Cherry Mobile Flare P1 Review

This year is the year of dual camera smartphones. Smartphones from different brands have now offered a dual camera on the back with different features and functionality. Some of them can be used for zooming, some for wide angle shots, and much more. Well, Cherry Mobile doesn’t want to be left out in the game so they’ve also released the Flare P Series too. Two of them – Flare P1 and Flare P1 Plus, packs a dual lens camera. And today, we’ll review one of them, the Cherry Mobile Flare P1.

Design and Hardware

Look, there’s nothing really to talked about its design as the smartphone packs a simple and very familiar design similar to what we can find from Cherry Mobile smartphones. The smartphone is made up of plastic but that’s what you can get on a smartphone at its price. Nonetheless, the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 has an ergonomic design which feels good to hold in the hand.

But despite its cheap price and a plastic body, there’s no hollow feeling when using the smartphone. It feels solid than I expected which is a plus for this smartphone. At the top of this smartphone is where you can find the headphone jack and also the micro USB port of the smartphone while on the right is the power button and the volume rocker.

The smartphone is a little bit heavy too which adds a little bit of solidness to the smartphone. The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 also packs three capacitive buttons and it doesn’t have backlit buttons.

The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 also has a removable back and you can find the two micro sim card slot and a MicroSD card slot. However, the battery of the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 can’t be removed from the smartphone which is rated at 2350mAh. Oh, and the battery life on the smartphone isn’t amazing. I’m pretty sure that this smartphone will not last in a day of use and you might need to bring your charger or your power bank always with you.

A good display for its price

The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 packs a 5-inch HD display. I’m not saying that the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 has the best display on a smartphone. But for its price range, the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 is actually better than I expected. I was expecting that the display of the smartphone will be washed out but surprisingly it was not. It has a good display for its price as the colors are good however I think that this display doesn’t have the best brightness. But again, the display is quite good for its price.

Not the best performer

The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 doesn’t have the best performance that you can find on a smartphone. It packs a 1.3GHz Quad-Core MediaTek 6580 Processor and only 1GB of RAM. Actually, by just looking at it, you already know that this smartphone is not really made for gaming or for heavy tasks.

For basic apps and light usage, the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 will do just fine, however, multitasking and opening apps simultaneously, you’ll notice that this smartphone will experience some lags. Again, this game isn’t ideal for gaming. Yes, you’ll be able to run games such as Mobile Legends and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas but you have to put it at medium settings to make it playable but expect some slowdown sometimes when playing these games.

It’s running on Nougat

What I love about this smartphone despite having a low specs is that this smartphone was able to run Android 7.0 Nougat. The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 doesn’t have special skins or too many bloats similar to other Cherry Mobile smartphones which are a plus as it avoids lags and slowdowns while navigating on the smartphone. Because again, the smartphone only packs 1GB of RAM which is really small for a 2017 smartphone.

Despite its hardware spec, the Cherry Mobile Flare P1 was still able to do multi-window however it’s not really ideal on the smartphone as this one only packs a small 5-inch display.

The Dual Camera

The Cherry Mobile Flare P1’s biggest selling point is its camera. There’s a dual lens camera at the back and according to Cherry Mobile, you could do bokeh shots thanks to dual lens rear camera. However, In my test, I was not sure if the dual lens camera is the one responsible for the bokeh or blurring.

The blurring of the smartphone is just radial and you could easily notice that when you’re playing with the camera of the smartphone. Anyway, just check out the photos that I took using the smartphone.

Well, the quality? The colors aren’t perfect and it’s a little bit of washed out. The autofocusing of the camera was also slow and the bokeh effect isn’t really the best one. Same with the selfie shots, you could easily notice that the smartphone wasn’t ideal for selfies but hey, there’s a LED flash on the front camera of the smartphone which is nice for taking selfies in the dark.

Verdict

The Cherry Mobile Flare P1 is an affordable smartphone at P3,999. Its biggest selling point is the dual rear camera however in our camera test, we didn’t really have a pleasant experience. The hardware of the smartphone is also top notch but what I like in this smartphone is despite its hardware, Cherry Mobile still managed to have Android 7.0 Nougat in the smartphone.

There are a lot of options at its price range and who do I think will love this smartphone? Well, the Cherry Mobile fans and those who want to try the first dual rear camera smartphone of the brand. There’s nothing really special about this smartphone aside from its affordable price.

The Cherry Mobile smartphone is now available for P3,999.