Cloudfone Excite 400D Review: The Exciting affordable Android phone

Cloudfone Excite 400D is really one of the most exciting smartphone in the market right now. Why? Because it packs an exciting specifications but it still have the affordable price in the market for its hardware. The phone is set to compete with Cherry Mobile Flare, the most affordable dual-core smartphone in the market right now.  The Cloudfone Excited 400D is a Dual-Core and Dual-Sim Android smartphone that has a SRP of P4,499. CloudFone gave the phone to me for review and so far, I like the phone and its features. So what do I think of the phone? Can it beat the Cherry Mobile Flare? Check it out after the break.


Hardware

The Back covers

When you first look at the phone, you’ll notice that it does look like any other Android phone from the market. It is made up of pure plastic in the black and glass on the front. The phone has a much cleaner 3 capacitive Android buttons – The Menu, Home and Back button. Some phones still even use the 4 capacitive Android buttons and I don’t really like that. At the back, you can see the glossy and fingerprint-attractive back cover with cloudfone’s small logo at the bottom. The design is kinda neat., there are no other markings in the back. Thankfully, Cloudfone brings us a free back cover. You can choose from Red, Blue and Yellow back covers. Reminds me of the Nokia Lumia

4 sides of the Cloudfone Excite 400D

It packs a 4-inch screen, which is kind of bluer than most displays. I’m not really why is it like that. The screen doesn’t have ghosting or any other problems. Just the blue-r display. I really hope that there’s a fix for that. Nonetheless, the display has a WVGA resolution which is already good for browsing the internet and playing games on the 4-inch IPS display. For me, if you have a 4-inch display it must have at least a WVGA resolution.

The phone doesn’t really surprise me when it comes to connectivity. Of course the phone packs a 3.5mm audio jack and the Micro-USB and as expected, the phone packs a dual-sim slot but there’s only one slot that supports HSDPA.  Not really a deal breaker except for those people who are using both their mobile data on their two Sim Cards. Beside the SIM card slot is the MicroSD card slot that can hold up to 32 GB. It is not  hot-swappable because the battery is blocking it. The speaker is also placed at the back that gives me a not-so-good but still decent sound. But c’mon guys, why would expect that much on a phone that is only priced below P5,000.

Speaking of battery, CloudFone listed it in their specifications that the phone has a 1200mAh battery  but the one that I got has a 1400 mAh battery. I’m not really sure what’s the real rate of the battery. But the battery is much better than the flare because it last up to 14 hours to me. It’s not that long and I really suggest that you get a power bank or an extra battery if you are a heavy user.

Here’s what inside the box

Camera

The camera of the Cloudfone Excite 400D is not that exciting. Its camera is actually one of its weakest points. The phone’s camera app has some bugs that will force to close the app. I really suggest that you get a 3rd party app for the camera.  When it comes to quality of the images of the Cloudfone Excite 400D, the images has a lot of noise whether you’re taking a photo at low-light environment or even at the well-lit scenarios. Another annoying thing about this is that the images are really dark than normal. Sometimes, it’s really frustrating to take a shot at low-light because the LED Flash doesn’t really help that much.  Take a look at the images that I took using the Cloudfone Excite 400D:

The phone cannot record in HD but the quality isn’t that plausible. I was really hoping for a better recording. The phone can only record .3gp and not .mp4.  IBut c’mon guys, this phone is just P4,499. Here, take a look at my video recording sample of the Cloudfone Excite 400D:
Software

The Cloudfone Excite 400D is running on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean already. That’s why the apps and some simple tasks are smooth and it loads easily. Swiping to the app drawer and photos are such a breeze thanks to the combination of Android 4.1 and 1 GHz Dual-Core Mediatek MT6577 processor. I didn’t need to have another launcher just to have those silky smooth transitions.

One reason why I’m happy about CloudFone Android Smartphones is because they aren’t adding to much bloatwares and unnecessary apps on the phone. CloudFone and CloudStore is still here in the phone and there’s the Media3D app in where you can check out the weather, photos and videos with a cool 3D effects. It is not useful to some but it is really fancy for me to check out my media files with 3D effects.

The performance of the phone was great. I’ve tried different games in the phone like GTA: Vice City and it performed really well at high settings. I really didn’t expect that GTA:VC will have a very high frame rates at that. I expect that most games will work on the device.

The benchmark that I got didn’t fail my expectations. I was expecting that the phone will only have a score of 6500 at Antutu but it got a score of 6881. Not bad. A pretty high score for a phone like this.

Verdict

This isn’t the cheapest smartphone around but this one is one of the best for its price. Not all smartphones could have a dual-core processor with a price like this. The construction is made up of plastic but it is really sturdy and I really feel that it won’t break easily.  The Dual-Core MediaTek processor and the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is really a fast combination. But the smartphone has a mediocre battery life and the camera wasn’t that good too. But for P4,499, I think the phone is worth the price and I bet you’ll love the phone too.

Pros:
Affordable
The construction is solid

Cons:
Camera was mediocre
Display was blue-ish

Q: Koya, okay po ba ang cellphone na ito?
A: Yes

Q: Is the Cloudfone Excite 400D better than the Cherry Mobile Flare?
A: Yes. I think so.