Cherry Mobile Flare HD Unboxing and First Impressions

How It Looks

The phone shares the same look with the Apollo, although Flare HD’s back cover feels a bit different. Its Sleep/Wake button is located at the top-right corner of the phone. Volume rockers can be found at the upper left side corner of the device. Ports – 3.5mm audio jack and micro-USB – sit just beside the sleep/wake button. Fo a 4.3in device, I find these locations quite conventional. The 3 capacitive buttons look really nice and are well lit too!

The screen looks really nice. It is undeniably HD, but I highly doubt if its dragontrail glass. I looked closely on the quality of its screen, and it’s something that give birth to an additional moniker to Flare HD – HD ng bayan. If they price this within the level I mentioned above, there is no doubt, that this phone will be Cherry’s bestselling device in the 1st quarter of 2014!

The Innards

Based on Antutu Benchmark, Flare HD’s CPU model is MT6589T. This is inaccurate becuase Mediatek did not release a 1.2Ghz variant of the said CPU. If we are to consider what’s written on its technical specifications, Flare HD has a 1.2Ghz MT6589 processor, with MALI-400 GPU. This is, again, a point of contention because, while its CPU model is correct (on paper), Mediatek did not release such with a MALI GPU. Nothing’s really accurate. For all we know, Cherry Mobile probably inadvertently erred and should have put MT6572 on the flyer. Of course, we still have yet to know directly from Cherry Mobile about its details. If you’ve got opinions, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Our comments section can freely take anything you want to say.

It’s also nice to know that the device has a 1GB RAM. That’s a sigh of relief for those who wish to have an entry-level quad core device with a wildly acceptable RAM capacity. It’s 4GB ROM is kinda of a letdown, but that’s already expected for an entry-level phone. Available user space is 1.3GB.

[youtube width=”640″ height=”360″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl2yfLu9Jzk[/youtube]

Another thing that you’ll love about this device is its 12mp rear-facing camera (AF and with LED Flash) and 5mp front facing camera. I can’t say anything yet about the camera but I do hope that it can take good shots.

How about battery life? It’s 1,800mAh, so that should be enough to make the phone up for 12 hours in moderate usage. But we have to try that though. Most of the things I say here are NOT based on full and rigid test as I just received the phone. So, please wait for my full review to validate my initial impressions.

Software

The device is running on Jellybean 4.2.2. Interestingly, this phone has a different custom lockscreen, which I find really intuitive. It actually looks like HTC Sense lockscreen to me. Toggles are available right and you can even easily post Facebook status and tweet right from the lockscreen. It is important though that you download Facebook and Twitter prior to using the quick post/tweet feature form lockscreen.

SRP if the phone is yet to be announced. Availability will be within the 1st quarter of 2014.

That’s all for now, folks! Please let me know if you have any questions about this device. Please hit the comments section below too!