Category: Cherry Mobile Cosmos

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X Review

Bob Freking Leave a comment

The Cherry Mobile Cosmos X is the most affordable among the company’s Cosmos line of smartphones, but, does it have what it takes to be a must-buy, or are you better off saving a little bit for more? Read our full review to find out.

Before anything else, you should see our unboxing video, which showcases the included flip cover and the extra red back casing:

Design and Construction

At first glance & touch, the Cosmos X reminds us of the Samsung Galaxy S2 – from the rounded corners, its size & its plastic construction; not to mention it also packs a Super AMOLED display.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

While it is indeed made out of plastic, it does feel solid. However, the premium feel is lacking here, and the protruding camera on the back isn’t helping at all.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

On the top side you can find the 3.5mm audio jack & the power button. On the left is the micro USB port. Over to the right are the volume controls and the single stage camera button. The bottom is clean with only the microphone to be found.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

We immediately changed the back casing of the phone when we got it, since it added more contrast and a unique look. Nevertheless, expect it to be prone to smudges and some creaking, as to be expected from a plastic phone of this build.

Display

The Cosmos X flaunts a 720p HD Super AMOLED display at 4.7-inches. It is very responsive and sharp, colors are saturated but not overdone, and the deep blacks are unmatchable. Viewing angles are very great too.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

In fact, in our use, we needed reminding that this is a 4.7-inch display as we felt that it is a very compact handset. While we prefer the IPS LCD one on the Cherry Mobile Cosmos S, this one works amazingly well too.

OS, Apps and UI

The phone runs on Android 4.2.1 Jellybean and is layered with a skin of icons, customization and CM’s apps. To put it frankly, we’re not a fan of the said icons as we already saw CM go almost stock on phones such as the Cosmos S. While their skin is still quite inconsistent across devices, the company is getting better at it at every release nonetheless.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

Like we’ve said, included here are CM’s usual apps and a 3rd-party keyboard. For some reason, CM wants this phone to be somewhat full of colorful & ‘cute’ design elements. Whether that looks appealing or not is up to you.

To add, the on-screen buttons are confusing too as the back and multitasking buttons are switched. You’ll just have to get used to that.

Multimedia & Camera

The speakers are found at the lower left part of the phone. It is fine for the most part; it’s not remarkably loud or clear but it’s definitely workable.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

Video playback on the other hand is great, especially with the 4.7-inch Super AMOLED display. The experience won’t disappoint on this one.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

Now, let’s take a look at that 18 megapixel BSI camera that protrudes at the top left corner of the back. Like we’ve said on our other reviews, we won’t let the megapixel count speak for the camera; let the images do that for themselves.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

We have to say that based on the quality of the images, the camera tends to wash out its colors. It’s also not as sharp as we want it to be. While it does succeed in making dark environments light up by a bit, we aren’t that impressed with the overall product.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

The same can’t be said about the video capture’s elements, and it’s slightly more inconsistent. It’s great in normal lighting – sharp & detailed yet washed out – but it drops a lot of frames in below-average lighting. See for yourself below:

Performance & Benchmarks

The CM Cosmos X is fairly fast in our use, though there are little hiccups here and there at times. It runs on a 1.2GHz quad-core CPU & 1GB RAM, just like its other Cosmos siblings, so don’t expect this to run faster or slower in real life use such as playing games, browsing the net or just breezing through the interface (benchmarks are slightly lower).

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X benchmarks

The phone scored 13,777 on Antutu, 3,987 on Quadrant & 47.1 on Nenamark 2.

Connectivity & Battery Life

With the Cosmos X, we didn’t encounter any problems with connecting to networks. It worked and handled everything just fine in our experience.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

In our battery test, looping video at 50% brightness & audio, the phone managed to deplete a full 100% in 4 hours, which is significantly lower than most phones we’ve tested.

Conclusion

I’m going to make this as easy as possible; we’d rather have you save a little more for CM’s other Cosmos phones. While the phone features dual-SIM capabilities, a good Super AMOLED display and a few freebies in the box, the design, UI, camera & battery is enough to make you look elsewhere.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X

However, if you’re really sticking to a budget of Php9,999, then there you have it. If you do happen to take this phone over the others, you’re getting a wonderful (but dirt-attracting) flipcover and a red rear casing included too. Overall, this is an ‘okay’ phone with an ‘okay’ price.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X specs:
4.7-inch Super AMOLED HD display
1.2GHz quad-core processor
1GB RAM
4GB internal storage
micro SD up to 32GB
18MP BSI camera with LED flash
8MP BSI front-facing
WiFi b/g/n
3G HSPA+
Bluetooth
GPS
Dual SIM
Android 4.2 Jellybean
1,800mAh battery
Php9,999

What we liked about it:

  • Great Super AMOLED display
  • Freebies!

What we didn’t like about it:

  • Inconsistent CM skin
  • Sub-par battery life
  • Washed-out camera
  • Dull & plastic design

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The post Cherry Mobile Cosmos X Review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 review

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

Not too long ago, we’ve posted our first impression of the Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 where we took you to a quick tour of its externals. Now it’s time to get more up close and personal with the Cosmos middle child to see whether it’s got some muscle to go along with its deceiving SGS3/Nexus 4 body.

Display

Before we go into its inner workings, let’s first tackle the X2’s gorgeous 4.8-inch display which is easily one of its strongest features.

cherry mobile cosmos x2

Although the market has almost entirely succumbed to the 5-inch 1080p craze, one can’t simply rule out the 720p-touting handsets, especially when you got a Super-AMOLED screen to go hand in hand with those pixels just like on the X2.

The result is an absolute eye-candy. It’s got a decent outdoor legibility, impressive color reproduction and great viewing angle which was actually a bit surprising considering that it isn’t IPS (well at least that’s what’s written on its specs sheet).

cm cosmos x2

At its dimmest, the X2’s screen is still relatively bright compared to other phones on the same league. It’s good in most cases as you wouldn’t have the need to crank up the brightness to get a decent view, but it does take a toll on its battery which we’ll discuss in the latter segment of this post.

Multimedia

One of the perks of having a superb screen on your smartphone is watching flicks or viewing high-res pictures. But having a good display is one thing, delivering a seamless movie playback is another.

cosmos x2

Fortunately, the Cosmos X2 was able to deliver quite well on both of these areas thanks to its 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1GB RAM setup. Regardless if we ran the whole film from start to finish, or just skipping through the various section of the flick, we didn’t see even a hint of lag on the X2.

In terms of sound output, we weren’t exactly blown away by it, but it’s certainly not the worst in class either. The sound coming out of its loudspeaker is loud enough to fill a small room, but can be a little soft outdoors or inside a fairly large room.

cosmos x2 back

Now if you’re the type who often listens to tracks on your smartphone through its audio jack, then I strongly suggest to buy a decent ear/headphone along with the X2 as the one that came with is just plain crap. It’s one of those clunky, thin-cabled headsets that are lucky to last a whole week’s worth of use.

But the problem here is that not all earphones are compatible with the X2. Yes, it has the typical 3.5mm audio port, but the threads are fashioned a little differently than usual. As such, it’s best if you bring the handset if you’re trying out a set of plugs for it.

Performance and Benchmarks

Since the handset was pretty much breezing through all of the basic tasks we’ve thrown its way, we decided to give its engine a workout. That comprised of playing Asphalt 7 while leaving the Facebook and Twitter app running on the background and fetching feeds over Wi-Fi.

cm cosmos x2 specs

Considering the fair amount of strain brought by those apps, we have to say that we were impressed with how well the X2’s internals handled it. In-game lags are barely noticeable, transitions from menus to menus we’re rather quick and loading times were fairly snappy.

Now for the sake of keeping score, we’ve ran our usual synthetic benchmarks on the Cosmos X2 and here are the results that we’ve got.

cosmos x2 benchmark

AnTuTu scored it 13578. Meanwhile, it scored 4026 on Quadrant Standard. On the GPU side, it got a respectable 45.5fps on NenaMark 2 benchmark.

gpu benchmark

OS, UI and Apps

The Cosmos X2 runs on an almost stock version of Android 4.2.1 right off the bat. Thus, it’ll be a familiar ride for those who’ve used an Android handset before. However, if you look close enough, you’ll find out that the X2 is equipped with “Smart Stay” which works exactly like the one found on the Samsung Galaxy S3.

UI

In addition to Samsung-inspired enhancements, Cherry Mobile has also added a few of their in-house apps like the Cherry Play (their own app store), “e-Warranty” and Software Update which makes it easier for users to update the firmware via OTA.

Third-party app compatibility was never a concern during our time with the X2. However, we encountered some “Force Closes” along the way, particularly during check-ins on location-based apps like Foursquare. After doing some research, we were able to zero in on the culprit behind it; the com.google.android.maps.jar was missing.

Cosmos X2 UI

Ironing out this small issue should be fairly easy to do, provided that you’re well-versed with APIs and SDKs. However, I think it’s fair to say that CM should’ve been keener in checking the X2’s library else these kind of things can and will happen. In any case, let’s hope that they release an update to fix this.

Camera

After seeing the output of its two other siblings (Cosmos Z and (Cosmos S) we pretty much had an idea on what to expect from the X2’s rear camera.

Being equipped with the same 18MP BSI sensor, the imaging performance we got was almost identical to the Z and the S. Sadly, we also noticed the same inconsistency in image quality that we were keen to point out on the Cosmos S review. That said, depending on the lighting condition you’re shooting in, you’re either going to get a relatively crisp shot (well-lit scenario) or a really crappy one (dim conditions).

In addition to taking pictures, the 18MP snapper at the back is also capable of shooting 1080p videos which is acceptable in most occasions. It’s not going to replace your camcorder anytime soon, but the quality is decent enough to meet most users’ basic video recording needs.

Battery life

Another thing that’s rather surprising about the Cosmos X2 is how well its battery pack held up during our time with it. We were able to get through a day’s worth of moderate use while still having a few ounces of power left for some music listening to last the entire journey back home.

battery life

The screenshot above is the battery life we got on a single full charge while watching HD movies on the X2 with the brightness and volume set to 50% and data connectivity left on. Meanwhile, the one below shows the output we got while playing Asphalt 7 while leaving the Wi-Fi on and a bunch of other social media apps running on the background.

cosmos x2 battery life

Conclusion

After spending an ample amount of time with the Cosmos X2, we can definitively say that there’s more to this fellow than just looks. It’s a great all-rounder that can pretty much handle most of your smartphone needs, plus it’s got a very respectable display that is certainly a treat to look at.

Although we’ve pointed out some minor drawbacks on the X2, we feel that those aren’t gonna be enough to put down this decent midrange Android smartphone. That said, the only question now is which one of the Cosmos quartet is the right fit for you?

What we liked about it:

* Impressive display quality
* Good over-all performance
* Affordable price tag

What we did not like:
* Cheap pre-bundled earphones
* Location-based apps issues

The post Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos S Review

Bob Freking Leave a comment

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

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

Design and Construction

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

COSMOS S

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

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

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

COSMOS S SIDES

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

Display

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

COSMOS S DISPLAY

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

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

OS, Apps and UI

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

COSMOS S SCREENSHOT

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

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

Multimedia & Camera

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

cosmos s shot

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

cosmos s

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

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

Performance & Battery Life

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

BENCHMARK CM COSMOS S

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

Call Quality & Battery

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

COSMOS S BACK

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

Conclusion

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

COSMOS S CM

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

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

What we liked about it:

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

What we didn’t like about it:

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

The post Cherry Mobile Cosmos S Review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z Review

Abe Olandres Leave a comment

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

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

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

Design and Construction.

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

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

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

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

Display.

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

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

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

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

OS, UI and Apps.

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

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

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

Multimedia and Camera.

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Performance and Benchmarks.

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

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

Our benchmark results show some struggle by the Cosmos Z in the graphics department, mainly due to the number of pixels it has to push per frame. Nevertheless, the numbers are still good enough with a Nenamark 2 score of 33.9fps.

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

Call Quality, Connectivity and Battery Life.

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

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

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

Conclusion.

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

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

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

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

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

The post Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z Review appeared first on YugaTech | Philippines, Tech News & Reviews.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 first impression

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

Cherry Mobile has finally sent us all 4 of their latest Cosmos series offerings, one of which is the 4.8-inch handset called the Cosmos X2. And while we’re still prepping for our final review, we thought of sharing some of our early insights about the new and exciting mid-range smartphone under the Cosmos lineup.

We’ll kick things off with the X2’s design, which to me is one of the stronger traits of this handset. Although I’m really not a fan of its glossy, all-plastic body, I have to admit that the X2 doesn’t come off as another cheapo, rebranded Android handset.

Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2

At a distance (and when viewed head on), the X2 looks deceivingly like the Nexus 4 with its rounded edges and all black front panel. However, this vague sense of similarity quickly dissipates once you flip the phone on its back, revealing its glossy, non-glassed posterior which offers little to no resistance to fingerprints and smudges.

Although the front panel is mainly occupied by the X2’s 4.8-inch S-AMOLED display, the maker was still able to make room for an earpiece and a 5MP front-facing camera at the top, as well as a pair of capacitive buttons (Menu and Back) and physical Home button at the bottom.

CM Cosmos X2

There’s a faintly protruding, pseudo-metallic rim on the sides which creates a slight separation between the front panel and back side. Along this section, you’ll come across a pair of ports for the audio jack (top) and Micro-USB (bottom).

The Cosmos X2’s priced component, its slightly bulging 18MP main camera, is placed at the top-center portion of its posterior with a couple of LED flashes just below it. Also found on this side of the fence, are a pair of tiny holes (near the camera and near the bottom) which I assume is for the microphones, as well as a fairly sizeable hole for the loudspeaker.

Cosmos X2

But the thing I liked the most about the X2’s design is the ergonomic placement of the buttons, particularly the power button and the volume rocker. These buttons are placed on each side of the phone and are comfortably within reach of my thumb (Power) and middle/index fingers (Volume) without having to shift the way I hold the X2.

Rounding up the list of some of Cosmos X2’s notable components are the Micro-SD card slots and two SIM card slots which are found underneath the plastic back cover. Albeit these slots aren’t tucked beneath the 2,200mAh power source, one still has to remove the battery pack in order to access it.

Cosmos X2 specs

From the design standpoint, we have to say that the Cosmos X2 is one of the more decent looking handsets we’ve seen in recent times. We wouldn’t go as far as putting it among the leagues of the HTC One or Sony Xperia Z1, but it’s definitely not something that you would be ashamed to take out of your pocket.

So the Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 has the looks. The question now is does it have the fire power to go along with its pretty face? Stay tuned for our full review in a week or so to find that out.

Note: The Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 is now available in the country and retails for Php11,699.

Editor’s Note: You can also read our Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z review here.

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