Cherry Mobile Flare S Review — Budget Wise Gaming Smartphone
Finally! Here is my Cherry Mobile Flare S Review, before you proceed reading my full review be sure to checkout my unboxing and initial impression review video, because some the technical details are already mentioned there. but for the record here is the Unboxing video 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tzLO-vb-VY
Budget Wise Gaming Smartphone
[section label=”Build Design, Display and Quality” anchor=”Build Design, Display and Quality”]
Build Design, Display and Quality
As you will notice the Cherry Mobile Flare S is not a glossy plastic build but almost 60% of its body is a rubber textured finish. and I really like that accent of design, a combination of plastic plus rubber which makes it easy to grip and very comfortable holding even just in one hand, since the size is just 4-inch you can barely grip it easily and its very lightweight.
The quality of the Cherry Mobile Flare S in terms of build is really not as cheap as you may expect for its price I find it comparable with other mid-range smartphone in terms of build. but one thing that I noticed on the display which first batch of user of the Flare S is whining about, is the Glass is a bit popped-out, to make it more visualize on your end the photo below shows it.
Well but for me this is not a big deal 😉 Other than that the Build and Design is really for teenage users 🙂 because of its small, lightweight and not that too prone for snatchers LOL! the IPS Display pretty good in all angles but you will still see some saddle change of brightness when you view it on the sides.
Here is a closer look at the Cherry Mobile Flare S
Left side is the volume rocker, on the top is the Micro USB port and the 3.5mm jack for your earphones, and on the right side is the power button. and last is the front which has the VGA camera, light sensor and 3 capacitive buttons (Menu, Home and Back button) you will also notice that it has a built-in screen protector but I find it a bit scratch prone so I recommend buying a better one if you’re quite conscious of the scratches on the screen. overall even though the screen is just 480×800 (WVGA800) with a 240ppi it’s still decent for me.
[section label=”Storage and Memory” anchor=”Storage and Memory”]
Storage and Memory
The Cherry Mobile Flare S has a pretty good specs since this has a 1GB of RAM + 4GB of ROM (1GB of Internal Storage plus the 1.63 Phone Storage and other are partitioned to the System files and Dalvik Cache) you can surely store huge amount of video and photo but the only downside is it cannot read OBB files from your app stored in your SD Card so you will need to Root your phone and swap your storage in order for you to use your SD Card in case you want to have a huge amount of storage for games. like what I did on my Flare S.
although there are still bloatware installed in the Flare S but don’t worry they don’t run in the background so it will not be a battery drainer. since the storage is limited when not rooted you can’t also transfer the files on your SD Card it will just be on the Internal Storage and Phone Storage.
[section label=”Performance and Gaming” anchor=”Performance and Gaming”]
Performance and Gaming
1GB is enough for this phone to multitask and run high graphics intensive games since this is just a WVGA in terms of display the gaming performance is pretty superb good framerate because it is not running on an HD resolution.
I have played casual games to high graphics intensive games and boy! this just didn’t break a sweat of all that games from GTA: San Andreas, RealBoxing, Modern Combat 4, N.O.V.A. 3, Riptide GP2 and many more. but take note some games needs to be manually pushed on your data storage rather than the Direct to Play Store Download (well not pirated I just have a backup of my app from other units to make it easier for me to transfer games from other devices).
Well Flare S is almost for me the best choice for gaming in terms of budget wise but unfortunately because of the bug we encountered which I will be mentioning in the Features and bug section of this post I find a bit hard to play on first person shooter and even on games that you need to have the 2point touch work together well if you watched my video you will see the problem I am pertaining 😉
But overall in terms of performance for gaming and multitask is a pertty good because of the MT6582 Chipset and a combination of the Mali 400mp GPU it surely thus the safest specs for hardcore gamer if only if it does not have the bug LOL!
[section label=”Features and Bugs” anchor=”Features and Bugs”]
Features and Bugs
Now we go to the Negative feedbacks and things that needs to address with this Smartphone 😉 first and foremost the major problem is the Bug Touch issue, Flare 1.0 did have this problem also but with the help of the update it did quite help, but for the Flare S although we did had an Update which you will see below but its quit weird because I just don’t update on my end and it always fail, although base on feedback it did update but it didn’t fix the issue it just added another bloatware on the phone (scratching my head!).
Well like what I said on the video this can be fixed thru software update because it is just a software bug but we don’t know on when cherry mobile will push that update 😉
But wait there’s more (Home TV shopping expression! LOL!) not only it has a bug touch it also has this issue on the camera where when you change some settings of the camera it will just invert the screen of the camera app which is weird well to fix it, at first I restore to factory settings and boom! all working fine again. but the easiest way to fix it is by just clicking the RESTORE TO DEFAULT on the camera settings and you will see it will just go back to the default settings plus the flipped camera will be fixed 🙂 teehee!
Pretty much the UI of Flare S is almost a Stock Vanila Android with a Jellybean 4.2.2, it just have some nifty added feature on the camera but I will mention that on the camera section 🙂 well it just have an audio enhancer on the audio settings which helps the audio quality other than hat nothing too fancy. but the good thing this is a Quadband GSM but not a dual 3G standby phone you will need to switch your other sim card to the SIM Slot 1 because that is the only Slot that can have 3G Connectivity, but surprisingly it has a stable connection. and also it uses Regular SIM Cards on both slots.
When I used it on a 3G connectivity you can really have this on the go even on a Free Facebook for both G**** and S**** (Not a sponsor LOL! kidding!) it still load the images on Facebook even just on a 3G connectivity which is I think for some they will benefit on that 🙂
[section label=”Camera , Video, Sound and Playback” anchor=”Camera , Video, Sound and Playback”]
Camera , Video, Sound and Playback
Well not to disappoint you on my first sentence well don’t expect too much on the camera event though it has 8mp it seems for me its lower than that 😛 well let me show you first some of the sample shots I have taken just for your to blow your mind haha!
Tada! no you saw the result well let me just explain why, first and foremost the camera is a fixed focus so don’t expect you can have good macro shots and selfie’s on this phone it will only be good in capturing establishments and some landscape since it will make your shot balanced in terms of focus like what you see on my android shot. but for some they will not like that right! well even though it has good camera specs (3.5MM , 2.8 f-stop).
I am still not convinced that it has a 8mp camera :P, anyways moving to the front camera as you will see I have a shot inside a room and outside well what did you notice? it seems it has the same ambiance of a CCTV camera that you expect there will be just a ghost that will pop-up on your screen, kidding aside! well in short the VGA camera is below average comparing to other cherry mobile smartphones that we have reviewed.
oh! wait since the camera is for me a below what I expected well just so you might also want to checkout the video well since it will just disappoint you if I will show it to you, let me just help you imagine the quality of the video well. if you’re into stop motion animation well boy! this phone is the perfect phone for you to used with that, why?
Because even though it can capture upto 1080p and can playback a full 1080p video it’s just a big disappointment for the video part, it only have 7fps all throughout its settings from Low,Mid,High and Fine. and that is just really not as what you want when you capture a video on a phone 🙁
[alert alert_type=”info” ]UPDATE: Base from some users of the Cherry Mobile Flare S the Nightmode settings has a higher Framerate which make it 15FPS and also if you have successfully updated from v5 to v9 it will have same result but still bug touch is an issue — thanks to Glenn Paul Sevilla Torres for the tip and photo 🙂
[/alert]
Well still thanks to the Mali 400GPU and it can handle full HD on a WVGA screen but for the audio it is not a CTIA compliant phone so you need to buy and audio jack converter just for you to enjoy the sound quality of the phone, also the speaker sound is just average but if you want to adjust it you can just tweak it on the engineering mode just so you can have more steps in the volume.
Even when having a conversation using a headset it’s quite low so you really need to tweak it just for you to have a decent sound quality.
[section label=”Battery.. Battery.. Battery” anchor=”battery”]
Battery.. Battery.. Battery
Moving to the last stage of the review, since this is only a 1,400mAh I HIGHLY DO RECOMMEND! yes it’s all caps, that you bundle this with a powerbank because if you’re a power user like this is a gaming phone well it will just last around 3–4 hours even though I have optimized it to a low brightness airplane mode still it didn’t get the 6hours of battery life but for a standby time it did raise to 10–12hrs but it just didn’t last a day 🙁
well for me since I always bring my powerbanks It’s really not a big deal for me but for some users who doesn’t use powerbanks you might want to think twice 🙂
but the good thing and what I like about this phone even though we used it for long hours of gaming I didn’t feel any large amount of heat on the back comparing to the Egg Cooking Flare 2x 🙂
[section label=”Verdict!” anchor=”Verdict!”]
Verdict!
If you’re into gaming and just don’t care about the camera and have a tight budget well this is the right phone for you, decent performance , it can handle high graphic intensive games plus it’s really portable with its size, but hopefully Cherry Mobile will have a patch update on the bug issues of the phone because to be honest if this phone does not have that issues this is the perfect gaming experience for a budget friendly smartphone 🙂
So overall Design and build is a good combination with its performance 🙂
CHERRY MOBILE FLARE S (Q360) SPECS:
- 4.2 Jellybean
- 1.3 GHz Quad Core Processor (MT6582)
- GPU Mali-400 MP
- 4.0″ IPS Capacitive Screen (480 x 800–240ppi — WVGA800)
- 4GB ROM
- 1GB RAM
- Wifi
- Bluetooth 3.0
- Quad Band 850/900/1800/1900
- 8mp Back Camera (Fixed Focus) (video upto 1080p 7fps only all sizes, LOW,MID,HIGH,FINE)
- VGA Front Camera
- 1,400 mAh
- 2 Point Multi Touch
- Sensors (Accelerometer, Proximity, Sound and Light)
- Note: it comes with a free jellycase
What do you think about the Flare S? do you have this phone or are you planning to buy this? well leave your comments down below on what do you think about the Flare S is it a thumbs up! or a thumbs down? well catch you later guys!
PRICE:4,499
You can also check out my review of the Cherry Mobile Flare HD but for those who are asking if which to choose of the two I really can’t compare the two because they have different specs and in general HD is better than a WVGA 😉 so both phones have their advantages and disadvantages so be sure to checkout my review of that 🙂
