Cherry Mobile Life Review: Good Smartphone for the Price Point

Cherry Mobile Life Review: Good Smartphone for the Price Point

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Great choice for budget conscious users

The great thing about technology is that it’s always evolving in favor of the consumer. Last year’s high end specs are now in mid-tier smartphones and last year’s mid-tier specs are now in entry level smartphones.The Cherry Mobile Life is a great example of this. It comes packing a 1.3GHz dual-core processor, 5 megapixel camera and Android 4.2 Jellybean at an affordable price of P2,999, which would be unheard of last year. It begs the question: is it a steal considering the price and specs?

Cherry Mobile Life specs

  • 1.3GHz dual core MediaTek MT6572 processor
  • Mali 400 graphics
  • 512MB RAM
  • 4GB internal storage expandable via MicroSD up to 32GB
  • 4-inch WVGA display (480 x 800 pixels) 233 ppi
  • dual sim, dual standby
  • 5 megapixel rear facing camera with LED flash
  • VGA front facing camera
  • 3G/HSPA+, WiFi, WiFi hotspot, Bluetooth 3.0
  • GPS, A-GPS
  • 1,500 mAh battery
  • Android 4.2 Jellybean
  • SRP: P2,999

Hardware and Build Quality

What we admire about Cherry Mobile is their drive to improve their product’s build quality. Despite being an entry level smartphone, the device feels solid and well built, and didn’t creak, no matter how hard we tried.

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It also has this premium vibe to it because of the pearl white back.

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Display

The display on the Cherry Mobile Life is a 4-inch, WVGA one with 480 x 800 resolution. During our tests, we noticed that the display was a little dim even when it was set to a 100% brightness. We also encountered some difficulty in using the device under direct sunlight. This maybe due to the lack of an ambient light sensor which adjusts the brightness automatically. Overall, we found that the display of the Cherry Mobile Life is generally clear and is adequate enough for viewing pictures and watching movies.

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Performance and Gaming

The device is powered by a dual core Mediatek 6572 processor running at 1.3GHz. The performance of the Cherry Mobile Life was generally snappy and smooth when doing basic tasks. As far as gaming is concerned, you’ll be able to run games like Plants vs. Zombies 2 without too many problems, even with the limited 512MB of RAM. Much more graphically intensive games may not fare so well because of the limited RAM.

Camera

Photos are relatively decent looking with the 5-megapixel camera, although picture quality takes a large hit when taking photos in low-light conditions.

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We found that the built-in flash didn’t help a lot when taking photos in low-light, which is understandable, given the limitations of the sensor in the device.

Battery

We found that the 1,500 mAh battery was above average. With light to moderate use, the phone lasted around 15 hours on a single charge. With heavy use (aming and video, social networks, internet), we got around 8 to 9 hours of battery life.

Verdict

We recommend the Cherry Mobile Life to budget conscious consumers working with a very tight budget. If you bought last year’s entry level devices, you will never get these specs at a Php 3,000 price point. The Cherry Mobile Life is a good entry level smartphone considering the features that you get.

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