Database Info

Dare to be Different – FSL Fast Review

Dare to be Different – FSL Fast Review​
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Introduction​
After entering the tablet market with Windows 7 proves to be little success, FSL, the Shenzhen based Chinese tech company starts to covet after the fast-growing market for Android tablets. It has recently launched its first Gtab called “Fast”, which uses a 9.7 inch IPS display manufactured by LG, an RK3066 dual core 1.6GHZ processor, and 1GB of DDR3 ram.
The market has seen dozens of tablets with 9.7 inch IPS displays since the end of last year, almost all falling into the category of iPad copycats. Well, bigger plans have been made for “Fast”, as FSL engaged a Korean team of expert designers to tailor the contour of the Fast, making sure that it’ll be unique and fashionable.
Key Features
◇9.7” 16M-color IPS display of XGA resolution (1024X768 pixels)
◇Weighs 580g, 263.9mm*173.9mm*9.8mm in size.
◇RK3066 chipset: Dual-core 1.6GHZ ARM Cortex-A9 processor; 1GB of DDR3 RAM; Mali-400MP4 GPU
◇Stock Android 4.1 JellyBean
◇16GB of built-in-memory
◇2.0MP front facing camera; 2.0MP rear-facing camera
◇Stereo speakers
◇HDMI TV-out
◇USB host
◇Bluetooth 2.0
◇Micro SD card slot
◇Standard 3.5mm audio jack
◇Adobe Flash 11 support
◇1080p videos of all formats
◇8000mAh Li-Po rechargeable battery

1. Retail Package​
The FSL Fast comes in a gigantic paperboard box that’s much thicker and wider than the tablet itself. It holds the charger, a USB cable, a 3.5mm headphone and an OTG cable, along with the user manual as well as the warranty certificate.
The tablet is packed in a smaller and much slimmer sub-box in the package.
The only impression this gives you is that the whole package is unreasonably humongous for such few fittings.
2. Design and Build Quality​
As is mentioned above, “Fast” features a 9.7 inch XGA IPS display manufactured by LG. Yet, there’s nothing special about the resolution, especially as some 9.7 inch tablets have already pushed the pixel density to above 260ppi. If you did the math already, you’d know that “Fast” is far behind at only 132ppi.
However, this LG IPS display, which has already had great success in supporting the dominant iPad2, does have impressive viewing angles, great color saturation, deep black, infinite contrast, nice outdoor visibility, much better than most ordinary IPS display seen on other Chinese tablets and smartphones.
And yet, despite all the superlatives it deserves, the screen won’t be the Fast’s key selling point. The role is most definitely reserved to its unique design by a professional Korean team. The black border surrounding the white bezel can easily help u spot the Fast among a bunch of 9.7 inchers.
The Fast, just like the rest of the Android gang, has very few hardware controls. With all the navigation done on the screen itself, there’s no need for hardware buttons on the front panel. All you get there is the 2m pixel video-call camera.
Unlike the iPad, the Fast is designed with lateral use in mind, you can identify that with where the video-call camera is located. Of course four-way screen rotation lets you use the tablet however you like, but the lateral seems to be the default orientation.
The back of tablet is also quite cool. The steel-colored aluminum, with a porcelain plastic trim for where your fingers rest when you hold it of its back cover gives the Fast all the exclusivity it needs. The stereo speakers and a 2 mega-pixel rear-facing camera are on the back, exactly where they are needed. The two speakers are quite far apart, creating stereo effects while playing music and videos, the volume is quite ideal, too.
Also notable is the Fast’s impressive complement of ports and slots. Along the right edge (when holding the tablet in lateral orientation), you have a Micro-HDMI port, a charging connector, a micro USB data port, a 3.5mm audio jack, a USB host connector, and a TF card slot that supports card up to 32GB, which could easily accommodate most people. The reason why the Fast needs to separate USB host and USB data port into two connectors remains mysterious.
As is mentioned above, Android tablet doesn’t need many hardware controls. Having said that, along with the power/standby key & volume rocker which all tablets have, the Fast is also equipped with a physical back button, this is a very considerate addition as the status bar can be faded to dots while the display is showing pictures or videos.

3. Software​
After lots of tablet makers’ efforts in improving the experience with customized UI turned out to be setbacks, many people would rather have a stock Android tablet than any skin, full stop. And FSL listens to many people. No customization has been done to the original Jelly Bean user interface, no icons changed, no color scheme tweaked….In a word, nothing has been changed.
The taskbar at the bottom of the screen is designed from ground up for tablet use, the navigation keys are in the left corner: Back, home and Task Switcher. The notification area is on the right corner, tapping it brings up the notifications box, which includes quick controls for turning on/off Wi-Fi, Flight mode, and screen rotation lock, among other features, plus you can access the brightness setting on the fly and tap into the full settings menu.
The search shortcut (voice and text) are in the top left corner of the home-screen, while the app drawer stay in the top right. There’re no dots or other shapes on the screen indicating the number of available homescreen panes and the current selection.
There are a few additions, though, including a customized FSL free market app which offers thousands of free applications for FSL users, a PDF reader which allows you to view PDF documents with the page-flipping effects, a Gaming center where you can download games compatible for this tablet. A voice assistant app which is a cool improvement from the famous Google voice search function.
The biggest improvement of Jelly Bean over its predecessor is the function of “pop-up play”, which enables you to watch videos in a floating box on the screen, and you could do some reading or even gaming simultaneously. I did play “Fruit Ninja: Puss in boots” while I was watching a clip of Adele “Set Fire to the Rain” in that floating box, and I scored more than 400 points in that game, pretty impressive, huh?
4. Performance​
Rockchip RK3066 is inside of many tablets I’ve tested in the last few months, and they pretty much all work the same. The Fast is really fast and responsive, and is particularly adept for playing games – as it is powered by the impeccable Mali-400MP4, which is also used by the famous Samsung Exynos 4410. I am getting really good at “Virtua Tennis” and “Star Warfare” as I test more and more tablets. And they are as smooth and impressive on the Fast’s display as any I’ve tried.
With Android4.1, the performance has been improved in many ways: the screen rotates much faster, scrolling is smoother, and every animation happens slightly faster. I ran some traditional benchmarks on the Fast. Obviously, processing power is the last thing to worry about in this tablet – there are few dual core android tablets that can outdo the Fast in most tests.
Below are the benchmark scores of the Fast in comparison with some of the Mainstream dual core Android tablets:
If you are a fan of videos, then the Fast won’t disappoint you in anyway. The RK3066b processor in it can support all formats of videos to at least 1080P, all local videos in my mobile disk and all online HD videos I tested can be streamed smoothly on the Fast.
Below are the videos I’ve tested on the Fast:

5. Connectivity
According to the findings of testing many other tablets, metal back cover can lead to poor data reception when a tablet is connected through WIFI. Unfortunately, this is also true on the Fast. Data reception heavily depends on the performance of your WIFI router, if your Fast is a wall and more than 6 meters away from a weak WIFI router, you probably will not be able to stream online videos, and even loading the mobile version of a web page can take quite some time. At least that's what I've experienced.
However, the Fast does support a 3G network card through an OTG cable, a very cool addition since FSL doesn’t seem interested in producing a 3G version of this gorgeous tablet.
6. Battery Life
This tablet includes an 8000mAh battery, and this should be sufficient for most users. The Fast lasted more than 8 hours during my 720p video-playback stress test (with 50% display brightness and full volume), which is better than any Chinese Android tablet I’ve tested during the past several months, it even beats Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9’s 7 hours. Impressively, the Fast’s charge can last several days when the tablet is not being used, even with WIFI turned on and automatically receiving some emails. This is quite great for non-intense users.
7. Cameras
FSL includes two 2-megapixel cameras in the Fast, one in the front and one in the rear side. Both cameras did a better job than I had expected, especially the front-facing camera, very ideal for video chatting, and the camera in the rear side can shoot images clear enough to share on Twitter or Facebook. But that doesn't mean I will suggest you to take it out as a digital camera.
Front-facing Camera Shot
Rear-facing Camera Shot
8. Browsing and Reading
Most android tablets come in with a widescreen, which is ideal for watching movies. But the advantage in browsing and reading of the 4:3 standard screen which are mainly seen on the iPad, doesn’t get talked about enough.
All browsers, even the stock one on Android 4.1 can offer up-tabbed browsing experience. Thanks to the powerful RK3066 dual core 1.6GHZ processor and 1 GB of ram, loading and scrolling of the web-page happen very fast, even with lots of flash contents on it. And the 9.7 inch XGA display shows just the right size of all the contents on that page, you don’t have to zoom to see them clearly.
Reading with the Fast’s 4:3 display is even more of a pleasant experience. All screen resource can be fully utilized, and 9.7 inch is just the right size for reading a full scanned copy of magazine. Of course you can zoom it a little bit just in case the contents are not big enough for your eyes. Flipping of the page also happens very fast, even with a 300MB full color PDF magazine of National Geographic, I experienced no lag at all.
Fast's standard display compared to Tab8.9's widescreen in reading​
9. Accessories:​
One of the iPad’s biggest advantages doesn’t get talked about enough: It has a wide range of accessories that complement and improve the device. For a company that’s still in its early stage, there isn’t going to be an ecosystem for its tablets any time soon. But FSL did smartly release a protection case specifically designed for the Fast. The case is nice, a thin and light rubbery material with a cord for keeping it closed. Unlike most covers which only uglify the tablets in them, this case, which comes in many colors, is a rather nice decoration for the Fast.

Verdict
Like:
The design and the build are pretty close to ideal. It doesn’t reach the high point of iPad4 or Nexus 10, but it’s a solid and unique piece of gear at a super low price (@USD 160.00). The Korean team of experts has done a remarkable job in making the Fast one of a kind, and most importantly, gorgeous.
The LG IPS display is impressive in view angles, color saturation, contrast ratio and outdoor visibility. Although the 132ppi density is now far behind most other tablets, you will still appreciate it if you are a Magazine subscriber or comic reader, you can read those stuffs full screen here.
The fast-growing Shenzhen tech powerhouse has also managed to pack in a slew of ports and slots for the Fast, saving the cash you might have to spend on other tablets which need adapters to work the OTG or HDMI output.
Dual cameras and dual stereo speakers also help the Fast to stand out from its Chinese competitions. 8000mAh of Li-Polymer battery and more than 8 hours of 720P video playback is probably most of a Chinese tablet needs to have now!
Dislike:
I haven’t found anything that I particularly dislike about this tablet. If I really have to count one, it should be the startup company LOGO, which looks very poorly-designed and should only appear on the archways of a lame grocery store in some very remote villages.
Besides, if FSL wants to make it big, WIFI connectivity needs to be improved in the next generation of its tablets.
The Fast is one of my favorite tablets so far, and I can tell you it’s because of its gorgeous design, you will find nowhere in the world another tablet that looks exactly the same as the Fast, for that alone, it’s a device worth having.
Below are the scores according to the scale I’ve designed for tablet products and the chart showing the comparison with scores of other tablets I’ve tested.

google play
VERY GOOD REVIEW!!!!!!!! But now I have only but one question can you install the play store on this device and have it work?
jupiter2012 said:
Verdict
Like:
The design and the build are pretty close to ideal. It doesn’t reach the high point of iPad4 or Nexus 10, but it’s a solid and unique piece of gear at a super low price (@USD 160.00). The Korean team of experts has done a remarkable job in making the Fast one of a kind, and most importantly, gorgeous.
The LG IPS display is impressive in view angles, color saturation, contrast ratio and outdoor visibility. Although the 132ppi density is now far behind most other tablets, you will still appreciate it if you are a Magazine subscriber or comic reader, you can read those stuffs full screen here.
The fast-growing Shenzhen tech powerhouse has also managed to pack in a slew of ports and slots for the Fast, saving the cash you might have to spend on other tablets which need adapters to work the OTG or HDMI output.
Dual cameras and dual stereo speakers also help the Fast to stand out from its Chinese competitions. 8000mAh of Li-Polymer battery and more than 8 hours of 720P video playback is probably most of a Chinese tablet needs to have now!
Dislike:
I haven’t found anything that I particularly dislike about this tablet. If I really have to count one, it should be the startup company LOGO, which looks very poorly-designed and should only appear on the archways of a lame grocery store in some very remote villages.
Besides, if FSL wants to make it big, WIFI connectivity needs to be improved in the next generation of its tablets.
The Fast is one of my favorite tablets so far, and I can tell you it’s because of its gorgeous design, you will find nowhere in the world another tablet that looks exactly the same as the Fast, for that alone, it’s a device worth having.
Below are the scores according to the scale I’ve designed for tablet products and the chart showing the comparison with scores of other tablets I’ve tested.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

yes, u can, but it will be limited to only free apps.
Sent from my XT910 using xda premium

Not Impressed
I bought one of these as an impulse buy after my old tablet smashed on a hard floor. A glance of the specks looked ok, and I could have one in my hands in under 24 hours. Big mistake. Cost me 25 Euro to return it.
It may have a decent cpu, but for the price, the screen and build quality are terrible. That black rubber seal you see around the edge (along with some plastic clips) is what holds the the whole thing together, so the front actually creaks and moves around against the plain (slippery) metal back case. the one I tried was also developing air bubbles under the screen (NOT a screen protector - the actual screen) after a few days.
The screen quality makes reading the internet a blurry frustrating experience that will give you a headache in 20 minutes, movies were very dark and hard to watch on the brightest settings, and the touchscreen is very...very.. poor and unresponsive. You are forever repeating actions to try and get the response you want. The peripheral sockets also feel very weak and poorly made. It felt like a gamble each time you plugged in a usb as to whether it was going to break.
It seems to be a tried and tested formula used by smaller 'fly by night' ****ester computer builders. Stick in a good cpu and more central noteworthy components, but match it up with the very cheapest more peripheral components you can find to build a complete lemon. You know you'll sell enough before going down on the core specification alone.
(I sent it back and got a pipo m1 for the same price. I am now a happy man - and what a huge difference in all round quality)

Benyi Miracle One Quad-core In-Depth Review

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
The Benyi Miracle One (AKA Dolphin) has the hardware needed for high end Android tablets. But still, with so many more tablets currently on the market, choosing the right one involves a great amount of research deliberation, so let’s take a look at what this package from Benyi has to offer.
Highlights
1.4 GHz Exynos4412 Quad-Core Processor
9.7” 1024×768 IPS display
1GB LPDDR2 RAM
12,000 mAh Lithium battery. (Approximately 10 hours of use)
5MP rear camera
3MP front camera (webcam)
Stereo Speakers
Specs:
Operating System: Android 4.0.3
Model: Benyi Miracle One (Dolphin)
Display Technology: IPS capacitive touch screen
Screen Size:9.7 inch
Resolution:1024*768
CPU Manufacturer: Samsung
CPU Model: Exynos 4412 (Quad core Cortex-A9)
CPU Speed: 1.4GHz
GPU: Quad core of Mali-400MP
GPU Speed: 400MHZ-440MHZ
RAM: 1GB LPDDR2
Hard Drive Capacity: 16GB
Storage Card Support: No
Camera: 3MP+5MP Auto Focus
HDMI: No
Bluetooth: No
GPS: NO
G-Sensor: Yes
Gyroscope: Yes
Audio: Built in stereo speakers / Built in Microphone
Language: Multi-language support
Battery Type: Li-ion, 12,000mAh
Charging Voltage: 5V - 2A
Color: White plus sky blue
Item Dimensions/ W*D*H:238.5×181×11mm
Net Weight: 680g
Connectors
Ports: 1 x Micro USB port (with OTG support)
1 x Audio jack
Communications
Wireless Connection: WIFI 802.11 b/g/n
Retail Package
The Benyi Miracle One, along with a USB data cable, an OTG cable as well as a pair of earphones is held by a very interesting, yet very expensive-looking see-through plastic packing box, which kind of reminds me of the Apple iPod touch, only it comes gigantic.
The battery charger is packed in a smaller paper back box.
Besides, I have also received a white leather case which is a perfect fit for the tablet and piece of anti-friction screen protection cover. All of the standard fittings of the Benyi Miracle One are of relatively high quality.
Design
The Benyi Miracle One has a stunning iPad-alike design, as this tablet features a 9.7 inch screen up front, pure white bezel and almost the same size as iPad2. The only difference you would notice is probably the blue sidelines around the bezel, and the absence of the famous home key.
Above the display, a 3.0 mega-pixels front facing camera sits in the right corner ready for our video chatting needs of self-portrait.
Flipping over to its backside, you will find more differences from the iPad2. The surface of the Dolphin’s backside is ABS engineering plastic, which feels very smooth, while the iPad2’s backside surface is made of magnalium alloy, which gives the device more of a frosted feeling. The Dolphin is also treated to a respectable 5.0 mega-pixels auto-focus camera, which can shoot relatively sharp images to share on Twitter and Facebook. The triple speaker gates can be found at the lower left, right near the bottom edge, this could prevent sound blocking while you put the tablet on a flat surface. You could also find Benyi’s Logo and some other information about the device on the lower middle of the tablet’s backside.
Just like the iPad2 and some Samsung tablets, Benyi has taken the minimalist approach, opting for just power/standby, screen rotation lock and volume buttons as the only physical controls and Micro USB port and 3.5mm audio jack as the only connectors on the device which means, somewhat disappointingly, that there’s no sign of HDMI or SD card ports.
At 680g, it’s over 200g heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab8.9, and measures in at 11mm in thickness which as a result, makes it extremely uncomfortable to hold in one hand. Benyi has claimed that the extra thickness is for the 12,000 mAh battery, so how can I not forgive them for not making the device a little slimmer?
Whether you find the design of the Miracle One good-looking is more of a personal taste. For me, I would say I probably prefer tablets like the PIPO M8 or the Motorola XOOM which represent the essence of black technology. But I do adore the overall clean appearance of the Miracle One. As it is manufactured by a famous OEM (FOXCONN), its build quality can also be guaranteed.
Display
We’ve seen plenty of Chinese tablets utilizing IPS displays of some sort, like the Ainol Hero and the PIPO M8. As a higher-end device, the Miracle One hasn’t gone beyond any of them by featuring a normal 9.7 inch 1024*768 pixels IPS display. This is still a decent choice since no android tablet with an FHD or retina display works fine enough to kick XGA screens out of the scene.
However, I would not suggest you to expect its quality to be as good as the Super IPS+ displays featured on those market-leading tablets such as ASUS Transformer Prime. Even though it has great viewing angles and color saturations like all IPS screens do, its brightness is not strong enough to support outdoor use.
The brightness of the Miracle One’s Display is not as good as the One featured by PIPO M8
Hardware
In terms of SoC, Benyi has chosen the impeccable Samsung Exynos 4412 quad core chipset, based on Cortex A9-frame and used 32nm workmanship. The main frequency of each core can reach 1.4GHz, and it is also powered by a quad-core Mali 400 GPU @44oMHZ, which proves to be more than adequate in my test of running some graphically intense games. 1GB of LPDDR2 ram only helps the tablet run various applications simultaneously, but also incurs lower power consumption than the DDR3 ram used in other Chinese tablets.
In terms of raw processing potential, Exynos 4412 leads the other chipsets used on android tabs by a large margin. Software optimizations and clock rates aside, increased parallelization allows this SoC to work on more data concurrently. Similar to the desktop space, adding cores doesn't turn out to have a multiplicative effect on most real-world applications. But an enhanced ability to multitask is nice, especially as resource-hungry background tasks pile up.
Here are some benchmark scores and comparison to the scores of other tablets:
Here are some screenshots of gaming on the Dolphin:
Interface
The tablet is running Miracle OS, an extensively customized operating system based on Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Benyi has transplanted almost the entire iOS interface onto an Android tablet. You would easily mistake it for an Apple iPad since the tablet has no ICS status bar, which also means that the famous software controls for “Back”, “home” and “task switcher” are nowhere to be found. Benyi has smartly designed a floating software key, which imitates the famous home button on the Apple iPad, both in appearance and functionalities. When you press the key once, it exits from the current screen to the previous one, just like the back button in the status bar on other Android tablets. But when you press the soft key for over 1 second, you would go back to the main screen. And if you press the key twice in a row, the customized task switcher would come out from the button of the screen, just like the one on iOS.
Several spots along the corner of the screen are reserved for you to place the floating soft key, but I sometimes find its presence quite annoying, especially when I am playing games or watching some video clips. For me, any customization done to the stock ICS UI is unnecessary, let alone a complete change just like the Miracle One brings.
Internet and Connectivity​
We’ve always been favorable with the web browsing experience on most ICS flavored tablets, but for some, the experience is marred by choppiness and sluggishness. Well folks, that’s not the case with the almighty Benyi Miracle One, as it represents what a flawless web browsing experience should be like. Not only is it able to load complex web pages very fast and accurately, it doesn’t flinch whatsoever when pages littered with heavy Flash content. All in all, it maintains its steady responsiveness and fluidity with various navigational controls to make it such a joy traversing through content heavy web pages. Seriously, I sometimes find myself getting lost in perusing a variety of pages for the simple reason that its performance is near perfect.
Connected to a Wi-Fi network, the tablet is able to establish a solid connection with very little evidence of fluctuation – and more importantly, it’s still able to connect perfectly at 10 meters away. However, the absence of Bluetooth is quite a letdown for such a high-end device.
Camera​
Turning our attention to its camera interface, Benyi again manages to give it a complete iOS feeling, sporting only a large viewfinder, a front/rear camera switcher, and a photo/video taking switch. The simpleness certainly makes it easier to use, but for a tablet featuring a 5.0 Mega-pixels AF camera, I would have expected more controls. Lastly, it takes less than one second to snap an image, which is extremely fast.
Photoes taken by the rear 5.0 Mega-pixels Camera​
Taking into account the kind of camera it’s packing on, there’s naturally some high expectations attached to it, since it carries something that’s beefier than most other tablets. As a whole, its quality is good enough to accept for the majority, but not great to put in in good light with the quality exhibited by some smartphones. Details are average looking, but for some odd reason, outdoor shots and indoors under florescent lighting tend to have a cooler looking color production – thus, casting a distinctive bluish/greenish hue to our photos. However, I am sorely disappointed that its quality tanks in extremely low lighting situations. Plainly, it’s diminished by its poor details, pervasive digital noise, and inability to handle dynamic range. Also, the absence of LED flash makes it impossible to take photos in a dark environment.
Photoes taken by front-facing camera​
For me, the 3.0 mega-pixels front facing camera is the real plus here, serving us with optimized online video-chatting experiences, much better than what the Galaxy Tab brings.
Multimedia
Not surprisingly, the interface of the music player on the Benyi Miracle One also imitates the one on the iOS. In fact, it’s the same exact one I am familiar with as I have received an iPad2 as a gift from my company! Well, at least it’s still an attractive looking one thanks to the clean feel to it. And the triple speakers packed on the tablet produce a good amount of intensity with its output – with no evidence of crackling during my usage. Additionally, there are various equalizer settings, even manual ones too, that fine-tunes the quality for each specific genre of music.
Do you need a traveling companion that’s worthy enough to play many hours of movies or music videos on the road? Well, the Benyi Miracle One is easily the number one candidate with its gorgeous looking display and indomitable quad-core processor. With my test videos encoded in H264 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720 resolutions, it’s simply a joy to watch them on the Dolphin thanks to its smooth playback, realistic colors, and sharp details.

Software
​
Interestingly, the tablet isn’t bogged down out of the box by bloatware, and in fact, preloaded third party apps are kept to a minimum. Specifically, it’s preinstalled with only a free app market, a WPS office, a VIVA HD magazine reader which only offers Chinese magazines, and some Google applications (Google Maps, Google Talk and Google Play).
Battery Life​
The Dolphin features three Li-Po rechargeable batteries of 4,000 mAh, which add up to an ass-kicking 12,000mAh of power, offering more than 10 hours of intense usage. During my 720P video-playback test, the Miracle One (with 30% display brightness and 50% of speaker volume) lasted 12 hours and 40 minutes, which is by far the best result I have had testing any tablet.
But here’s also another annoying issue, the tablet cannot be charged under a shutdown state, every time I plug in the charging cable, the tablet automatically boots itself. A full charge can take up to 7.5 hours with the bundled 5V-2A charger. What should also be noted here is that the tablet is charged via the Micro USB port, not the 2.5mm DC port we have seen on almost all Chinese tablets.
Verdict​
The Good:
1.4 GHz Exynos4412 Quad-Core Processor
Adorable industrial design
1GB LPDDR2 RAM
12,000 mAh Lithium battery.
5MP rear camera
3MP front camera (webcam)
Stereo Speakers
The bad:
No Bluetooth
No Micro SD card slot
No HDMI
Excessively Customized user interface
Incapability of charging under a shutdown state
Unquestionably, this is the tablet to own right now if you’re in the market of buying one, and trust me, you won’t be disappointed at all. First and foremost, we have to give Benyi credit in taking the opportunity in delivering such a high-caliber tablet that’s no doubt a benchmarker in many categories.
Ushering us into the age of quad-cores, the Benyi Miracle One screams remarkably in the processing department – making it the fastest and best performing Android tablet I’ve had the prestigious opportunity of checking out. For some time now, Android had this stigma of never achieving the fluidity and responsiveness found with iOS, but this seemingly breaks them down and shows the endless possibilities of an Ice Cream Sandwich powered device. To balance things out, I am also impressed that battery life isn’t compromised in the least bit, as it’s able to surprise me with its excellent performance.
When you think about its adorable industrial design, muscle power quad-core processor, impeccable battery life, and brilliant looking IPS display, and its choice of Foxconn as the OEM, you could easily assume that it should be quite costly. However, Benyi has somehow managed to keep its cost of ownership quite affordable. The 16GB version of the tablet, along with a very gorgeous protection case and a piece of high quality anti-friction screen cover, is priced at RMB1990 ($319). I would not say it’s the cheapest quad core android tablet you can get coz it’s not, but I would say it’s the best quad-core tablet you can get under RMB 2,000 ($320.00).
Here is the score I would give this device:

Cube Talk 5H in Depth Review - The Best Entry-level Smartphone

{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
What is the CUBE Talk 5H?​
The Talk 5H (A5300) is CUBE’s first smartphone product, which is made as a rival to the Xiaomi Hongmi phone and Lenovo A850. A phone tasked with getting CUBE into the smartphone industry, it features an array of competitive innards. It has a 5.5-inch IPS display at 1280*720 pixels, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.2GHz quad-core CPU and an impressively large 2,500mAh battery. Priced at RMB999 ($164), it really gives the nobody-is-able-to-buy Xiaomi Hongmi phone a run for its money!
Video Review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHiI7qamN9Q
Pros
1. Vivid and rich colors from the 720p IPS display.
2. Good for multimedia
3. Eye-dazzling MIUI, thousands of themes to choose from
4. Smooth performance from the MT6589 quad-core processor
5. Strong loudspeaker with clean sound.
6. Great battery life.
Cons
1. The cheap feel from the plastic shell
2. Incapable cameras
3. Only 4GB of internal storage
4. 200g weight does feel a little heavy for a phone
Key Features:
5.5-inch IPS Capacitive Panel, 1280*720
MIUI V5 (Android 4.2.1)
MT6589 quad-core Cortex-A7 [email protected], 28nm process, SGX544 GPU
1GB RAM
4GB ROM
FM Radio
Bluetooth V4.0
GPS
Wi-Fi 802.11n/b/g
WCDMA: 2100MHZ / GSM: 900MHZ + 1800MHZ
Front-facing 1.3MP camera and rear-facing 8.0MP camera with auto-focus support
High quality stereo speaker
Vibration
Light Sensor, G-sensor, Proximity Sensor
Dual SIM
2500mAh Li-Po battery
Design and Build
Continuing the trend of ever-growing screen sizes, the CUBE Talk 5H pairs a 5.5-inch 720P IPS display with a dramatically reduced bezel. This combination maximizes the amount of on-screen real estate while keeping the phone’s overall footprint small. Above the display are a 1.3MP front-facing camera for video calls and a proximity sensor along with the telephone receiver.
The CUBE logo can be found in the middle of the phone’s back, where there are also an 8MP rear-facing camera with LED flash. You will also find the stereo speaker in the lower left corner.
The 3.5mm headphone jack and the Micro USB port are the only connectors to be found along the edges of the Talk 5H, you could only get access to the SIM slots (One standard-sized, one micro) and Micro SD card slot when the battery cover is removed.
The placement of the physical keys (power/standby button & volume rocker) on a phone accommodating a large 5.5-inch screen is understandably a bit inconvenient. I had to shuffle the phone around in the palm to use them on many occasions, and a lot of the time I couldn't use my thumb to hit the whole of the screen without jiggling the phone up and down.
Like many of the cost-efficient smartphones, the CUBE Talk 5H is let down by a plastic body that feels flimsy in parts. The battery cover just never feels as solid as those installed on Samsung smartphones, I am almost having a heart attack each time I have to remove it. What’s more, the gloss finish on the plastic body is a magnet for fingerprints and grime, further causing the Talk 5H to look even cheaper.
At 9.5mm thick, the Talk 5H is far from the most svelte smartphone offering. It's a lot thicker than the Lenovo K900 (6.9mm), but it is on par with the 9.4mm thick Samsung Galaxy Note2 and 9.45mm thick Lenovo A850. And at 200g, the CUBE Talk 5H is also a little heavier than the Note2 (180g), A850 (184g) and K900 (165g). Despite this, the Talk 5H never feels bulky or uncomfortable in the hand, with a slight curvature to the phone’s rear giving it an ergonomic fit.
The thing that I love about the Talk 5H’s design is that it’s one of a kind, although you could find a bit of the OPPO Find5 and Sony phones in it, it is still a distinct design. I personally believe it is the best-looking smartphone under RMB1000 ($165).
Screen and Sound Quality​
The 5.5-inch IPS display of the Talk 5H is bright and vibrant, offers very good viewing angles, and strong color saturation. Even when you put it next to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, the Talk 5H is not blown out of the water. Actually, you would find sometimes the IPS panel works even better than the HD Super AMOLED screen. For instance, I would prefer to see the umbrella image on the Note2, but I love the sunflower image better on the 5H.
Unfortunately, the CUBE Talk 5H’s screen quality is not without the odd blemish. The display is a little on the reflective side, with outdoor conditions producing an unwanted amount of glare. But the price could easily help you forget about this slight issue.
The speaker of the Talk 5H is also very nice, producing high-volume sound for gaming and videos, my only issue is that even when you turn the volume all the way down to the lowest possible, the sound can still be a little loud for certain occasions.
Software
The CUBE Talk 5H is an Android phone with a custom-made MIUI interface on top. Building on Google’s Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean OS, the MIUI interface has all the features and functions you would want and expect from a high quality smartphone. It is not as overloaded as the Samsung's Touchwiz interface, but is more exciting with thousands of elegant and colorful themes.
Besides the elegance, the MIUI also makes the Android easier to use. Lots of the customized Xiaomi apps and widgets handily enhance the overall experience, and the rearrangement of the pull-down status bar and Android setting makes everybody aware of what needs to be done.
The wonderful Micloud service can be used for backing up all the important data of the phone.
Another advantage of the MIUI is its incomparable smoothness. Browsing through the homescreens happens incredibly fast, uninstalling an application only takes less than a second, sometimes it makes you feel as if you are on iOS instead of Android.
Performance​
The MTK MT6589 quad-core chipset is probably the most popular choice for entry-level smartphones now. But the performance of the Talk 5H is by no means entry-level. Above are the benchmark scores of the device and the comparison with the notches of some other quad-core smartphones.
In its real world performance, the 1.2GHZ quad-core Cortex-A7 processor and the PowerVR SGX544 GPU easily generate enough power to run everything smoothly on the Talk 5H, including some of the most graphic-intense games such as the “Need for Speed: the Most Wanted” and “Virtua Tennis”.
Video content also benefits from the large screen and graphics partnership, with motion blur and image lag now a thing of the past. The only issue I have with the Talk 5H is its pitifully small built-in storage, I only have 1.6GB storage usable after the system files and ROM taking up most of the 4GB flash disk. Thankfully there is a Micro SD card slot on board, and everyone using this phone will have to need it!
Even loading those most image-heavy websites, hiccups and lags were rare.
Call Quality and Connectivity​
The Talk 5H features 2G and 3G connectivity and performs admirably across both network types. Connections proved strong during call and online use, and I suffered no unexpected signal loss or dropped calls during my time with the phone. Call quality was sharp and clear and volume was easily managed using the volume rocker on the left edge.
Cameras
The cameras on the Talk 5H don’t live up to today’s smartphone standards. Although the MIUI does give the Talk 5H a lot of shooting options.
Normal shootings
Panorama Mode​
The 8MP F/2.8 rear-facing camera is probably one of the worst 8MP cellphone cameras I have ever seen. Sharp and clear photos can only happen while the ambient light is just right, but the colors of those snaps are still far less good-looking than those from the market-leading flagship phones. The LED flash does help with shooting in low light, but you should not put your expectations too high, either.
The front-facing camera is not even nice for video calls, and I would not recommend you to use it for selfies.
Battery Life​
The Talk 5H packs a 2,500mAh Li-Po battery. Judged by smartphone standards, the Talk 5H delivers decent battery endurance. Two days of regular, 3G-powered use are a perfectly reasonable expectation from this device. After 3 hours of nonstop heavy use — involving some benchmarks, web browsing, several phone calls, and online video playback — I was left with 64 percent of battery power remaining.
In our standard TR battery tests, the 5H gives an 8 hours, 12 minutes run time in 720P video playback, it also streamed an online TV show for 7 hours and 49 minutes.
If you are willing to sacrifice some performance for longer use, you can turn on the “CPU Power Saving Mode” in the settings.
Even better, the phone’s power supply is removable, meaning a spare battery can be carried for emergencies or heavy business use.
The Verge​
With the help from MTK, lots of the entry-level smartphones are now equipped with quad-core processors, and have relatively strong performance. I can easily list a dozen of those phones under the price of RMB1000 ($165) without even thinking.
The CUBE Talk 5H is a brilliant device. Unlike most of the entry-level smartphones which have the MTK quad-core SoC., but the stock or poorly customized interface, the CUBE Talk 5H runs the MIUI, which I personally consider to be the best customized Android OS. This greatly enhances the users’ experiences of this phone. There are some setbacks, as you can imagine from such a low-priced device, including poor cameras, but none of them denies how wonderful the 5H actually is.
I bought the Talk 5H as a birthday gift for my dad, but now feel reluctant to give it to him. The MIUI, the big HD screen, and the compact design are all too nice to give away, and I bet anyone ever uses this phone should feel the same way, too. At RMB999, it is arguably the best choice for smartphones below the price point of RMB1000.

Pretty brilliant device, hope people enjoy it.

I also liked the phone, but THL W100S looks better than it.

Lindsay02 said:
I also liked the phone, but THL W100S looks better than it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
THL devices also have decent quality and are reasonably priced, but the one thing special about the 5H is the MIUI it runs, pretty brilliant!

Lindsay02 said:
I also liked the phone, but THL W100S looks better than it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thl has released a new phone, with octa-core processor, and pretty nice-looking, too, wanna buy one!

jupiter2012 said:
thl has released a new phone, with octa-core processor, and pretty nice-looking, too, wanna buy one!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You said THL T100 eight-core phone? I booked a THL T100 on the www thlmobilestore com website, Do not know when I can receive phone?

EvangelineX said:
You said THL T100 eight-core phone? I booked a THL T100 on the www thlmobilestore com website, Do not know when I can receive phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have u got it, how is it?

[REVIEW] THL 5000 Octacore MTK6592 $269.99

THL 5000 Review
Introduction
I was completely shocked and awed when I heard about the THL 5000. Coming from my Nexus 4, which had subpar battery life, 5000mAh seemed like a dream. 2 day battery life? That's how I want to live my life!
As mentioned above, the defining feature of this handset is its mammoth battery. However, here are the other specs below:
Key Specifications:
5.0 inch screen, 1920 x 1080 pixel display
GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz WCDMA 850/2100MHz
MTK6592, Cortex-A7 Octa core,2.0GHz
13MP back camera + 5MP front camera
2GB RAM + 16GB ROM
Bluetooth, NFC
Dual SIM Standby
MicroSD Card Slot
Android 4.4.2
How will the 13MP camera stack up? How will the 5000mAh deal with the notoriously power hungry MTK6592 SoC? Let's see what we have.
Unboxing the THL 5000
The THL 5000 comes in a nice white box with the THL logo on the front. It had the usual contents, earphones, a microUSB cable and a charger.
Note: Instead of giving me a North American charger, they gave me a European charger with an adapter instead.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
Hardware
The THL5000 has a decidedly small footprint for a phone containing such a large battery. Its dimensions are 144.2 x 70.4 x 8.9mm. Impressively, it is only 2mm longer than the Samsung Galaxy S5 and 0.8mm thicker. Its width is 2mm less than the S5, which is even more impressive.
Its 146g weight is also well distributed within the body, making it feel good in the hand.
The design of the THL 5000 in my opinion is uninspired. It is a featureless rectangular slab with a chrome bezel surrounding it. The material surrounding the screen is bevelled downwards, somehow making the THL 5000 look even worse.
The materials used in the construction of this device is nothing special, but is not especially terrible either. It feels solid in hand and does not feel like it would bend if you really tried (unlike a certain Apple product ahem...).
The front of the device contains the proximity sensor, front facing camera and mic. The removeable back is black textured plastic and holds the speaker, 13MP camera and flash.
The volume buttons and power button are well situated heightwise on both sides of the phone, making them relatively easy to reach. However, these buttons feel flimsy and wiggle easily within the housing, and sometimes they have to be pressed correctly to for it to register. I am probably going to use an app like Gravity Screen to avoid using the power button to ensure it doesn't spoil.
Opening up the back cover, you will see the non-removeable 5000mAh battery, a MicroSD slot, and a GSM only SIM Slot and another GSM/WCDMA SIM slot.
Display
I unfortunately was shipped a THL 5000 from a later batch that had washed out colours, probably due to high levels of gamma. THL representatives have said that there is nothing they could do to fix this either. I was able to lessen it using screen filters from the app store, and while not ideal, worked out just fine. So take the display section with a grain of salt.
The screen is a 5" 1920x1080 resolution panel with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and OGS (One Glass Solution) technology. With the screen filters, the colours on the device are a little on the cool side and absolutely do not contain the oversaturated colours (which I personally like) of the Galaxy series' AMOLED screens.
Sunlight legibility isn't bad at all, with a maximum brightness of 500nits, its not hard to use in direct sunlight.
Battery
With a 5000mAh battery, there is no doubt that this phone will have amazing battery life. Even current phones with the largest battery packs top out at around 4000mAh (Huawei Ascend Mate 2). THL touts a talk time of 47 hours, WiFi browsing of 11 hours, and 11.6 hours of video playback. Let's see how THL's numbers stack up to real life use. In addition, I will be comparing this phone's battery life compare to others such as the Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z3. GSMArena does 3 key battery tests on its phones, namely calling, web browsing and video. As I do not have the resources to do all three tests, I only performed the web browsing test and the video test (who is going to talk on their phone for 47 hours anyway?).
I set the screen to about 200nits and installed Web Reloader from the Google Play Store and used it to reload webpages over WiFi every few seconds. First, I reloaded the mobile version of the CNN home page every 10 seconds for 3 hours. Then I transitioned to www.focalprice.com and reloaded that every 30 seconds for 3 hours. Finally, I used www.gearbest.com and reloaded this page every 30 seconds for the rest of the time. The phone finally died after 10:50 of browsing. While this is indeed an impressive number, to put this into perspective, the Sony Xperia Z3 with a larger screen manages 12:11 of browsing time with just 60% battery capacity. The Galaxy S5 achieves 9:48 browsing time with 56% battery capacity.
Note: Most websites who review phones can dedicate the phone for an entire day of straight testing without using it, but since this is my only phone, I had to start this battery test at 94%, and I also had to use battery intensive apps for about 20 minutes as well. Just an FYI.
In the video playback test, the screen was set to 200nits and a standard definition video played. GSMArena also set this test up similarly, except they turned on airplane mode, I chose not to do this in order to better replicate real life, as videos are not usually watched while in airplane mode (unless in an actual airplane). The phone played back video for 12 hours and 2 minutes before dying.
As you can see, THL's claims for WiFI browsing and video playback are not far off from the mark at all. It is refreshing to see a company post real numbers of their products instead of inflating them to sell more devices.
On a more "normal" battery test, the phone was off the charger for 16 hours. During that time, I racked up 5 hours 26 minutes of screen on time, which were a mix of Clash of Clans (and 3 other clones that I also play) for about 45 minutes, an hour of web browsing, 20 minutes of miscellaneous stuff and the rest of the time on 9gag/Feedly. At the end of the day, I was left with 46% battery.
Charging the phone from 0% to 100% took about 4 and a 1/2 hours.
Very few people are going to be web browsing for 10 hours straight per day, so there is no need to keep an eye on battery life. However, it seems that the MTK6592 chipset used in this device is very power hungry and THL also has not optimized the software as well as the big name manufacturers. Hopefully an OTA update will improve battery life even further.
Software and Performance
The THL 5000 runs a stock version of Andorid 4.4.2 with a custom launcher installed and custom icons. I was most disappointed by the smoothness of the stock firmware that came with the phone. I would compare the smoothness of this device to that of the Galaxy S3 and while many wouldn't see the difference, I just moved from a Nexus device and the difference is night and day. This is due to the firmware not being optimized, and hopefully future updates will fix this. This lagginess also cannot be attributed to the MTK6592 processor, as I have played around quite a bit with an Alcatel OneTouch Idol X+, which has the exact same specifications, except a battery half the size. Daily usage of the Alcatel is very very smooth, almost on par with Nexus devices.
The first thing I did when I set up my THL 5000 was install the Google Now Launcher, which is Google's launcher which integrates Google Now into the mix. As a result, performance when swiping between home screens, opening the app drawer, and launching apps were quite laggy. However, I switched back to the stock launcher, and I have to say that I am very impressed with the fluidity and speed of the device. Swiping between home screens, opening of the app drawer and launching of apps is quick and zippy. One would not be able to tell the difference in smoothness of the THL 5000 and a Nexus device and would even say that the THL is more responsive due to shorter transitions/animations.
It does come with some bloatware, which surprisingly did not require root to get rid of, which was a nice touch.
I ran Antutu as well, and obtained a score of 31,881. This is about average for an MTK6592 device with 2GB of RAM and an FHD screen.
Connectivity
I have to admit I was apprehensive about reception of this phone since it was my first chinese phone. However, I was pleasantly surprised, as this phone actually gets better reception than my Nexus 4 here in Canada. In my basement, the Nexus 4 only gets about 2 bars of signal on 3G, while the THL 5000 gets 3-4 bars consistently. It does not have LTE, but I do get HSPA+, with speeds around 36mbps.
Calls are clear and don't drop, however, there is a strange, almost non issue with incoming calls. The phone will ring when there is an incoming call, and whether the screen is on or off, it will take almost 3/4 of a second before the screen allowing you to accept/reject the call pops up. Certainly not an issue, but it does take longer than expected.
WiFi performance is also good, as I get reception anywhere in the house. My Wireless N router is in the basement, and I get reception anywhere in the house, even on the second floor and outside. However, every few hours, WiFi will suddenly stop working. I will still be connected to the network, but I won't be able to load webpages. Stopping and restarting WiFi fixes the problem.
I was concerned with GPS performance as I had heard many reports of GPS issues such as GPS jumping, very long lock times and other issues that happened pre firmware v1.0.9. However, my phone came with v1.1.0 and I did not experience any issue at all. When data was turned on and location was set on high accuracy, I got a lock within 5 seconds. With location set on battery saving mode, I got a lock within 15-20 seconds. It also was very accurate as well, doing me a huge service when guiding me to my next interview's building.
Bluetooth and NFC are also included in this phone, and both work as expected.
Side Note: This will not work on Wind Mobile in Canada
Camera
The THL 5000 features a 13MP camera with a Sony Sensor and F2.0 aperture. It focuses quite well and takes nice photos. Below are some pictures.
As you can see, the quality of these pictures in daylight is quite good. Colour reproduction is quite accurate, and detail is not bad either. Overall, I would rate daylight pictures taken by this camera to be a little better than a Galaxy S3. The bottom two shots have HDR enabled.
Low light performance is another story. Pictures are very grainy under low light. Even my old Nexus 4 has better low light performance than this. I took a few shots in low light, and below are the shots with and without flash.
The flash on this phone, while not powerful, has the ability to wash out the subject of the picture.
In conclusion, if you're taking pictures in the daytime, expect good smartphone pictures to come out of that. If you're in a dark setting, forget it.
EDIT: Please note that after reading review, the reviewer could get quite high quality shots in low light and this is probably due to my lack of camera finesse and expertise, so please take the low light section of this review with a grain of salt.
Video quality is average as well, with the quality being a little lower than picture quality, which is to be expected.
The stock camera software has terrible performance. When you move the camera, the screen will lag behind by almost 1 second. Installing Google Camera from the app store solves this problem, but video recording at 1080p and 720p isn't supported.
The front 5MPx camera is quite good for use in Skype, Hangouts and selfies.
Verdict
Is this phone at $269.99 USD worth it? On one hand, its relatively cheap, and its 5000mAh battery should sufficiently convince any heavy smartphone user. On the other hand, one too many flaws could annoy users sufficiently to return this product.
Pros
Cheap
Massive battery. It refuses to die on you no matter how much you use it
Good specs
Good camera performance in daylight
Impressive reception on calling, texting, data
Cons
Battery life only about par with other flagships with 1/2 the battery capacity
Terrible low light camera performance
Its hard to find fault with the THL 5000 when it costs $269.99. A massive battery, fast octacore processor, FHD screen and great reception make this phone a great buy. The software experience on this phone is also fluid, responsive, and a pleasure to use. THL has also promised to continue providing OTA updates to the phone, and hopefully THL will continue quashing bugs, improving performance and decrease battery consumption.
I definitely recommend this phone to anybody looking for a cheaper device with great specs, great battery life and a fluid user experience.

If only I had read this a few days ago. I ordered one of these phones based off the massive battery and sony 13mp camera.
One thing you didn't mention in the review was GPS function. I have been hearing there are lots of problems with the MTK6592 in terms of GPS.

I did, GPS issues have been fixed

Haha, sorry, I must have skipped that paragraph. I needed a sub heading for my ultra short attention span. The GPS firmware fix is good news.
I think the battery life issues must reflect the chipset. The new 9695 is supposed to be better at power efficiency whereas the 9592 has all 8 cores running all the time. Not sure if there is any way for them to optimize the ROM. There are lots of cheaper phones with this chipset but they only have 2300-3000 batteries. They must not last long even with lower res screens.

Never had a phone that locks so fast ?

THL 5000 price
Too expensive, THL 5000 phone price is $212.99, here: http://www.pompmall.com/thl-mobile-phone.html

[REVIEW] Siswoo Cooper i7: octa-core, 64 bits, 4G, IPS HD 5", 2GB de RAM, 16GB ROM,

[REVIEW] Siswoo Cooper i7: octa-core, 64 bits, 4G, IPS HD 5", 2GB de RAM, 16GB ROM,
Recently the young Chinese company Siswoo announced their second Android model, taking advantage of the new 64 bits processors from MediaTek.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
As I have already told before, those Chinese manufacturers are each time copying (imitating less) and willing more to highlight something from their own. Today Siswoo is presenting the Cooper i7, and before going into the review, I cannot hide... it's a bullet!
Hardware
Those are the specifications of the last Siswoo smartphone:
And yes, you are right, 64 bits octa-core processor running at 1,7Ghz, GPU Mali T760, 2GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage (of which 12,82GB available for the user) and up to 64GB expandable via microSD, 4G-LTE connectivity ... appetizing, isn't it? Let's go with the review.
Packaging, design and ergonomics
The package is really simple and quite square, the one used by Elephone for the P3000s attired my attention, but this one goes back to the “standards”. Small and with the table of content and smartphone specifications.
[YOUTUBE]http://youtu.be/sF0Pcrfu1Fo
[/YOUTUBE]
Just taking it out of the box, two things surprised me: the design and the weight. It's really light, in a very first moment I even though it didn't have the battery, but yes, it was inside, and even so it stays on 130gr.
As we can see on the video, the device comes inside a small plastic bag and in the bottom inside the box, we will find the charger and earphones. It's very nice from Siswoo's side to include (already applied) the plastic cover for the screen.
Regarding the design, I must confess I didn't like it in a first sight, too simple and too... flat, with round edges.
BUT, once you use it, this feeling changes. And this design influences a lot. As said before, it's very light (although the different of size, exactly the same weight of iPhone 5) and with less than 9mm of thickness, you can carry it very comfortably on your pocket... and being a 5” device.
One remarkably thing on its design are the touch buttons. They are normally off, but when you use the phone or you have a notification, they light in an elegant and practical way. When not, the front part is completely black. On this front, we will also find the 5Mpx camera and the sensors for light and proximity.
Unlike other smartphones, all the physical buttons of the Cooper i7 are on the right side. In the beginning it might be confusing, since sometimes you want to press volume down and you lock the phone.
However, once you get used to that, it's very comfortable, specially because this terminal fits perfectly into one hand, and by having the buttons on the same side, you can manage it completely with just one hand.
The rest on the edges is free... except for the top part, where we find charger plug and jack 3.5 for the earphones.
Turn it. On the rear part, your eyes go directly to the 8Mpx camera with dual LED flash on the top, just below SISWOO logo and on the bottom the speaker and logo with “4G-LTE” like to remember us that we can connect to those networks.
Last on this part, I must say that the Cooper i7 does not slide at all. It's very agreable to touch and it fits perfectly on the hands, so VERY good ergonomics.
Screen
Cooper i7 mounts a HD IPS 5” screen, offering a resolution of 720x1280. It has very good quality, although I think they use dynamic contrast, because I don't feel as much range of tones as in other (first brand) phones. I mean, black is not as black.
The viewing angle is very good and I had no problems using it under bright sun, by having the brightness in automatic mode, it adjusts in seconds to any situation.
We will also find two interesting functions, "Gesture sensing" and "Smart Wake". The first one means that we will be able to navigate through pictures on the gallery and some other apps just by moving our hand over the phone (but without touching it). The second one, allows us to complete some actions by drawing pre-defined patterns on the screen when the phone is locked, like activate radio, camera, change song...
The gesture recognition is working but, at this point is not as perfectioned as in other models like new Samsung Galaxy, with the Cooper i7 you must pass your hand closer to the screen and slower.
The Smart Wake function is really interesting, I liked it a lot. I continually use it for many applications... and with just one movement!
Software, multimedia and games
This terminal comes with Android 4.4.4 Kitkat, although Siswoo has annouced we will receive the update to Lollipop during March.
They didn't apply any customization layer on top of Android (maybe it also influences the high speed this phone goes), in addition it is rooted by default and includes all the usual and popular applications out of the box (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, Adobe Reader, Documents to Go and the interesting WeCal) so we can start fully using it just after the first booting.
Browsing the web either with WiFi or with 3G/4G connection, it's very fast and fluid, no lags, specially the background applications (like social network notifications)
In the multimedia area is where I really enjoyed myself. Since there were not pre-installed game, I went direct to Fifa 15:UT and another action game called Contract Killer... ¡bingo!
The initial test became some weekend hours playing online tournaments (specially Fifa, I really love it). The fact of being so light and so comfortable on the hands, make this smartphone the perfect portable gaming console, and as I said before, being so fast makes the games start very quickly and loading times are very short. While playing there are no lags, nor freezes and being moving images, contrasts and colors are perceived perfectly.
I have the same feeling when playing videos, the powerful CPU and accompanied with one of latest presented GPUs make the work without any trouble. FullHD, subtitles... even working through the network I had no problem with any type. Regarding the volume, it's OK and the rear speaker has enough relief (inward) so that the sound is not muffled by supporting the phone on any surface.
Coming to the extras, GPS and compass worked very well and once again, without having to wait.
So, in general, the multimedia experience has been very satisfactory.
Camera
The Cooper i7 brings (as usual) two cameras, the front one with 5Mpx and the main one at the rear with 8Mpx, both with interesting characteristics like voice shooting control, the beauty effect (perfect for selfie lovers) or the noise reduction.
However it suffers from the great evil of Chinese phones: lots megapixel unable to perform well in low light conditions.
It was clear that the "buts" would arrive sooner or later.
I have tried the camera inside and outside. Taking pictures outside and with full sun light, the results are very satisfactory for pictures and also recording video.
But when the light is lower, other "first brand" phones like iPhone (who also mounts an 8Mpx main camera) are capable of great pictures...and with this one we will simply prefer not to zoom too much on the pictures.
I would even say that I even like more the results of the front camera (with its 5Mpx and without flash) rather than the main one, so selfie addicts...good for you! Both cameras work perfectly with Skype, just pay attention you don't cover the microphone when holding the phone.
Autonomy
As seen on the specifications, the (removable) battery has a capacity of 2100 mAh, something I found quite tight compared to the more than 3000 mAh we see often on new terminals... but very good compared for example with the 1440mAh on the iPhone 5... and more than enough for one day. I already said I spent several hours playing online.
It's equiped with fast charging technology, nevertheless I would preferred to see the latest ultra-fast charging technology (around 80% in 15min or so).
Conclusions
In the first lines of this review I already stated than although most of Chinese phones have some common points, it is each time more usual to see brands willing to highlight their "personal touch".
In my opinion, Siswoo has been able of achieving a very interesting result in which is only their second model on the market. Not only on the design but specially on the usability, the user experience is very agreable.
We cannot dismiss from our minds that it's not only the aforementioned excellent potential, the Cooper i7 also brings us dual SIM and 4G-LTE connectivity for around 180€ (as per its price on Etotalk including VIP shipping DHL only took 2 days to arrive to my house).

mdabar said:
Recently the young Chinese company Siswoo announced their second Android model, taking advantage of the new 64 bits processors from MediaTek.
As I have already told before, those Chinese manufacturers are each time copying (imitating less) and willing more to highlight something from their own. Today Siswoo is presenting the Cooper i7, and before going into the review, I cannot hide... it's a bullet!
Hardware
Those are the specifications of the last Siswoo smartphone:
[IMG="Specifications"]
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-omHjEmmzagg/VPGBRIFQFlI/AAAAAAAABuY/8la0GNjKY-I/s1600/SiswooCooperI7-specs.jpg[/IMG]
And yes, you are right, 64 bits octa-core processor running at 1,7Ghz, GPU Mali T760, 2GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage (of which 12,82GB available for the user) and up to 64GB expandable via microSD, 4G-LTE connectivity ... appetizing, isn't it? Let's go with the review.
Packaging, design and ergonomics
The package is really simple and quite square, the one used by Elephone for the P3000s attired my attention, but this one goes back to the “standards”. Small and with the table of content and smartphone specifications.
[YOUTUBE]http://youtu.be/sF0Pcrfu1Fo
[/YOUTUBE]
Just taking it out of the box, two things surprised me: the design and the weight. It's really light, in a very first moment I even though it didn't have the battery, but yes, it was inside, and even so it stays on 130gr.
As we can see on the video, the device comes inside a small plastic bag and in the bottom inside the box, we will find the charger and earphones. It's very nice from Siswoo's side to include (already applied) the plastic cover for the screen.
Regarding the design, I must confess I didn't like it in a first sight, too simple and too... flat, with round edges.
BUT, once you use it, this feeling changes. And this design influences a lot. As said before, it's very light (although the different of size, exactly the same weight of iPhone 5) and with less than 9mm of thickness, you can carry it very comfortably on your pocket... and being a 5” device.
One remarkably thing on its design are the touch buttons. They are normally off, but when you use the phone or you have a notification, they light in an elegant and practical way. When not, the front part is completely black. On this front, we will also find the 5Mpx camera and the sensors for light and proximity.
Unlike other smartphones, all the physical buttons of the Cooper i7 are on the right side. In the beginning it might be confusing, since sometimes you want to press volume down and you lock the phone.
However, once you get used to that, it's very comfortable, specially because this terminal fits perfectly into one hand, and by having the buttons on the same side, you can manage it completely with just one hand.
The rest on the edges is free... except for the top part, where we find charger plug and jack 3.5 for the earphones.
Turn it. On the rear part, your eyes go directly to the 8Mpx camera with dual LED flash on the top, just below SISWOO logo and on the bottom the speaker and logo with “4G-LTE” like to remember us that we can connect to those networks.
Last on this part, I must say that the Cooper i7 does not slide at all. It's very agreable to touch and it fits perfectly on the hands, so VERY good ergonomics.
Screen
Cooper i7 mounts a HD IPS 5” screen, offering a resolution of 720x1280. It has very good quality, although I think they use dynamic contrast, because I don't feel as much range of tones as in other (first brand) phones. I mean, black is not as black.
The viewing angle is very good and I had no problems using it under bright sun, by having the brightness in automatic mode, it adjusts in seconds to any situation.
We will also find two interesting functions, "Gesture sensing" and "Smart Wake". The first one means that we will be able to navigate through pictures on the gallery and some other apps just by moving our hand over the phone (but without touching it). The second one, allows us to complete some actions by drawing pre-defined patterns on the screen when the phone is locked, like activate radio, camera, change song...
The gesture recognition is working but, at this point is not as perfectioned as in other models like new Samsung Galaxy, with the Cooper i7 you must pass your hand closer to the screen and slower.
The Smart Wake function is really interesting, I liked it a lot. I continually use it for many applications... and with just one movement!
Software, multimedia and games
This terminal comes with Android 4.4.4 Kitkat, although Siswoo has annouced we will receive the update to Lollipop during March.
They didn't apply any customization layer on top of Android (maybe it also influences the high speed this phone goes), in addition it is rooted by default and includes all the usual and popular applications out of the box (Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, Adobe Reader, Documents to Go and the interesting WeCal) so we can start fully using it just after the first booting.
Browsing the web either with WiFi or with 3G/4G connection, it's very fast and fluid, no lags, specially the background applications (like social network notifications)
In the multimedia area is where I really enjoyed myself. Since there were not pre-installed game, I went direct to Fifa 15:UT and another action game called Contract Killer... ¡bingo!
The initial test became some weekend hours playing online tournaments (specially Fifa, I really love it). The fact of being so light and so comfortable on the hands, make this smartphone the perfect portable gaming console, and as I said before, being so fast makes the games start very quickly and loading times are very short. While playing there are no lags, nor freezes and being moving images, contrasts and colors are perceived perfectly.
I have the same feeling when playing videos, the powerful CPU and accompanied with one of latest presented GPUs make the work without any trouble. FullHD, subtitles... even working through the network I had no problem with any type. Regarding the volume, it's OK and the rear speaker has enough relief (inward) so that the sound is not muffled by supporting the phone on any surface.
Coming to the extras, GPS and compass worked very well and once again, without having to wait.
So, in general, the multimedia experience has been very satisfactory.
Camera
The Cooper i7 brings (as usual) two cameras, the front one with 5Mpx and the main one at the rear with 8Mpx, both with interesting characteristics like voice shooting control, the beauty effect (perfect for selfie lovers) or the noise reduction.
However it suffers from the great evil of Chinese phones: lots megapixel unable to perform well in low light conditions.
It was clear that the "buts" would arrive sooner or later.
I have tried the camera inside and outside. Taking pictures outside and with full sun light, the results are very satisfactory for pictures and also recording video.
But when the light is lower, other "first brand" phones like iPhone (who also mounts an 8Mpx main camera) are capable of great pictures...and with this one we will simply prefer not to zoom too much on the pictures.
I would even say that I even like more the results of the front camera (with its 5Mpx and without flash) rather than the main one, so selfie addicts...good for you! Both cameras work perfectly with Skype, just pay attention you don't cover the microphone when holding the phone.
Autonomy
As seen on the specifications, the (removable) battery has a capacity of 2100 mAh, something I found quite tight compared to the more than 3000 mAh we see often on new terminals... but very good compared for example with the 1440mAh on the iPhone 5... and more than enough for one day. I already said I spent several hours playing online.
It's equiped with fast charging technology, nevertheless I would preferred to see the latest ultra-fast charging technology (around 80% in 15min or so).
Conclusions
In the first lines of this review I already stated than although most of Chinese phones have some common points, it is each time more usual to see brands willing to highlight their "personal touch".
In my opinion, Siswoo has been able of achieving a very interesting result in which is only their second model on the market. Not only on the design but specially on the usability, the user experience is very agreable.
We cannot dismiss from our minds that it's not only the aforementioned excellent potential, the Cooper i7 also brings us dual SIM and 4G-LTE connectivity for around 180€ (as per its price on Etotalk including VIP shipping DHL only took 2 days to arrive to my house).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good, very good to review, but I wonder what is the most interesting device, and what it may have longer duration in time ... this I 7, or R8 ...
now my thanks for the review ...

Hi bodyjoao, from my point of view they are very different devices.
Think that Siswoo is a really new (young) company and up to now they have just launched 2 smartphones, being the first one the R8 Monster. In my opinion they did like that to show everybody what they were able to do, so top of hardware specifications.
Then they presented the Cooper i7 to show that they want to do also more affordable products, but without going to low end range. My impressions have been very good testing the i7, I insist that the weak point for chinese phones is always the camera, but leaving that on a side... I'm really enhoying the i7, it's very very fast on everything... and delicious to play with very light and thin hehe
The R8 Monster costs around 100$ more and... still I'm not sure the camera will be much better.
We have very good news coming from other brands like Xiaomi, were people insist that their cameras are quite good, so I'm confident that chinese companies have already understand that people demand quality and they are giving it little by little... better finishing, better, screens, better storage... It's not always the amount that counts, but the quality

mdabar said:
Hi bodyjoao, from my point of view they are very different devices.
Think that Siswoo is a really new (young) company and up to now they have just launched 2 smartphones, being the first one the R8 Monster. In my opinion they did like that to show everybody what they were able to do, so top of hardware specifications.
Then they presented the Cooper i7 to show that they want to do also more affordable products, but without going to low end range. My impressions have been very good testing the i7, I insist that the weak point for chinese phones is always the camera, but leaving that on a side... I'm really enhoying the i7, it's very very fast on everything... and delicious to play with very light and thin hehe
The R8 Monster costs around 100$ more and... still I'm not sure the camera will be much better.
We have very good news coming from other brands like Xiaomi, were people insist that their cameras are quite good, so I'm confident that chinese companies have already understand that people demand quality and they are giving it little by little... better finishing, better, screens, better storage... It's not always the amount that counts, but the quality
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am under This phone or the jiayu s3 , But the site don't have now the jiayu s3 for now, and I like this look...I wait for one or tree days and then I decid....
Sent from my HUAWEI G750-T20 using XDA Free mobile app

bodyjoao said:
I am under This phone or the jiayu s3 , But the site don't have now the jiayu s3 for now, and I like this look...I wait for one or tree days and then I decid....
Sent from my HUAWEI G750-T20 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Jiayu is very good one too, I found available on the same store I took the Siswoo -> http://www.etotalk.com/jiayu-s3_p7545.html
And as usual customer they gave me these coupons... first in first served
5 USD Available 77571b3b8a 2015-04-02
5 USD Available 7ef04c0bff 2015-04-02
5 USD Available fc8cabfe8e 2015-04-02
5 USD Available 9c7b4d8e1d 2015-04-02
5 USD Available 857faaa218 2015-04-02
5 USD Available bf36c5bfe8 2015-04-02
I prefer them because of the DHL VIP shipping ... take a look and decide, you will tell later which one you take!

I've been using mine since a couple of weeks, but the home button backlight somehow stays on all the time. Any idea why? Cheers, great review!

yash3339 said:
I've been using mine since a couple of weeks, but the home button backlight somehow stays on all the time. Any idea why? Cheers, great review!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have not had this issue... and since yesterday I'm thinking on it and surfing my Cooper i7 up and down to find anything :-/
The only I can think on is, go to Settings -> Display -> BreathLight and try to unable all of them, reboot the phone and then activate them again.
Normally it should light only to notify something.
Goos luck and tell us if it works!

cooper 17
hello
i also plan to buy it, but i fear about the small battery..
could you tell us more about that matter ?
thks

jdcesari said:
hello
i also plan to buy it, but i fear about the small battery..
could you tell us more about that matter ?
thks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
More than 1 day with my normal use,... I mean a lot of wifi: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Opera, weather and Youtube for the baby
I've also been using radio and trying 2 different GPS applications (Navmii and Navigate 66) for which I have not only tried the apps but also downloaded the maps for a couple of countries (so more than 1GB downloaded over wifi for those apps)
And planning the trip I have moved cartoons for the baby from my NAS to the smartphone using the wifi, so another 1GB moved there and the battery resisted
It's true it went faster when playing Fifa, because it was online and playing, but with normal use it's much longer.
So it's true that the battery is not as long as for other devices, but you see that also on its thickness, it's really comfortable to bring it on the pocket.

5" HD 720p is poor
it's a great screen with 5" FHD
MTK6752 support screen solution 1080P

thks a lot
you are perfect

Hahaha thanks! but just trying to help and share my experience through reviews
If you liked it, I would appreciate you clic on the "Thanks!" button
Have a nice one!!

Weak wifi on Cooper i7?
Hello,
I just received my siswoo cooper i7 yesterday. I'm also lucky with until now except for one issue: the Wifi is very weak. It has an ok connection next to the router (54 Mbps), but if I move away 4-5 meters (staying in the same room even), it drops the connection or goes down to 12/ 5 / 2 Mbps. I also tried at my office, it wouldn't work if not directly at the router. All my other devices (Moto MB 526, XT320, iPad Air) have good connection even 2 rooms further away and work like a charm.
Anyone else having similar issues? Any good ideas to solve this?

IF SISWOO IS READING -> PLEASE DONT BLOCK ROOT !
ROOTED WITH iROOT SUCCESS
Back and other Button LED = (su) echo 255 > /sys/class/leds/button-backlight/brightness // 0 to turn off
Breathlight (HomeLED) = echo (CODE) > /sys/devices/virtual/breathlightdrv/breathlight/open // 0 to turn off
CODE -> defines blinking rate - havent figured out the system but any numbers between 12 to 20.
Will add if found out more...

What about the storage? Is it unified or partitioned?
I'm still worried about the battery. Otherwise it looks great.

chat1978 said:
What about the storage? Is it unified or partitioned?
I'm still worried about the battery. Otherwise it looks great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you mean with unified that all the available storage is on the same partition then it's a yes, available storage appears all together as internal SD Card and it all can be used to install apps.
The battery life depends on the usage. I consider it will last a full day with moderate usage (2 - 3 hours SOT, some gaming, some calling, some music listening), but no more that that.

alresave said:
If you mean with unified that all the available storage is on the same partition then it's a yes, available storage appears all together as internal SD Card and it all can be used to install apps.
The battery life depends on the usage. I consider it will last a full day with moderate usage (2 - 3 hours SOT, some gaming, some calling, some music listening), but no more that that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes about the storage. Thanks.
On my daily life, I don't have high expectations from the battery.
But last year, while on route to an island, I drained the battery of THL W200 within a couple of hours just by looking at the ship's location and doing some reading.
Very disappointing. I have a portable battery back but still, I would like something bigger for vacation time!

Full Review Video
Pictures from http://s7yler.blogspot.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLB3C60yvcc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYR-Y3umZaM