Cherry has finally unveiled its first 5G phones for the Philippines, and it looks like the Aqua SV might just be one of the best phones to come out from the local brand in a long time. Aside from looking like a gorgeous budget phone thanks to its curved 90Hz OLED panel, the Cherry Aqua SV also looks to be a solid choice for gamers, thanks to its fairly powerful MediaTek Dimensity 810. We’ve already reviewed a phone last year rocking the same processor, and to its credit, it performed fairly well for what it was. Will the Aqua SV get the same high marks when it comes to gaming?
For our gaming test with the Aqua SV, we used Gamebench to measure metrics for the games we used for testing: Asphalt 9, Apex Legends Mobile, and Genshin Impact. For the settings, we maxed out the graphics on both Asphalt 9 and Apex Legends Mobile, while we tested Genshin Impact on both low and medium graphics settings. We also pit the Aqua SV against the POCO M4 Pro 5G and Infinix Zero 5G–two of its closest rivals–to see how they fare when it comes to gaming.
Starting off with Asphalt 9, it’s interesting to see that despite the Dimensity 810 being more of a mid-range 5G processor, we managed to run the game in 60FPS–and do so with flying colors. Running Apex Legends Mobile was a flawless experience on the Aqua SV: at ultra graphics and high FPS, hitting the 40FPS cap is a walk in the park.
Things get interesting when it comes to Genshin Impact. While the POCO M4 Pro 5G was struggling running the game at low graphics despite also using a Dimensity 810 processor, the overall performance is much better on the Aqua SV. We were able to run Genshin Impact comfortably at medium graphics while blasting our way through mobs–and even managed to push the graphics on high and still get acceptable performance.
Compared to the Infinix Zero 5G, which uses a newer Dimensity 900 processor, we’re impressed at how the Aqua SV was able to match the Zero 5G in running Genshin Impact at medium graphics.
However, the Aqua SV is able to one-up off both the Zero 5G and the M4 Pro 5G for being able to run Asphalt 9 at 60FPS even when setting the graphics to high. The Aqua SV’s performance in Asphalt 9 is better than the M4 Pro 5G despite using the same processor–which means that the Dimensity 810 is properly optimized on Cherry’s offering.
Overall, Cherry did a good job with the Aqua SV in choosing the right set of internals–Dimensity 810, 8GB RAM, 128GB UFS 2.2 storage–to make it both 5G-capable and decent enough for heavy gaming.
