Falling into our hands, the Cherry Mobile Sonic 2.0 packs a 4-inch display with a quad-core CPU and more for a very affordable price tag, but is it worth your money? Read on our quick review to find out.
Starting off with the design, the Sonic 2.0 doesn’t stand out as much. You get a black slate design with elements of glass, gloss and matte, and we think it’s a little uninspiring. The back of the device is nice to hold and doesn’t feel cheap, however the rest is a mile below that. The sides, while not made out of cheap material, feels weird and awkward. In addition, all the buttons around are quite stiff and hard to maneuver. If there’s one thing that will make up for those, it’s that the Sonic 2.0 is solidly built even as an affordable smartphone.
Turn on the 4-inch WVGA display and you’re in for a view – but not a pleasant one for that matter. Look at the device straight on and there’s a blueish tint covering the screen. Slight movement in top, left and bottom angles will make it all a lot worse while looking at it from the right feels just about right – they made this phone begging to be looked at with an angle. If you’re out in the sun, it helps too as the blueish tint is quite fought off by the warmth and the display has really good sunlight legibility.
Look at the display. Try closing your left eye, then open it and try closing the other one. Both look entirely different. It’s like looking at 3D without the glasses.
The camera works well for the most part too – but taking the photo is the big problem and it’s due to that horrible display. It’s like having a viewfinder with false colors to represent your picture. Multimedia playback will also be a pain because of this.
Here I’m glad that they didn’t have much bloatware and ugly skinning with the software. It’s pretty much looking as stock Android all around and that’s a good thing as I don’t see any lag, stutter or performance issues.
The phone is run by a quad-core Broadcom CPU paired with 1GB RAM and for a phone of this price, it really performs well so kudos to that. Here are the benchmark scores:
- Antutu – 13,673
- Quadrant – 3,609
- Nenamark 2 – 49.1
Speaking of benchmarking, when we tested the phone, the device heated up when running the said apps. Standby time was also quite a problem for us as not using the device for a few days would make it lose a significant amount of the battery. We don’t have an exact number of hours for real life usage, but from that standpoint, it’s far from impressive.
Cherry Mobile Sonic 2.0 Specs
4-inch 480×800 LCD display, 233ppi
1.2GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM23550 processor
1GB RAM
4GB internal storage with microSD
5 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash
VGA front-facing camera
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth
GPS
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
1400mAh battery
For the price of Php3,999, the Cherry Mobile Sonic 2.0 is a hard buy. I may have just been spoiled by other mobile displays, but I really had a hard time looking at the display during this review. The design felt uninspiring and the fast heating of the device caught my attention in a bad way. However, for the performance that it delivers along with the software and this price, it’s good. If those aren’t the only things that you’re looking for, then may we suggest saving up more.
What we liked about it:
- Fast performance
- Solid build quality
- Affordable price tag
- Clean and smooth software
What we didn’t like about it:
- Eyesore display
- Stiff and hard-to-press buttons
- Uninspiring design
- Heats up easily
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