Cherry Mobile Omega Spectrum Review

Every time Cherry Mobile releases a new device, news easily spreads in the community like wild-fire. The new Omega Spectrum promises to counter the quad-core phone from MyPhone, the Rio. Nevertheless, the Omega Spectrum delivers a great price and quality. Here is our review.

DESIGN

At first look, Cherry Mobile Omega Spectrum looks a bit standard and normal as a handheld device. Judging by its color and whatnot, it is not pretty astounding and flashy as MyPhone’s Rio. But when we unboxed it, the Spectrum is surprisingly beautiful and classy.

The glass is made out of Asahi Dragontrail making it uber-protected and gives the customer a great display. The firm hold, smooth curves and a matte-finish at the back of the device make it really stand out as a quad-core challenger to the colorful and youthful looking MyPhone Rio. If you don’t want a phone with flashy color, Omega Spectrum offers a more professional look. And yeah, it kinda looks like Omega HD 2x too!

Cherry Mobile Omega Spectrum sports a 5-inch HD IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 resolution. Colors and shades are definitely vibrant and delightful. 3 capacitive panels are located in front of the device, on/off button and volume rockers are at the right side of the device and a 8-megapixel camera is at the center back of the device. A little protrusion of the camera (a few millimeters perhaps) is the only problem with its design, it basically attracts scratches and hardware problems so a minus points for that feature.

In addition to this, the speakers of the Omega Spectrum offers a premium sound quality in which you can enjoy music like any other speakers out in the market. Good job, Cherry Mobile!

There are times that when you are busy, it is difficult to turn on the screen of your device just to see if someone texted you or missed call you. The Omega Spectrum has a notification light that’s pretty helpful if you want to know if your phone received something. It is located beside the front facing camera.

PERFORMANCE

The Omega Spectrum is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM 23550 processor compared to the Mediatek processor of the Rio. I noticed lag in terms of navigating the menus, actually. And to be honest, it made me a bit frustrated because a phone with 4 cores is supposed to be fast and can handle medium to high demanding applications. Yes, Broadcom is a cheaper alternative to Mediatek, but isn’t as reliable and fast as the latter. 

Omega Spectrum scored 13,835 points from the Antutu Benchmark and 3161 points on Quadrant Benchmark making it technically capable of running not-too-shabby graphical games like Temple Run and Flappy Bird.

Surprisingly, Spectrum’s battery lasts for at least a day for me with WiFi and several hours of gameplay.  That’s definitely a plus points for a power user like me.

Calling and Messaging are the simplest uses of a phone. The Omega Spectrum would not let you down in terms of these. Of course, its dual SIM capable so you don’t have to bring 2 phones.

CAMERA

Cherry Mobile Omega Spectrum has 8-megapixel back camera which captures quality photos however, in my opinion, color saturation is a bit dull. The camera app is quite laggy when capturing photos and accessing menus. Maybe in the near future, Cherry Mobile would make an update for this. You will be the judge whether it is a great camera or not. But for me, it’s a-okay.

VERDICT

drum roll please

It was imperative for Cherry Mobile to launch a phone that can rival the highly successful MyPhone Rio. It was their move to win the dwindling interest of its followers, especially when their competitor successfully marketed their colorful and affordable quad-core device.

Offered at similar price point,  Omega Spectrum fell short in meeting my expectations. But don’t get me wrong though. Its overall design pleases me, except its matte and dust-attracting matte back panel and slightly protruded camera. I am, of course, more particular to the value of my money – like most, if not all, of us are. At PhP4,999, I just feel that it’s quite expensive for its overall performance. If I were to be given a choice between Flare S2 and this one, I’d get the former immediately as it has better camera and more efficient processor (but smaller screen and battery capacity)

SPECIFICATIONS

• 1.2GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM 23550 processor
• 1GB RAM
• 5-inch HD IPS display, 1280 x 720 resolution
• 4GB storage (possibly expandable via microSD)
• 8-megapixel camera with flash
• 2-megapixel front camera
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, GLONASS, Miracast ready, USB OTG capable
• 3G
• Dual-SIM
• 2000mAh battery
• Android 4.2
• Php 4,999

Gianfranco Viterbo

Gianfranco is the co-founder of gadgetpilipinas.net. He graduated from Far Eastern University. A Psychology student turned tech-savvy. He's currently the HR Supervisor of Blip Media and one of the content producers of Gadget Pilipinas. He enjoys playing competitive video games and binge-watch American TV series.