We unbox the Cherry Mobile Tegra Note 7!

It seems we’ve done nothing but unbox products since last week, but that’s usually what happens when a lot of review units suddenly lands all at the same time in the Unbox HQ. Anyway, today we’ll be taking a look at the Cherry Mobile Tegra Note 7. The Tegra Note 7 was released around a year ago by NVIDIA via their partners in other countries, and gained fame in US where it’s sold as the EVGA Tegra Note 7. Obviously NVIDIA has partnered up with local brand Cherry Mobile to distribute the device, and while the innards of the Tegra Note 7 is identical to the one sold by EVGA a few months ago, the outside is a very different story.

Cherry Mobile Tegra Note 7

• 1.8GHz NVIDIA Tegra 4 quad-core CPU
• 72-core NVIDIA GeForce GPU
• 1GB RAM
• 7-inch HD IPS display, 1280 x 800 resolution display
• 16GB internal storage, expandable via microSD up to 32GB
• 5-megapixel rear camera
• VGA front camera
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, GLONASS
• 4,100mAh battery
• 199 x 119 x 9.6mm
• Android Jellybean, can be updated to KitKat via OTA

Packaging and contents

While we talked about locally branded devices are not simply rebranded products, the Cherry Mobile Tegra Note 7 is an exception to that. NVIDIA has tapped the local brand to sell their products here in PH because of the brand’s wide distribution network, and in return they’re able to put their branding (alongside NVIDIA’s of course) on the box of the Tegra Note 7. Aside from Cherry Mobile’s logo on the upper left, the box of the Tegra Note 7 bears little resemblance to the packaging of CM’s other products, as it has a certain polish that only an international brand like NVIDIA can pull off. The box is protected by a carton sleeve that bears the photo of the product within.

Once you take that off, you’ll see the tablet itself, and a few essential accessories. Actually, just two – a USB charger and the accompanying USB cable. The user manual you can probably do without.

First impressions: redesigned on the outside, still the same hardware on the inside

If you do a cursory Google image search for the EVGA Tegra Note 7 tablet, you’ll see that it doesn’t quite look like the device that Cherry Mobile is selling. That’s because the version that CM is selling is a redesigned tablet that’s now being made by Foxconn, the same people who make iPhones for Apple. The futuristic, rubberized back is gone, replaced by a more sedate and conventional looking matte back.

Aside from the 7-inch, HD IPS display, the front of the Tegra Note 7 bears two front facing speakers that put out quite a bit of volume, which is great, since this particular tablet was made for gaming and multimedia.

You’ll find the volume rocker on the top of the device (while it’s oriented sideways) alongside the microSD card slot. The left side of the tablet bears the power button, 3.5mm, USB and micro-HDMI ports. Turn the tablet over, and you’ll see the 5-megapixel camera, and the DirectStylus sitting in its holster.

If you’re wondering what the DirectStylus is, well it’s NVIDIA’s answer to having a pressure sensitive stylus without using a Wacom Digitizer. One of the nice things about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 was that it utilized a Wacom digitizer and an active stylus that knew just how much pressure you were applying to the pen, giving brushes wider strokes just like the real thing.

The problem there is that a Wacom digitizer and an active stylus would substantially increase the price of the product, though going the other way (with a traditional passive stylus) would result in poor performance. NVIDIA’s solution is their DirectStylus, which bridges the gap between an active and passive stylus. In our brief test, the DirectStylus delivered what it says on the tin, though only a more through test will show for sure if the DirectStylus solution is worth it or just another gimmick.

Lest we forget, the Tegra Note 7 is a gaming tablet first and foremost, and to that end it performs just as advertised. It’s AnTuTu score is certainly impressive, as well as its gaming performance in Dead Trigger 2 and Modern Combat 4. What we’re more concerned with is heat – some people have said that NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 generates quite a lot of it during gaming sessions, something that we’ll be closely monitoring while we game with the tablet.

We’ve also seen some of the comments of the people present during the official launch of the device around a week ago, saying that the device lagged a lot when they did their hands-on. To be fair to CM and NVIDIA, we haven’t seen those lag issues during the launch and our time with the tablet, although we’ll definitely keep an eye out and report if our review unit exhibits lag.

That’s it for this unboxing!