Cherry Mobile Flare J1 Review

Last December, Cherry Mobile has announced that one of their affordable Android smartphone is going on sale and it’s the Cherry Mobile Flare J1. The hardware of the smartphone is on-par with most decent entry-level Android smartphone today but still, the price of the Cherry Mobile J1 is still a steal for its specs at P1,999.

Hardware

It’s made up of plastic and it’s a little bit thick for my taste but I guess there’s nothing wrong with that because again, the smartphone is affordable and it still looks gorgeous to me. What do I mean by that? Well, at the back, the smartphone design is just simple but not ugly while the sides feature a flat design, which makes the phone less desiring to hold.

However, the chrome design on the design of the smartphone adds the beauty to the smartphone. In addition to that, the black bezels of the smartphone make the smartphone look even better because it looks like the smartphone doesn’t have a bezel when you’re looking at the display is turned off from afar. One thing that some users might be turned off is the lacked of the notification LED and the capacitive button backlighting.

The smartphone packs a dual sim and a microSD card slot inside and what’s weird about this laptop is that it has a non-removable battery.  Speaking of battery, the battery of the smartphone was actually decent. I was able to use the smartphone for almost a day and for gaming, this smartphone won’t even last a day. But for me, I think the Cherry Mobile Flare J1 did a pretty good job. Unfortunately, there’s no OTG on this smartphone and the audio quality wasn’t the best that you can hear.

Display

One of the things that I really didn’t like about this smartphone is its display. The display of the smartphone is bad. The viewing angles weren’t that good and the colors are a little bit washed out. But again, this smartphone is affordable that’s why you have to make some compromises to make this smartphone cheap.

Software and Performance

For its price, the Cherry Mobile Flare J1 is pretty good. For starters, this smartphone packs an Android 5.1 inside. It’s really good to see a smartphone with Android 5.1 at this price range, there are only a few smartphones that have this operating system at its price range.

The smartphone doesn’t have a complex UI. This one is fast, swift, and it looks like a launcher from Nova or a Nexus. It’s clean but the washed-out display ruins the color experience of the smartphone.

There aren’t much to see on the smartphone’s apps but you don’t get pretty big storage with it so I strongly suggest that you get a MicroSD for this one. You only get around less than 2GB of storage which is a downer for some people. When it comes to gaming, it can play some 3D games but heavy games would have a problem on this one.

Camera

The smartphone packs an 8-Megapixel Rear Camera and it wasn’t a photographers dream. The smartphone doesn’t take good images despite at a good lighting conditions.

Verdict

The smartphone might not pack a 64-bit processor or least an HD display but you should remember that this is an affordable smartphone and it’s only at P1,999. For its price, the smartphone was a good one. It fares pretty well and it’s a good budget smartphone.