Glass front, glass rear – these are the striking features of the newly released Cherry Mobile Excalibur. At first glance, this 5-inch Android Smartphone from the company that brought us the Cosmos line projects a very premium and grandeur look. But the Excalibur isn’t just all about how it looks – it has the beauty and the power to stand against another fairly more expensive competitor, the O+ Imagine.
The device has a 5-inch HD IPS display with 720 x 1280 resolution and 294 ppi. At such resolution and PPI, it technically pit against the Lenovo K860. Images and videos look gorgeous on Excalibur’s screen as per my initial run, but this is subject to our further observation, which I will post on our comprehensive review soon.
Both front and back panels are protected with Corning Gorilla Glass technology. We hope that when you see one yourself, you’ll nod and tell us “Damn, tama nga si Gian.” It is also very comfortable to hold, thanks to its chamfered aluminum side bezels. It’s very seldom to find a smartphone with such design and ergonomics with less than PhP10,000 price tag.
At PhP6,999, Excalibur is simply one of the most affordable and great looking octa-core smartphones to date. Armed with an MT6592 SoC, it has everything you need to play your favorite games and use the productivity tools you can download from the Android Playstore. Excalibur has a 1.4Ghz processor, with 1GB of RAM. It also has 8gb of internal memory (6gb available at first boot), which you can easily jack up the storage by putting in MicroSD (up to 16gb). We have verified these specs using Geekbench and CPU-Z, so rest assured that you’re getting the real thing.
You can also play your favorite resource-heavy games such as Real Racing 3, GT Racing 2 and Real Boxing with little to zero issues since it uses a quad-core ARM Mali graphics engine.
The device also has an 8 megapixel Sony BSI camera with LED flash. It has an f2.0 aperture, which basically translates to: THIS ONE SHOULD BE GOOD EVEN IN LOW LIGHT. (The smaller the number, the better and well lighted the photo of your subject would be even in low light environment.) We’ll surely take sample photos pretty soon so don’t forget to monitor our posts about #Excalibur on our Facebook Page.
Sample low light photos
Excalibur can take 2 SIMS – both can be installed in the tray located at the right side of the phone. You just simply have to take the tray out using the SIM ejector tool included in the package. The first SIM card slot supports up to H+, but the second slot is stuck at 2G network. If you’re going to jack in 2 SIMs from 2 networks on this device, be sure to put your most reliable SIM with faster H+ connectivity on the 1st tray.
For quick reference to Excalibur’s full specs, check below. If you’ve got questions about this device, or if you’ve got any requests, please let us know by using the comments section. We’ll give Excalibur the same treatment we did for Flare 3 and Razor 2.0, so join us in our conversation.
Cherry Mobile Excalibur Full Specs
- 5-inch HD IPS display, 294ppi
- Corning Gorilla Glass front and back
- 1.4GHz MediaTek octa-core CPU
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB internal storage
- up to 32GB via microSD
- 8 megapixel Sony BSI rear camera w/ LED flash, F2.0 aperture
- 5 megapixel front camera
- Dual-SIM, Dual-Standby
- HSPA+, 3G
- WiFi
- Bluetooth 4.0
- GPS, A-GPS
- 1,980mAh battery
- Android 4.4 KitKat
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.