audio from movies are a bit weak than normal.

The speakers at the back seemed to do its job when playing MP3 music or even with games. Despite it lacking in bass, the volume is more than enough to fulfill our needs.

The 18MP rear camera was very controversial since it rode on the megapixel marketing hype. Nevertheless, we were after on image quality rather than image size. Here are the sample photos we got using the rear camera.

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   We were initially skeptic with the performance of the camera but the results        showed above average picture quality.

   Here’s the sample HD video we got from the same camera:

Don’t forget to tick the 720p or 1080p video in the quality settings before playing.

We were actually fairly impressed with the image quality. The camera apps was full of options and settings for tweaking the performance of the camera. There was no option for a 16:9 aspect ratio though and everything was in 4:3 aspect ratio.

Performance and Benchmarks.

There were occasions when we notice some significant lags. This was evident when we first used the phone that had Live Wallpaper running on the background and transitions were a bit choppy. It only disappeared when we changed the background to a static wallpaper. It’s curious though that CM used a custom Live Wallpaper as the default background without checking the user-experience at that level.

We played a number of usual games on the phone without any problems — starting out with simple ones like Fruit Ninja, to Temple Run 2 and Fast Racing 3D. For the most part, gameplay is smooth and appealing. Graphics might sometime become pixelated especially when they’re designed for 720p instead of full HD 1080p like the display of the Cosmos Z.

Our benchmark results show some struggle by the Cosmos Z in the graphics department, mainly due to the number of pixels it has to push per frame. Nevertheless, the numbers are still good enough with a Nenamark 2 score of33.9fps.

Quadrant Standard gave the handset a score of 4,674 while Antutu Benchmark scores reached a high of 15,431.

Call Quality, Connectivity and Battery Life.

The Cosmos Z uses a dual-SIM functionality although only the primary SIM has 3G capabilities. Call quality is good though not as clear as we would have wanted. This is probably due to the lack of a secondary noise-canceling microphone. SMS delivery works fine and there was no noticeable delays in sending and receiving text messages.

The handset is all the connectivity options required from it — from cellular data, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and stereo FM tuner. What’s obviously missing is LTE capability and NFC connectivity we normally see in other flagship handsets. This is an inherent disadvantage when using a more affordable Mediatek processor where LTE and NFC are not yet integrated into the chip, unlike Qualcomm.

Based on our standard test bench for battery life, we were able to last up to 7.5 hours playing a full HD 1080p video at 50% screen brightness and 0% volume. That’s slightly lower than our average of about 9 hours on most other flagship handsets.

Conclusion.

Cherry Mobile has a solid contender in the Cosmos Z. Pretty solid set of hardware, good camera, impressive display — all in a very affordable price tag. We could not complain much except for the battery capacity.

With a suggested retail price of Php11,999, the Cosmos Z has the makings of a flagship smartphone at a mid-range price. It’s a proven and tested formula that will sell well.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z specs:
5-inch IPS LCD display @ 1080×1920 pixels, 441ppi
Mediatek MT6589 1.5GHz quad-core processor
PowerVR SGX 544MP
1GB RAM
16GB internal storage
micro SD up to 32GB
18.2MP BSI rear camera with LED flash
8MP front-facing camera
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
3G/HSPA+, Dual SIM
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS w/aGPS support
FM Radio tuner
Li-Ion 2,000mAh battery
Android 4.2.1 Jellybean

What we liked about it:
* Impressive display quality
* Good over-all performance
* Large front and rear camera sensor
* Very affordable price

What we did not like:
* Below-average battery performance
* Low internal storage

Cherry Mobile Cosmos S Review

The Cosmos series from Cherry Mobile marks a very huge step for the company as it is very ambitious. We put the Cosmos S under the test. With a quad-core processor, a 5-inch 720p display, an 18MP camera, a 2,500mAh battery & Android 4.2 packed in a 6.98mm thin body, will it deliver?

To see what comes in the package, here’s our unboxing video: 

Design and Construction

The Cosmos S is without a doubt a beautifully crafted device. It feels entirely premium & it even gives you an impression that it’s priced expensively, even when it’s not.

“People I handed the Cosmos S to wanted it from the moment they held it.”

People I handed the Cosmos S to wanted it from the moment they held it. Their only complaint with the build was the poorly printed 18MP label on the back, and they wanted a case to go along with it from day one.

On top you’ll find the 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB port. On the left, you have the poorly placed volume rocker & the power button. Over to the right, you’ll find a bulging mini SIM card slot that you’ll mistake for the volume very often.

Overall, this is one thin phone that packs quite a punch – a solid and quite hefty one for that matter. All that it probably took was the removal of dual SIM capabilities and a micro SD card slot.

Display

It’s true that its bigger brother, the Cosmos Z, packs the first 1080p display for the local market, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the Cosmos suck.

5-inches of 720p HD IPS goodness comes into play with the Cosmos S. It’s big, yes, but you might ignore that for the moment when you see it; it’s gorgeous beyond measure. At the lowest brightness level, it could outclass several IPS displays that I know of, and the colors just pop.

Go ahead; you won’t find any problems here, from viewing angles to responsiveness. A pixel density of 294ppi is also enough for most users, so what else are you looking for?

OS, Apps and UI

Android 4.2 Jellybean runs the show here, and glad to say it doesn’t run on top of any skin. The UI is top down vanilla Android, safe for the semi-transparent app drawer, a new wallpaper, a modified camera interface and some usual CM apps.

I wouldn’t have clapped my hands for this; I would have given CM a standing ovation – the live wallpaper is one of the best I’ve seen (including the image selections; I love how they showcase parts of the Philippines), everything felt very clean, and to be honest things would have been perfect if it weren’t for some hardware slow downs and still some CM bloatware. Nevertheless, it’s getting a lot better.

Sad to say though, CM is still inconsistent with its UI implementation. While the Cosmos S has to be applauded for this, the Cosmos X features different icons & some minor changes. It would have been a lot better if CM had finally decided on what road to take.

Multimedia & Camera

The speakers on the Cosmos S are pretty weak – to the extent that it became a deal breaker for some. On the other hand, video playback is a wonder on this 5-inch IPS display. We didn’t encounter any problems with playing any of our movies & recordings.

Now as for the camera, an 18 megapixel BSI sensor sounds so pleasing to the ears. However, just like how most people would have guessed – it’s basically an 18MP camera that takes 8MP-like images. It’s very obvious that all of the images were just stretched.

There certainly is a lot of processing going on behind the photos, as even the viewfinder is slow. In great lighting, expect sharp photos and less noise, while if you’re shooting in low-light, it’s a trade-off; you’re going to get bright shots, but extremely muddy & noisy ones for that matter. You won’t need to worry about auto-focus & everything else – they work very well.

For video recording purposes, it’s almost the same story, but you’re going to get less light. Also, expect a few dropped frames from time to time.

Performance & Battery Life

Powered by 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, the Cosmos S still stutters in day to day use, but glad to say it’s a lot better than CM’s past phones. The 1GB RAM helps a lot here, just as always, but what makes this faster than CM’s other phones is probably the lighter UI. Going through most of the basic stuff is a breeze.

• Antutu Benchmark - 16,662
• Quadrant Standard - 4,846
• Nenamark 2 - 50.6

Call Quality & Battery

We took a few calls on the Cosmos S, and everything sounded decent. It’s not entirely crisp & clear, but it wasn’t that bad and muffled either. To add, we didn’t experience inconveniences when connecting to wireless networks as well.

The Cosmos S packs the largest battery among its other space siblings; it’s non-removable at 2,500mAh. During our battery test (looping video at 50% brightness & 50% volume), we managed to squeeze out approximately 6 hours of video playback, which is very impressive for a phone this thin & of this caliber.

Conclusion

Cherry Mobile has made a lot compromises for the Cosmos S; it lacks dual-SIM capabilities, it has no micro SD card slot & it doesn’t have a removable battery. But even with that said, CM has managed to create an amazing device – one that has exceeded our expectations.

The Cosmos S packs a beautiful display, a solid build, a long-lasting battery & decent internals into one thin desirable design. CM’s hardware & software combinations are getting there, and while there are indeed drawbacks, they’re not much to rant about. After all, you’re paying an affordable price to go along with all of that.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos S specs:
5-inch IPS LCD 720 x 1280 HD display
1.5GHz quad-core processor
1GB RAM
16GB internal storage
18MP BSI camera with LED flash
8MP BSI front-facing
WiFi b/g/n
3G HSPA+
Bluetooth
GPS
2,500mAh battery
Android 4.2 Jellybean
Php10,999

What we liked about it:

• Amazing display
• Affordable price tag
• Premium feel
• Extremely thin
• Improving CM Android experience
• Good low-light camera

What we didn’t like about it:

• Odd button layout
• Weak speakers
• Sub-par video recording capabilities
• Muddy image captures

Cherry Mobile Flare HD Review

The Cherry Mobile Flare lineup has carved a name for itself in the local scene by luring in the budget-conscious crowd with its affordable price tag and pretty decent spec sheet. This time though, the company has added a 720p display in the mix which makes the Flare HD even more interesting.

In case you missed it, here’s our quick first impression of the handset just to get your feet wet for our review.

Display and Multimedia

One of the caveats of the Flare handsets was not having a decent screen. This has always been the case for inexpensive handsets with quad-core processors but has a poor WVGA display.

But Cherry Mobile is looking to change that with the Flare HD. And although their new budget smartphone is, by far, the most expensive handset among the Flares, it’s still cheaper compared to other handsets with the same feature set.

The Flare HD sports a 4.3-inch IPS display with 720p resolution, making it an ideal companion when watching movies or viewing high-resolution pictures. The brightness levels and color rendition were generally OK for the most part, and we didn’t have any issues using the phone under broad daylight.

We also didn’t encounter any problems when it comes to the screen’s responsiveness, although we did notice that the touch inputs were sometimes slightly off by a millimeter or two. We’re not sure if this is just an isolated glitch on our review unit, but it’s something to keep an eye.

OS, UI and Apps

The Flare HD runs on a slightly-tweaked version of Android 4.2 Jelly bean right off the bat. I say slightly-tweaked because the UI is almost similar to a stock Android version, but the company has made a few adjustments on the interface to give the handset some distinction.

Apart from finally dropping the hideous square icons (Thanks CM!), one of the more significant changes in the UI that we noticed is the lock screen. It’s not something that Cherry Mobile came up with, rather a preinstalled lock screen app from Celltick calledStart.

Start provides users access to almost all of the apps that are installed on their device including feeds from Facebook and Twitter. On top of that, users can customize how the UI looks and which shortcuts are displayed on the lockscreen.

Speaking of third-party apps, we’re glad to report that we didn’t encounter any issues when installing/running apps on the Flare HD. The only serious problem we had was that the internal storage was too small to accommodate all of our apps, but luckily the Flare HD provides an option to move the apps to an SD card.

Performance and Benchmarks

Luckily, the Flare HD packs a pretty decent specs to go along with its 720p screen. Handling the workload for this handset is the combo of MT6589 quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM and PowerVR SGX544MP GPU.

This is the same engine found at the core of the CM Apollo, as such we expected the same results on our usual synthetic benchmark tests.

True enough, the Flare HD fared similarly to the Apollo. Here’s the breakdown of the test results:

AnTuTu: 13,744
Quadrant Standard: 4,786
NenaMark2: 44fps
Vellamo: 1541 (HTML5) / 430 (Metal)

As far as the overall performance is concerned, the handset delivered a satisfactory performance. Apart from a few minor hiccups here and there, the Flare HD ran smoothly for the most part and, as mentioned earlier, didn’t cause any issues when running apps.

Camera

Another feature that the Flare HD shares with the Apollo is the camera. The only difference between the two is the lack of a BSI sensor on the former, but both handsets are equipped with 12MP camera with LED Flash on the back couple with 5MP on the front.

The quality of the image we took using the Flare HD is almost at par with the ones we got from the Apollo. Sadly, the resulting image also suffered from lack of detail and contrast, not to mention the colors aren’t that vibrant.

Low-light performance isn’t so great either. The camera had a hard time locking on a subject during dim conditions and the built-in flash isn’t powerful enough to aid the snapper in lighting the subjects in scenarios when there’s little to no light.

Conclusion

Despite the average battery life and so-so image quality produced by its 12MP rear camera, we have to admit that the Cherry Mobile Flare HD is indeed a keeper. The combination of reasonably cheap SRP coupled with a 720p display and decent engine configuration makes this handset a formidable candidate in the mid-range category.

The CM Flare HD is expected to hit the shelves starting this month and will retail forPhp5,499.

Cherry Mobile Flare HD specs:
4.3-inch HD IPS display, 1280×720 @342ppi
1.2GHz MTK6589 quad-core processor
PowerVR SGX544MP GPU
1GB RAM
Expandable 4GB internal memory
12MP camera w/LED flash
5MP front-facing camera
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0 with A2Dp support
GPS w/ A-GPS
Dual-SIM, Dual Standby
Android 4.2 Jellybean
1,800mAh battery

What we liked about it: 
* 720p display
* Decent specs for price
* Stock Android UI with fancy Lockscreen app
* Dual 3G/HSDPA SIM card slots

What we didn’t like about it:
* Generic design and plastic build
* Weak built-in flash and poor image quality
* So-so battery life

Battery

Despite having a smaller screen, the Flare HD and its 1,800mAh battery fared slightly worse than the Apollo in our battery test. It only managed to last 6 hours during the test which involves looping an HD movie while the phone is in Airplane Mode and the brightness and volume set to 50%.

Conclusion

Despite the average battery life and so-so image quality produced by its 12MP rear camera, we have to admit that the Cherry Mobile Flare HD is indeed a keeper. The combination of reasonably cheap SRP coupled with a 720p display and decent engine configuration makes this handset a formidable candidate in the mid-range category.

The CM Flare HD is expected to hit the shelves starting this month and will retail forPhp5,499.

Cherry Mobile Flare HD specs:
4.3-inch HD IPS display, 1280×720 @342ppi
1.2GHz MTK6589 quad-core processor
PowerVR SGX544MP GPU
1GB RAM
Expandable 4GB internal memory
12MP camera w/LED flash
5MP front-facing camera
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0 with A2Dp support
GPS w/ A-GPS
Dual-SIM, Dual Standby
Android 4.2 Jellybean
1,800mAh battery

What we liked about it: 
* 720p display
* Decent specs for price
* Stock Android UI with fancy Lockscreen app
* Dual 3G/HSDPA SIM card slots

What we didn’t like about it:
* Generic design and plastic build
* Weak built-in flash and poor image quality
* So-so battery life

Samsung Debuts Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4-Locally Priced at Php 18990

Along with the Galaxy Note PRO 12.2, Samsung Philippines also officially announced the Samsung Galaxy Tab PRO 8.4, the smallest among the Galaxy Tabs that the company unveiled during this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Despite of bring the smallest in the group; the Galaxy Tab 8.4 is no push-over when it comes to feature set. Its internals are pretty much same with its bigger siblings which consists of 2.3GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and an expandable 16GB of internal storage.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 (Wi-Fi) specs:
8.4-inch Super LCD WQXGA display @ 2560×1600 pixels
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz quad-core processor
Adreno 330 GPU
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
up to 64GB via microSD card
WiFi 802.11ac
Bluetooth 4.0
NFC
IR blaster
GPS w/ aGPS support, GLONASS
8MP rear camera, BSI sensor
1080p @ 30fps
2MP front-facing camera
1080p video @ 30fps
4,800mAh Li-Ion battery
Android 4.4 Kitkat
Dimension: 219 x 128.5 x 7.2mm
Weight: 331g

The Samsung Galaxy Tab PRO 8.4 is now available locally and will set you back Php18,990 for the base configuration as seen above.

Cherry Mobile Apollo Hands-on Review

In case you missed it, Cherry Mobile recently released a bunch of smartphones within a short time of each other, all of which are targeted toward the budget segment. Of the four phones, the Cherry Mobile Apollo is arguably the most intriguing because of its 4.5 inch HD display and quad core processor.

Unless I’m mistaken, that’s the first time HD resolution has been offered on a screen that small on a locally branded smartphone since most other 4.5 inch screens tend to come with qHD resolutions or worse.  Obviously, I’ve been itching to get my hands on one since it was first announced, and fortunately, Cherry Mobile was kind enough to send over a review unit for me to try out.

I’ve been playing around with the Cherry Mobile Apollo for a while, and although I haven’t been using as my primary phone yet, I’d like to share some of the impressions I’ve gathered from my short time with it so far.

The Screen

As mentioned, the Cherry Mobile Apollo sports a 4.5″ HD display. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about the quality of the screen since Cherry Mobile made no mention whether it was an IPS screen or not. However, after taking it out of the box and powering it on, I’m happy to say that it is indeed an IPS display.

You’re getting a screen with a resolution of 720 x 1280 and a pixel density of 326ppi. That’s the best pixel density of any screen on a local phone in the market next to Cherry Mobile’s own Cosmos Z. To put things in perspective, that’s the same pixel density as the screen on an iPhone 5S, and on a larger screen too!

The Chipset

Another thing I was concerned about was the SoC that powers the Cherry Mobile Apollo. In case you didn’t know, the CM Apollo is priced at Php6,999, so you would think they would have cut corners and slapped a Snapdragon 200 on it rather than an MediaTek MT6589, which performs better. Thankfully, the Apollo does indeed come with the more powerful MediaTek MT6589 and navigating through the phone’s UI was fast and just a bit snappy.

  

The benchmark results were pretty respectable to. You just don’t expect a phone that sells for less than Php7k to perform as well as the Cherry Mobile Apollo has in benchmark tools like Antutu, Quadrant and Nenamark 2, but thanks to the MT6589 SoC, the Apollo was able to produce some great results.

Design and Construction

If there’s one particular aspect of the phone where the Cherry Mobile Apollo cut corners, it’s in the design. The Apollo is made from thick, solid plastic and there weren’t any noticeable gaps when I pressed down hard against the body. However, the design is on the generic side and I can’t say I like the circular “home” capacitive navigation key in the center.  Maybe it’s just my nitpicking, but it doesn’t mesh well with the other two. Admittedly, there’s only so much you can do to make the design stand out on your basic touchscreen bar phone form factor, and hey, it’s only Php6,999.

Impressions

When you first take the Cherry Mobile Apollo out of its box, it doesn’t feel like anything special. It’s just your typical black brick of a touchscreen smartphone. However, when you power it on, the screen comes alive and blows you away. The onscreen image is sharp and color accuracy and vividness is spot on. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s powered by a quad core MediaTek MT6589 SoC, which is one of the more powerful budget quad core chips that can be found in the market.

Cherry Mobile Apollo Specs

• 4.5″ HD IPS display (720 x 1280 resolution, 326ppi)
• 1.2GHz quad core MediaTek MT6589 SoC
• PowerVR SGX544 GPU
• 1GB RAM
• 4GB internal storage, expandable up to 32GB via micro SD
• 12mp autofocus rear-facing camera
• 5mp fixed focus front camera
• 3.5G/HSPA+
• WiFi b/g/n
• Bluetooth
• GPS with A-GPS
• 2,000mAh battery
• Price: Php6,999

At Php6,999, the combination of killer screen and powerful quad core processor is a steal. I just can’t help but feel like I’m getting more than I paid for at that price. The price is perfect whether you want to use it as your primary smartphone, or if you’d rather bring this around on your commutes rather than a significantly more expensive branded phone like a Galaxy S4 or HTC One.