Unbox/Review: Cherry Mobile Stellar

A couple of months ago the Cherry Mobile Stellar debuted in the market, together with other spectacular Cherry Mobile products. Now, the kind folks at Cherry Mobile decided to loan us a review unit to try and make sense why they’re one of the Philippines’ top local brands.

The Cherry Mobile Stellar is a dual-SIM, mid-tier smartphone running on Android 2.3 with a Qualcomm 7227T 800MHz CPU. It’s perfect for those looking for an performer phone on the Android that is not too shabby and not too expensive.

Read our unboxing and review of the Cherry Mobile Stellar and see if you’ll want this phone on your pocket.

Design

The Cherry Mobile Stellar looks like your typical Android phone. On its face, the Stellar has your standard Android buttons coupled by a flashing LED and light sensors near the earpiece. The capacitive touchscreen panel is as wide as an iPhone’s and is responsive enough for everyday use.

The back panel is made of smooth plastic and carries the 5MP camera with flash designed with a chrome lining. Here’s also where the Stellar‘s speaker grill  is located. The grill would’ve looked nicer if the alternating dotted pattern was let go and was replaced by a uniform grill. The back panel is easily snapped and contains dual-SIM slots at the top area near the removable battery dock.

The earphone jack and the lock/power button is found at the top of the Stellar. The right panel meanwhile houses the microSD card slot, the shutter button, and the volume buttons. The physical buttons are soft to the press and are nicely located, save for the lock/power button which is very hard to press.

The Cherry Mobile Stellar is very light at 123.3g, already with a battery. Mind you, Motorola’s Droid RAZR weighs at 127g and even Nokia’s latest entry the Lumia 710 weighs at 125.5. With all its lightness, the Cherry Mobile Stellar may seem cheap at first glance.

Display

The Cherry Mobile Stellar sports a 3.5″ HVGA capacitive touch panel (320×480 resolution) with a decent viewing angle. The screen is nothing stellar (pun intended), just what you would expect from a mid-tier Android smartphone (not as ugly as the LG Optimus L3′s display, then again there’s no challenge on that).

The main screen on boot would greet you with a Cherry Mobile tone and logo followed by a Stellar boot screen. If you’re not a fan of company boots with quirky start-up tunes, as compared to clean quiet boots, this phone will irk you every time you turn it on. After the boot, a default Cherry Mobile wallpaper will serve as your home screen BG but is replaceable afterwards.

Most Android users will feel right at home with the user interface of the Stellar. Like most Android phones, you have a set of the most useful applications waiting for you on the home screen. Swiping it from right to left would reveal other apps and widgets such as the weather, calendar, appointments and the like.

If you’re constantly connected to the web, updates from applications such as Twitter would continually be fetched automatically and would be shown in a one-line format in the phone status area. A very nice addition especially if you’re multitasking.

One feature of the 2012 Cherry Mobile Stellar is its built-in SPB3 Shell, a feature which alters the home screen drastically and makes it look like a spinning panel of 3D app cards. At stand-by, each of these cards plays its own unique animation, the one pictured below playing a rotating Earth with green locator lines.

You can add or subtract cards to your heart’s desire. You can even alternate with the normal Android UI while the shell is active. The sad thing is, as it’s only an add-on, the SPB3 Shell fails to automatically load at boot and you have to activate it manually. Then again it’s only a minor annoyance.

Performance

The Cherry Mobile Stellar is great for everyday use, especially if you like to check your email, your Twitter and Facebook stream, and whatever takes place online. The only snag with everyday usage the Stellar hits is in its landscape keyboard feature. There’s only a certain area which the space bar would activate if it’s on landscape. You’ll be lucky if you’ll get a space on one try; the Stellar usually reads my space presses as Cs or Vs. There’s also the occasional accidental period press.

Powered by a 512MB RAM and a Qualcomm 7227T 800MHz processor(also from the makers of the Snapdragon processor), the Cherry Mobile Stellar sails past a barrage of lags with flying colors, as witnessed here while running the all new Angry Birds Space.

Surprisingly, the in-game sounds sometimes come late after the animation and moments later the phone itself would play catch-up and run normally. There’s also this thing with the Cherry Mobile Stellar not loading applications properly, which would lead it to bring to you a Force Close dialog box. Pressing the OK button fixes the problem. You can try and run the application after a force close. Another frequent Force Close recipient is the Google Maps app. For some reason it just crashes on its own.

Other applications such as Fruit Ninja run smoothly on the Stellar. Remember that 2.3 Gingerbread is supposedly optimized for gaming, so there’s that. Aside from that, you’ll have no problem running social networking apps. Oddly though, I can’t find the Temple Run app at the Google Play store while using the Stellar.

Video and Audio

Audio admittedly isn’t one of the strong suits of the Stellar. Music coming out of its loudspeaker, as one way of putting it, sounds “canny”. The whole back panel vibrates as you are playing songs, which of course might give you the palms.

Videos on the other hand, play wonderfully and smoothly, as long as they’re HD. Non-HD vids on the other hand makes the Stellar‘s screen look dated.

Kara playing on YouTube at the Stellar screen

Another issue I had with the Stellar is its lock screen-to-online video screen transition while buffering. If you have a video on buffering and leave the Stellar for a while, the moment you try to play it again you would be greeted by another Force Close dialog box. You have to try several times and press a couple of “Wait” buttons for the video to run again. So if you like watching videos online, just make sure you have a dedicated internet line that can handle such requests quickly.

With an expandable microSD up to 32GB, you’re sure to be able to load up with all the apps, videos, and audio files you can gather.

Camera

Didn’t have a chance to test out the camera as I don’t have a spare microSD. Yes, the camera won’t run, and the Stellar won’t even let you load Dropbox photos if you don’t have a microSD card installed. But with the Cherry Mobile Stellar‘s 5MP camera paired with a LED flash, you’ll be sure to capture enjoyable images even in the dark.

Battery

The Cherry Mobile Stellar would last up to, give or take, 84 hours on stand-by on my tests. This drastically changes if you have background apps continuously running even if you’re not connected to the internet, in this case your battery would go from a hundred to zero in 9 to 10 hours without usage, even faster if you leave your phone connected. The phone would last throughout the day with average use of apps, surfing, videos, etc.

Another interesting feature of the Cherry Mobile Stellar is its battery indicator. Once the battery reaches a low enough level, the battery indicator would blink red. Plugging it to the wall would give the indicator a steady red which means it’s charging; the indicator would turn green when the battery’s full.

Battery is replaceable.

Box

The Cherry Mobile Stellar box contains the phone unit itself, a charger and a USB cable, stock earphones, an instructions manual, and a warranty card. No Cherry Mobile logo sticker here.

Verdict

For P6,999.00 (with a free bluetooth headset), the Cherry Mobile Stellar is really shines against other smartphones in its price range. You can get yourself a Samsung Galaxy Y or an LG Optimus L3, but with a grand more you’ll be able to own the Stellar and ultimately do yourself a favor by avoiding small screens, over-saturated colors, below average pictures, a cramped screen, and an underpowered device.

So there you go. Share this Cherry Mobile Stellar review on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, especially if you have friends looking for mid-tier phones.

The Cherry Mobile Stellar was formerly priced at P9,999.00, now 30% off at P6,999.00.

‘Till my next installment.

Searches related to unbox/review: cherry mobile stellar:
cherry mobile stellar review
cherry mobile stellar specs
cherry mobile stellar price 2012
cherry mobile stellar features
cherry mobile stellar android games free download

Unbox/Review: Cherry Mobile Stellar

Cherry Mobile Titan and Titan TV to Receive Jelly Bean Update on 4/15

The folks at Cherry Mobile just gave everyone what they were asking for from the getgo: A Cherry Mobile Titan Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update. But—as the late Billy Mays would say—wait, there’s more! The BIG TIME phone, the Cherry Mobile Titan TV, would also get the Jelly Bean treatment. That’s right, two Jelly Bean updates for two titanic phones!

Both devices’ updates would start rolling out on April 15, 2013, that’s just a few days from now. We’re really not sure if it’s going to be the service center way of update, or OTA. Based from experience though, we should expect the former.

It’s safe to say that all Cherry Mobile Titan and Titan TV in the coming weeks would already be on Jelly Bean, unless they’re very old stocks (which I doubt).

The Titan is still a powerful smartphone, so if you’re interested in having one we have a Cherry Mobile Titan review right here.

Cherry Mobile Titan and Titan TV to Receive Jelly Bean Update on 4/15

Cherry Mobile W3 Review

Mark Zuckerberg is always being pestered by the tech industry about the elusive Facebook phone. When is it going to be produced? What’ll be its specs? Will it feature a whole new Facebook experience? Well, they should quit that incessant asking and look at the Cherry Mobile W3, our very own Facebook phone.

The kind folks sent us a Cherry Mobile W3 to review. It’s bright, it’s white, and it’s alright. They don’t call it the Like Phone for nothing. Read with me through this review and decide if this affordable phone is for you.

Design

The Cherry Mobile W3 looks like your typical entry level Android phone, although it’s not an Android. It reminds you of HTC’s distant past (in fact, it also reminds you of the Cherry Mobile T20). A 3.5-inch display, an Android-ish UI, haptic-capable soft-touch buttons, and a dedicated Facebook button are in its face.

The back side meanwhile carries the 3MP camera (lined by a metal strip. Sadly, the W3 has no flash), the 2-liner speaker grill, and the company logo. Other than that, it’s totally a bare back, no pattern whatsoever; Honestly, the back reminds me of an Xperia phone: Just bare and smooth with only the camera, the company logo, and the speaker grill on. Simple elegance.

There’s a nail slot at the bottom for snapping up open the battery and SIM compartment.

 The sides are lined with a chrome bezel. To the right is where a nondescript volume rocker is located. The top has the sleep/wake button, and the bottom has a micro 5-pin USB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The unit’s heavy enough to not feel very cheap, but the body being surrounded with cheap plastic and the screen’s lack of gloss, it just negates the former. To its credit, the W3 is slim and slippery enough to just slide down in your pocket.

The Cherry Mobile W3 is available in black and pearl white.

Display

The Cherry Mobile W3 has a 3.5″ full touch capacitive LCD display, the size being the same with most of the entry-level smartphones today. I personally don’t know the resolution, but I’m betting it’s at 320×480.

The screen is bright but seems to have a low contrast, leading to a minor wash of colors. To its credit though, the W3′s screen has decent viewing angles. Passable display overall.

Touch sensitivity on this phone is great. Swiping on the home screen and creating messages are smooth. Swipe-down menus from Android has also been emulated, which is a very welcome addition. I personally loved it. Another thing that I loved so much is the phone’s hold-to-unlock feature at the lock screen. It’s the first time I saw such a workaround from Apple’s slide-to-unlock, and it’s awesome. It reminds me of a game loading screen. But alas, lag is very noticeable when at the menu UI (it’s not the display’s fault, but the innards). An entry level-phone can only do so much.

The home UI is based from the iOS (it even has a dock). And like the iOS, if tap and hold an app for a few seconds, it’ll jiggle. You’ll now be able to freely switch it around.

Lastly, there is no landscape orientation on the W3 while texting, or for any other matter. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t find the option to turn it on, if there’s any.

Performance

With some of important specifications undisclosed, we can’t help but wonder what’s powering this phone. It’s no dual-core I give you that, but its ease of use combined with its smooth flow (at least most of the time) makes its faults seem to go away.

The unit is WiFi capable (thank God for saving this one from WAP). So as long as you have WiFi around the area you’re in, you’re good. Applications that take advantage of the WiFi capability are already programmed in, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Opera. And although they’re a far cry from what these apps look like in an Android, I must say the former decently does the job.

Surfing with the built-in Opera app is quite challenging. On one hand, you have no landscape (which I absolutely can’t stand. Then again, it’s just a matter of preference). On the other, websites render slowly and once you scroll down the already rendered parts start rendering again. Pinch-to-zoom and double tap-to-zoom features, although present, are difficult to deal with. But as I’ve mentioned, it does the job.

Gaming with the Cherry Mobile W3 is cool, insofar as the built-in games are concerned. I observed no lag and it was all smooth sailing. Some apps do have a noticeable loading time. But you’re not after that, you’re after this phone’s dual-SIM dual-standby capability.

Audio and Video

Playing music using the W3 will remind you of other entry-level Androids. It’s loud, but at its peak it may sound canny. It’s great for casually playing music to just listen to something. If unfortunately you don’t have an SD card installed or simply don’t have music, don’t worry. There’s an FM radio to waste your time with.

The Cherry Mobile W3 is also perfect for audio playback of recorded lectures from professors or discussions from meetings (there’s a built-in recorder application).

Meanwhile on the video side, yes, you can watch YouTube videos, or any other video website as long as it’s mobile supported. Unfortunately, even with HD, video pixelization is prevalent. Imagine a field-transferred movie on a wide LCD TV, that’s how pixelated some videos are. To that effect, watching videos on the W3 is great as long as you’re not touchy about the pixels.

*Audio and video quality also depend on the format being played

Camera

Surprisingly for the Cherry Mobile W3, its 3MP camera takes acceptable photos as against to some more expensive entry-level Androids that carry 5MP cameras with them. Like a good friend of mine always says, it’s not always about the megapixels. It’s also about the wellness of the make. And to think that the W3 has no flash. Untouched sample photos of the W3 below.

(Click images to enlarge)

The camera capabilities go out the window once indoor lighting is used as a light source. Images are also admittedly not meant for high definition shots. Photos taken with the W3 are perfect for social media uploads and such (that’s why there’s a dedicated Facebook button right there).

Battery Life

The Cherry Mobile W3 has 1200 mAh for a battery. But due to the phone’s non-smartphone nature, it takes a bit more time to drain this thing down. Sadly, I think the battery meter is bugged because even after 5 days of standby, it still reflects a fully-charged status.

Casual texting and surfing brings the battery life to about 8 hours at moderate display brightness. And yes, playing YouTube will drain the battery like hell.

Verdict

If you’re out of budget, not selective about what kind of phone you’ll be using, and a power texter, the Cherry Mobile W3 is perfect for you. Not only would it meet your requirements, it’s also well-made and light in the pocket.

What’s more is, you’ll get to Twitter and Facebook thanks the this phone’s WiFi capability. It may not be revolutionary, but a 3.5-incher that’s dedicated to social networking, now that’s respectable. Heck, it even has elements of the Android and iOS operating systems integrated in itself.

The Cherry Mobile W3 sells for P3,699.00 and is available at all Cherry Mobile concept stores and kiosks nationwide.

‘Till my next installment.

Searches related to Cherry Mobile W3 Review: cherry mobile w3 specs, cherry mobile w3 price, where to buy cherry mobile w3, cherry mobile w3 like phone, cherry mobile w3 unboxing, cherry mobile w3 social on the go

Cherry Mobile W3 Review

Cherry Mobile W500 Titan Review

When we think of 5-inch Androids, we quickly think of the Samsung Galaxy Note series. Other sub-brands don’t even ring a bell. That is, until recently.

A few weeks ago Cherry Mobile, arguably the strongest player in the local mobile phone industry, released together with the Cherry Mobile Flare, the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan. The Titan is a 5-inch Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich device powered by a 1GHz dual-core processor. And for the ample time we spent with it, we found it great.

Interested on having this affordable device? Read on for our Cherry Mobile W500 Titan review.

Design

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is one rectangular smartphone. To the untrained eye, it looks like the first Galaxy Note, or even something from LG (yes, the design is well enough to pull this off).

The biggest feature of the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is its titanic 5-inch display—puns intended. The screen comes protected with a plastic film right out of the box by the way because it’s all glass. The front also carries the secondary VGA camera, three standard haptic buttons (sans the search button), and the contemporary earpiece grill.

The backside of the Titan is ideally clean, with just three stamps overall. The rear plate is of matte material, and is really thin. One wrong drop and it could spell disaster. Fortunately, the device comes with two plates: one that’s normal, and one that comes with a leather flap. And yes, the camera adds even more to the already premium look of the device.

The device’s speaker grill is located beside the camera, unusual positioning but effective. More on sounds later.

The sides of the Titan is tapered with a smoke-black bezel all around. You’ll find nothing here but the sleep/wake button, the volume rocker, and the 3.5mm headphone jack. Now that’s clean.

The device’s back plate has a fingernail slot at the lower left area, but ample care should be paid since as I’ve mentioned it is thin and can break.

With regards to handling, it’s pretty comfortable in my hands, unless you have really small hands though. It would still fit in your jeans pocket too, albeit it has the tendency to swing loose because of its fairly heavy weight relative to contemporary devices.

Samsung Galaxy Note 2 vs Cherry Mobile W500 Titan

Display

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan sports a 5-inch WVGA 2-point capacitive touch screen. But as huge as its screen is, it only has 800×480 for its resolution. It’s not as high-res as you would like it to be, but for its price what you see is what you get.

There’s also this issue with the screen being washed out and of display ghosting. Ghosting is heavily observable at the device’s stock Android 4.0 UI, but it stops at that. Games and apps show no signs however.

The display’s maximum brightness is comparable to a contemporary unit’s medium brightness.

Performance

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Mediatek Cortex-A9 processor coupled by 471MB RAM. These innards really sound powerful so we took them to the usual benchmarking tests.

The Quadrant Standard benchmark gives the Titan a 2719, a shining third place for the 5-inch behemoth.

AnTuTu’s more updated benchmarking app places the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan well below a list of devices at 5445, just under the LG Optimus 2X.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s Vellamo test gives the device a 1075 and a 346 for both the HTML5 and Metal tests. To give you an idea, the HTC One X ranks 1625 and 613 respectively, a few hundred points above the Titan. And for its score, it’s pretty decent. It evens out with other local brands bearing the same specs.

In real world usage, these tests prove just how fast the Cherry Mobile Titan is. Sure it may not be at par with a Samsung Galaxy S III, but if you’re a new user coming from a feature phone or even an iPhone, you’ll really enjoy this.

One point of interest for the Titan is its noticeable lag when waking up after a long sleep then proceeding to the home menu. The device would slow down but would be speedy again after it loads (yes this happens even on a clean load, without too much background apps running). It’s probably more software than hardware, then again the device runs on stock ICS. Summing that up, this only happens when the device is transitioning from sleep to wake to home menu.

Surfing the web with the Titan—with its native browser renders and washed out display (and the pinching ghosting)—is okay at best.If you find your experience poor, better get a browser at Google Play. We heard the UC Browser was good.

Audio and Video

You’d think that with the Titan‘s poor resolution everything would be ruined. That could be true to some extent, but viewing HD videos with the device gives—and this I emphasize—a somewhat fair experience.

There’s some pixelation present in HD videos, so if you’re touchy about clarity this device isn’t for you. Imagine watching from both an LCD and LED TV at the same time, the LCD is the experience from the Titan.

Playing sounds on the other hand is quite nice. As I’ve mentioned above, it’s not a Samsung Galaxy S III, but the quality is passable. That plus the built-in FM app and you can use this as a radio of sorts.

Gaming

Gaming is a joy with the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan. With its huge display you get to see everything that’s happening on-screen. Unfortunately the display only supports 2-point touch, so no five-finger fruit slashing on Fruit Ninja for you.

I ran a handful of games on the device as well and I should say it went smooth. Lag is little to non-existent, so it really doesn’t affect game performance.

The device warms up after some period of playing.

Camera

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan sports a 5-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and flash. A couple of months ago 5MPs were all the rage, but its now the minimum standard.

The photo above is the Titan‘s good-looking camera, situated near the speaker and the dual-SIM slots/microSD slot. And here’s some sample photos taken using that snapper.

The photos produced by the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan looks good at small to medium scales, but on closer inspection the noise of the images show. It also doesn’t portray colors vividly as you would in other more expensive phones. Fortunately the device comes with a built-in ICS photo editor. You can just easily autofix lighting and add some warmth, and you’re good to go.

The Titan’s flash is quite strong it easily turns into a flashlight, provided you use a flashlight app that really uses the flash’s potential.

Battery Life

At a 2350mAh rating, the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan‘s battery is one of the best out there in the local market. Similar devices that boast the same specs coupled with an IPS display have lower battery capacities. That is to say that the Titan definitely owns this category.

The Titan charges up pretty quickly, relative to other local brands that go on for four hours or more.

With regards to usage, the Titan has a pretty awesome battery life. At max brightness, alternating WiFi and data connection, some moderate gaming, plus surfing and messaging (on dual-SIM), I was able to get around more or less 14 hours with it.

Other Features

Dual-SIM dual standby – The dual-SIM dual standby feature doesn’t seem to affect the battery life, at least for me;
3G Connectivity – The 3G antenna of the Titan is great. It loads data properly at the approximate data usage without loading too much then failing. I unfortunately experienced this with another local brand. Data speeds also depend on network quality;

Verdict

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is a great substitute for those aspiring to have an updated Android with a huge display. Sure its display quality might be well below expectations, but you have to be kidding if you nag at that despite the awesome PHP 6,499.00 tag price.

It’s fast, it’s reliable, it’s got everything you need covered. The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is a solid device that’ll give you an awesome Android experience.

The Cherry Mobile W500 Titan is now available at all Cherry Mobile kiosks and concept stores nationwide at PHP 6,499.00. Get one now for Christmas.

Cherry Mobile W500 Titan Review

Arc Mobile Introduces New Line of Android Devices, Promises Affordability

A relatively new player in the local mobile industry, Arc Mobile recently introduced their brand’s Android line—a set consisting of entry to mid-range smartphones and tablets that are attractively priced. Consisting their lineup are the Prime 350, the Nitro 400D, the Nitro 500D, the Nitro 450QD, the Tab 700M, the Tab 720M 3G, and the Tab 701D.

Of their Nitro series, the Nitro 500D and the Nitro 450QD stand out. Measuring 5-inches  (800×480 resolution) diagonally, the Arc Mobile Nitro 500D is the company’s resident phablet. It operates on a 1GHz dual-core A9 processor, a PowerVR SGX531 GPU, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, a 2000mAh Li-ion battery, and runs 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. It also has a 5-megapixel BSI rear camera.

The Arc Mobile Nitro 450QD meanwhile is something that resembles most local quad-core devices today, sans the 1GB RAM. Actual photos and specifications below:

Arc Mobile 450QD Specifications:

OS: Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean
Processor: 1.2GHz quad-core A7 (Mediatek?) processor, PowerVR SGX544MP GPU
Memory: 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, microSD expandable up to 32GB
Display: 4.5-inch qHD capacitive touch display, 960×540 resolution
Camera: 5-megapixel rear camera with flash and digital zoom, 0.3 VGA front camera
Battery: 1800 mAh Li-ion battery
Features: Dual-SIM dual-standby, 3G connectivity

The Arc Mobile Nitro 450QD has no official pricing yet, but is apparently scheduled to come out this June.

Among the company’s tablets, the Arc Mobile Tab 701D would be the most suited for gaming and general use. It sports a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, a Mali 400 GPU, 1GB RAM, 8GB of internal storage, and a 3200 mAh Li-ion battery.

Like the Nitro 450QD, the Tab 701D also has no official pricing released but will also be available soon.

Hopefully we’ll hear more from Arc Mobile and probably give us a hands-on on their units if and when they come through.

Arc Mobile Introduces New Line of Android Devices, Promises Affordability