Full review of the Cherry Mobile Ultra!

While Cherry Mobile was the first local brand to offer a LTE powered phone, it wasn’t what you’d call affordable. Sure, it certainly was a bit less than the lowest tier LTE smartphones that international brands like Sony and Samsung offered, but the price difference wasn’t compelling enough for us to really give our recommendation to the W900 LTE. This changes with the brand’s latest LTE powered smartphone, the Ultra. The Ultra changes the game as far as affordable LTE is concerned, coming in with a price of just Php 8,999, far lower than most other brands’ LTE offering and giving back the price advantage CM enjoyed with its other devices. But does the Ultra perform well enough to be given a recommendation of LTE ng bayan?

Cherry Mobile Ultra specs

• 1.2GHz MSM8926 quad-core processor
• Adreno 305
• 1GB RAM
• 5-inch HD IPS display, 720 x 1280 resolution
• 8GB storage, expandable via microSD up to 64GB
• 13-megapixel rear camera
• 5-megapixel front camera
• Single SIM
• 3G, LTE
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS
• 2000mAh battery
• Android 4.3
• Php 8999

A design reminiscent of the BlackBerry Z10

We’ve been really impressed with the build quality of many of the Cherry Mobile phones we’ve seen recently and the Ultra is not an exception. The phone is very sturdy and well made, and can easily pass off as a device made by a international brand. Speaking of other brands, the facade of the Ultra reminds us a lot of the BlackBerry Z10, especially the white plastic chin on the bottom of the bezel.

While the Ultra uses a white, slightly gloss finish on the back, it’s unlike other gloss finishes that we’ve seen before, possessing a pearlescent finish that’s really pleasing to the eye. Button layout is typical of what you’d expect from an Android device, with the volume rocker on the left and the power/lock button on the right.

While it’s comparatively unremarkable compared to flashier Cherry Mobile products like the Icon which has a faux leather back, the Ultra is still a head turner, albeit in a more subtle way. People we show it to are almost always impressed by the overall build quality and the design of the smartphone, and usually mistake it for a device made by a foreign brand.

The display is a 5-inch, HD IPS panel. The display has good viewing angles and is readable under direct sunlight with the highest setting. While we’ve seen much better displays come out from other local brands, the 5-inch display on the Ultra is good enough for the price.

Fast performance from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor

Cherry Mobile’s latest batch of smartphones packs Qualcomm’s chips in them, and the Ultra is no exception. The Ultra uses a 1.2GHz MSM8226 quad-core processor paired with an Adreno 305 GPU and 1GB of RAM. This hardware configuration gives the Ultra a bit of oomph as far as computing is concerned, managing to notch a relatively high score of 17184 from AnTuTu. That translates into a relatively smooth and lag free user experience. The Ultra is capable of running most of the latest Android games on high without any issues, which is a testament to how well matched the hardware is.

We spent a lot of time with the Ultra and used it as our primary phone during our COMPUTEX coverage last week. Usually we don’t like to take out untested gadgets during important overseas coverages like the one in Taipei, Taiwan, but we were confident that the Ultra could pull through with flying colors. We weren’t disappointed. We used the Ultra as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot to upload articles and videos through FarEast Tone, a telco in Taiwan (we bought a local SIM card for unlimited data) and it managed to post impressive speeds even in just 3G. Of course, part of the credit needs to go to the amazing cellular data capacity of FarEast Tone, but it just shows that as long as the network is there, the Ultra will perform.

As for 4G, well we got decent LTE speeds back home in Manila using Smart and our personal postpaid line provisioned for LTE – as our video above demonstrates, it’s capable of achieving fast LTE speeds here in the PH as long as you have LTE coverage.

The Ultra has been skinned with a custom UI that looks similar to the custom UI that’s present on the Cosmos Z2. The unlock screen of the device gives you quick access to several apps without having to unlock the phone and muck around in the app drawer. We’re happy to report that the Ultra does not have the same software issues that the Cosmos Z2 had when we reviewed it a few months ago, namely it does not randomly restart on its own volition when you use it. On the contrary, the software is quite stable, and we haven’t had any software crashes at all during use.

Good performance out of the 13-megapixel camera

While Cherry Mobile hasn’t offered the best cameras in its other smartphones, they seem to be improving the quality of their optics in some of the phones that they’ve released recently. The Ultra is no exception, and while it’s not the best camera out there, it managed to give relatively clear photos with good color reproduction.

We did notice that the white balance of some of the photos that we took were a bit wonky, but overall the image quality is pretty good.

Good battery life, even with LTE on

Many people have said that the Ultra may not have enough battery endurance to run the entire day, especially with such a small 2000mAh battery inside. In our tests we found that the Ultra had pretty good battery even with LTE on, managing to stay alive for around 8-9 hours, certainly long enough to last til the end of the working day. This was with heavy use though – with light to moderate use, you can probably extend that a couple of hours more. Another nice thing about the SoC on the Ultra is that you’re able to use Qualcomm’s BatteryGuru app on it that can further extend your battery life. It does this by detecting patterns in your daily use, turning off unnecessary apps and services that you don’t utilize everyday, saving your battery and ultimately extending your battery life. The BatteryGuru app will only work with Qualcomm powered smartphones.

The most affordable LTE smartphone that you can buy right now

Is the Ultra the LTE phone you’ve been waiting for? Well, it’s certainly one of the best smartphones that Cherry Mobile has offered this past few months, and we really struggled to find something that we didn’t like about the phone while writing this review. Looking at the big picture, the Ultra certainly is one of the most compelling smartphone offerings to date from the local brand, and is a definite step up over their previous LTE offering, the W900 LTE. It’s currently the most affordable LTE-equipped smartphone right now, and if you’re looking to get LTE on the cheap, you can’t do better than the Ultra.