Cherry Mobile has come a long way since they entered the local scene some five years ago. And they decided to celebrate their 5th year of doing business in the country by launching a limited edition smartphone called Cosmos One.
The Cosmos One has caused quite a stir because of its sub-Php7k price tag that’s almost unheard of for an octa-core smartphone. In this review, we’ll delve a little deeper in to this handset to see what other things this phone has to offer besides its affordable price tag.
Design and Construction
In terms of its design, what’s a bit interesting is that the Cosmos One comes with what-could-be a faux leather back cover (like the Galaxy Note 3). However, upon closer inspection, it’s actually just some cleverly designed polycarbonate material that mimics the texture of leather.
Everything else seems pretty standard — the power button on the right side along with a dedicated camera shutter button. Volume rocker is on the left.
The 14MP rear camera at the back is flushed almost near the top corner together with the LED flash. This is perhaps the reason why the camera shutter button is also positioned near the top end (for left-finger shutter clicking).
Display and Multimedia
The real estate at the front is mainly occupied by the handset’s 5.5-inch full-HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 2 laid on top of it for added resistance against scratches.
For the most part, the display delivered to our expectation. It’s not as gorgeous as, say the Magnum S, but it’s certainly not the worst out there.
The viewing angles are decent on all sides, all portions of the panel were responsive to touch inputs and the color reproduction on the positive side. One thing we didn’t like about it though is that the brightness could use a little bump, especially when you typically use your smartphone outdoors.
As pleased as we were about its display, we can’t say the same thing about its built-in speakers. Not only was the output weak, the quality is somewhat below our standards. Well, I guess this is one of the things that CM (or the OEM) had to sacrifice to keep the prices down.
OS, UI and Apps
The Cosmos One comes pre-installed with Android 4.4.2 Kitkat right out of the box and feel really smooth and responsive. There are a few customizations made by CM and the rest are mostly from Android’s Vanilla UI.
As far as pre-installed third-party apps go, CM added a Gameloft App store and TouchPal X on top of their usual apps like Pinoy App shop, Cherry Play and Cherry Fun Club. Sadly most of these apps cannot be uninstalled, which eats up a good portion of the phone’s internal storage.
On the bright side, users can pop a micro-SD in the phone to expand its default 8GB (6.08GB usable) internal storage and not have to worry about the pre-installed apps taking a bite out of the phone’s memory.
Performance and Benchmark
The CM Cosmos One comes with the same set of internal hardware that we often see on mid-range to high-end local phones in the market. As such, we pretty much have an idea on what kind of performance its engine can spit out.
We didn’t experience any lags when we’re navigating through the various menus or doing simple tasks on the phone. It was also able to handle 3D games quite nicely and the engine didn’t generate too much heat, making the backside warm in the process, when we we’re playing games on it.
Camera
Most of the images we took using the CM Cosmos One’s 14MP rear camera were pretty good. The pictures came out with a decent amount of sharpness and contrast, although we noticed that the native camera app has a tendency to underexpose the shots by -1EV even though it’s set to ±0EV.
Having said that, it’s best to check your images first or just set your camera app to +1EV when you’re planning to take pictures using the handset’s rear camera.
Speaking of taking pictures, it’s good to note that the CM Cosmos One comes with a physical shutter button located just above the power button. The shutter button can launch the camera app even if the phone is on Sleep which is ideal if you want to take a quick snap.
However, we find the placement of the button rather odd and we think that most right-handed users will also find it difficult to use the shutter button when taking a landscape-oriented photo. And since the shutter key is placed near the power button, some users may also interchange the one from other at, especially during the first few days of using the phone.
Battery Life
The Cosmos One runs on a removable 2400mAh battery which, in theory, should keep all of its components, particularly its 5.5-inch 720p display, running for around 10-12 hours on a single full charge on light to moderate use minus the “always-on” mobile data.
For the most part, the battery managed to give us a decent mileage which was hovering around the 9-10 hours from full charge. It’s not that bad considering that we turn on the handset’s Wi-Fi from time to time to connect to our mobile hotspot and check for feeds on our social media account.
Above is the screenshot that we took after we ran our usual battery test which involves looping an HD video using MX Player whilst setting the phone on airplane mode and dropping the brightness down to 50% and the volume to 0%.
Conclusion
Cherry Mobile’s success in the local scene is primarily based on the fact that their devices have decent specs and are competitively priced. Both statements hold true for the Cosmos One which pretty much have the same configuration and price as the CM Pulse but with a slightly bigger screen.
Cherry Mobile Cosmos One specs:
5.5-inch HD IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 2
1.4GHz MediaTek 6592M octa-core processor
Mali-450MP GPU
1GB RAM
8GB storage
Up to 64GB via microSD
HSPA+
Dual-SIM capable (standard and micro)
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
USB OTG
14MP rear camera with BSI and LED flash
8MP front-facing camera
Miracast support
Li-Ion 2,400mAh battery
Android 4.4.2 KitKat
Price: Php6,999
This handset is a good all-around device that handles most, if not all your smartphone needs without breaking the bank. It offers decent performance, average camera performance, and a large real estate on the front for watching movies on the go. If you can let the poor audio quality pass by investing on a decent headset or earphone, we feel that you wouldn’t go wrong with this smartphone.
What we like about it:
* Respectable build
* Large and responsive display with Gorilla Glass
* Decent performance
* Dual-SIM
* Competitive price tag
* Good mileage-per-charge
* Decent Camera performance
* Physical shutter button
What we didn’t like about it:
* Below average sound output
* Screen brightness (a bit too dim)
* Most pre-installed apps cannot be uninstalled
* Camera has underexposes most shots
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