Cherry Mobile Desire R7 and R7 Plus Quick Review: Handsome, Do-it-all Phones

Cherry Mobile Desire R7 and R7 Plus Quick Review: Handsome, Do-it-all Phones

Here’s our first look at the Cherry Mobile Desire R7 and R7 Plus!

Local outfit Cherry Mobile has sorta-announced their new budget smartphones, the R7 and R7 Plus through the product flyers that the company sends to its dealers and resellers, but we know very little about the two new phones. What we do know is that both phones are aimed at the highly lucrative budget market, with the R7 priced at Php 4,999 and the R7 Plus at Php 5,999.

Since both phones are under the new Desire product lineup, it stands to reason that Cherry Mobile is positioning both phones as budget devices meant for people who want a good looking phone without having to shell out a lot of cash.

Cherry Mobile R7 specs:

  • 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6737 quad-core processor
  • 2GB of RAM
  • 5-inch HD display (720 x 1280 resolution)
  • 16GB of expandable storage
  • 13-megapixel rear camera with flash
  • 8-megapixel front camera
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, LTE 700MHz
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, Fingerprint scanner
  • 2200mAh battery
  • Android Nougat

Cherry Mobile R7 Plus specs

  • 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6737 quad-core processor
  • 3GB of RAM
  • 5.5-inch full HD display (1920 x 1080 resolution)
  • 16GB of expandable storage
  • 13-megapixel rear camera with flash
  • 8-megapixel front camera
  • Dual SIM
  • 3G, LTE 700MHz
  • WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, Fingerprint scanner
  • 3000mAh battery
  • Android Nougat

Initial Impressions: Good looking plastic exterior that looks and feels like metal

Both the R7 and R7 Plus look like they have metal bodies, but in reality the new phones have bodies that are made from poly carbonate. While metal-looking plastic exteriors aren’t new, the faux-metal finish on the two new phones beat the implementations in other budget devices by a large margin. The metal-polish treatment on both phones make them look more premium than they really are, especially at a distance.

Only a closer look at the phones will you see that they’re actually built from plastic. Even then, there’s a good chance that a casual observer will mistake the two devices as having metal backs.

As far as actual design goes, both phones sport roughly the same look, with minor tweaks and changes to the positioning of the power and volume buttons and the microSD/SIM tray. The R7 is the smaller of the two, owing to its smaller 5-inch HD panel, while the R7 Plus has a bigger 5.5-inch full HD display.

Both have the same placement of the rear camera and fingerprint sensor on the back as well, and have the same 13-megapixel sensor on their primary camera. The R7 is obviously the handier of the two to hold if you have small hands, though it does come with weaker specs than its bigger brother.

Speaking of specs, both phones get MediaTek’s MT6737 quad-core processor running at 1.3GHz and is paired with 16GB of storage though the R7 gets 2GB of RAM while the R7 Plus gets 3GB. Both phones will be able to tap into the new 700MHz LTE frequency of both Globe and Smart, and will be running Android Nougat when they’re released to the market.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to run AnTuTu to check benchmark scores on the units we saw earlier because both devices were still engineering units. It’s safe to say that both phones will probably won’t be breaking speed records thanks to their budget processors – expect the devices to perform well with basic Android apps and struggle with games that require higher processing and number-crunching power.

That’s it for this quick review. As soon as we get our review devices we’ll be giving you our full review for both phones.

Share:

Facebook
Twitter

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *