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| Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie Review; Budget Perfect Selfie Expert?! |
INTRODUCTION:
Cherry Mobile never fails to pack the hottest smartphone-trend in an affordable price tag. Knowing that majority of its target consumers are after to selfie-centric device, the local mobile phone manufacturer came up with a handset sporting Samsung cameras, meet the Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie.
While its price obviously gives the Flare S6 Selfie an edge against its competitors, what more it can offer to consumers? Let's all find out!
PHYSICAL:
Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie Unboxing and Hands-on
The Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie is dressed with a metal body. It still has this familiar Cherry Mobile touch, but the brand gives the device a more premium-looking design compared to its older models. It is easy to hold, and it could comfortably sit on our hands, as well.
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| Capacitive Buttons and Fingerprint Scanner |
Its front is dominated by its 5.2-inch screen with 2.5 curved glass. Located above the screen are the 16-megapixel Samsung front camera, speaker, and LED flash. The latter displays a blue light when you received notifications or when you charge the handset. Below the display is the device capacitive buttons, which don’t emit light. Its home button doubles as fingerprint scanner, too.
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| Volume Rocket and Power Button (Right) |
Its power/lock button and volume rockers are placed on the right side of the device, while the hybrid SIM tray is positioned on the left.
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| Loudspeaker Grills and USB Type-C Port (Bottom) |
The 3.5mm audio port is found on the top, while the microphone, loudspeaker, and USB Type C port are situated below.
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| Main Camera, LED Flash and Logo (Back) |
Flip the device and you will see the 16-megapixel Samsung-made rear camera, it LED flash directly below it, and the company's logo after that. Flaunting an aluminum unibody case with visible antenna bands located at the top and bottom. The device could attract scratches easily, so, protective case is highly recommended.
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| Multi-touch Test Result |
Going back to its display, it sports a 5.2-inch IPS display that has 1920 x 1080 resolution, which translates to 424 pixels per inch. Impressively, the device produces rich colors. It has good viewing angles, as well. Moreover, it produces decent display output, which gives users better viewing experience when watching videos and playing games with heavy graphics. The Flare S6 Selfie, however, scored only 5 in multi-touch test.
To know more about its physical appearance, how it looks like and what are the items included in the retail package, you can watch our unboxing and hands-on video above.
See Also: Cherry Mobile Flare S6, 5.2-inch HD Android Nougat w/ 13MP Camera for Php3,999
SOFTWARE:
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| Software |
The Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie is running on the brand’s newest and very own forked version of Android, the Cherry OS. It has colorful icons, a very user-friendly interface, and gives the smartphone a better look than its previous models. It features multiple home screens and app drawer, too. The app drawer shows the app in alphabetical order, which is kind of thumbs down for us.
Meanwhile, it comes with pre-installed apps, including Google apps, Uber, UCBrowser, MovieClub+, and Chumslive PRO.
PERFORMANCE:
The Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie is powered by MediaTek 6750T octa-core processor clocked at 1.5GHz, and is complemented with Mali T860 MP2 GPU. Technically speaking, it is the same chipset found inside the Flare S6 Plus and more expensive devices like OPPO F3 and OPPO A77. It is equipped with 3GB of RAM to handle multiple tasks efficiently, and a 16GB of native storage that can be expanded up to 128GB with the use of micro SD card.
That said, we already know that it is capable to give us a decent performance. Nonetheless, we still ran it on our favorite benchmark apps to gather its raw processing compute ability. Here are the results:
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| Benchmark Results |
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| 3D Mark Benchmark Scores |
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| NenaMark2 Scores |
- AnTuTu – 41,312
- Quadrant – 18,711
- PC Mark Work 2.0 – 3,163
- Geekbench – 611 (Single Core)
- Geekbench – 2,451 (Multi Core)
- 3D Mark – 10,007 (Ice Storm)
- 3D Mark – 6,437 (Ice Storm Extreme)
- 3D Mark – 547 (Sling Shot)
- 3D Mark – 381 (Sling Shot Extreme)
- NenaMark2 – 55.2 fps
Apart from improving its “selfie skills,” the Flare S6 Selfie manages to deliver impressive overall performance. It is fast and smooth throughout our tests. Used as our primary phone, it has minimal lag, which only happened when we’re already running out of juice. Nevertheless, it could still run multiple apps at the same time.
We watched several videos and played various games, and to be honest, it has the best gaming performance compared to other Cherry Mobile devices that we have tried.\
Also Read: Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Max Leaks; 6-inch HD Android Nougat w/ 4100mAh Battery for Php3,999
CAMERA:
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| 16-megapixel Samsung S5K3P3 Sensor |
Promising to deliver great photos, its front and rear shooters are both equipped with 16-megapixel Samsung S5K3P3 sensors. It uses ISOCELL technology, which on paper can capture colors more accurately with lesser noise. It is the same sensor found in Samsung Galaxy C7.
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| Camera Settings |
Like any other smartphones, it offers numerous camera settings to enhance your images, most especially your selfies. Three of the most popular ones are Bokeh, Beauty and Mono. There is also an option to add watermark.
Sample Photos:
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| With HDR |
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| Without HDR |
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| Flower Shop |
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| Indoor |
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| Outdoor |
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| Night |
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| Another Night |
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| Selfie |
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| Lowlight Selfie |
Considering its price, the device did a great job in delivering these kind of image qualities. It is not something that will blow you away, the images have visible noises and still blurry, at times, but it is really capable of producing good photos.
However, as Cherry Mobile’s flag bearer in terms of mobile photography as well as a camera-centric smartphone, the Flare S6 Selfie still needs to improve its camera performance. With great camera sensors, we believed that it snapping capabilities will still improve over time through software upgrades.
CONNECTIVITY:
The Flare S6 Selfie is a dual-SIM device that supports LTE connectivity, including band 28 or popularly known as 700MHz frequency. It works well, and we really never had a problem about our data connection even indoors. It has good signal reception for both SMS and calls, too. It is also worth noting that it sports the latest USB standard, which is Type-C that provides faster file transfer rate.
BATTERY:
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| Battery Test |
For some reason, this handset is only equipped with 2,600mAh non-removable battery, this is a bit small in today's standard, and could be a make or break for some consumers. For us, at least 3000mAh could be more acceptable, especially that it needs to push more pixels on its Full HD display, not to mention the MediaTek chip used is not really battery-friendly.
We did our video loop test, wherein the Flare S6 Selfie lasted for about five hours. In PC Mark Work 2.0 Battery Life test, it scored 5 hours and 42 minutes, which is slightly lower than what we usually get when reviewing phones.
As our primary device, it only lasted for a little over six hours, this includes browsing social media apps, checking emails, and other communications. However, without continuous usage, it lasted for a day. It has longer battery life, too, at least when we used it for basic tasks only.
See Also: Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Power; Quad Core with 5000mAh Battery for only Php3,799
CONCLUSION:
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| Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie |
As a budget smartphone, it succeeded in impressing our team with its features and overall decent performance. In addition, the Cherry OS is intuitive and pretty good, especially when you consider that it is their first time to implement such thing.
However, as a camera-centric Android phone, it is a different story. Cherry Mobile still has a lot of things to improve in this aspect. We know that Samsung camera sensor is great, the most popular local brand just needs to learn more in tweaking its software. Nonetheless, the Flare S6 Selfie offers better image quality against the brand's older models.
Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie Specs:
- Dual Nano SIM, dual standby, supports LTE connectivity
- 5.2-inch IPS capacitive FHD (1920x1080) touchscreen display
- Dimensions: 153.6mm x 74.6mm x 8.5mm
- Weight: TBA
- Android 7.0 Nougat with Cherry OS 2.0
- 64-bit octa core CPU Cortex-A53 (4x1.5GHz + 4x1.0GHz), ARM Mali-T860MP2 GPU, MediaTek MT6750T chipset
- 3GB of RAM
- 16GB internal storage, expandable up to 128GB via micro SD card
- 16MP f/2.0 front camera with LED flash
- 16MP f/2.0 main camera with LED flash
- Multimedia player
- 3.5mm audio jack
- GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
- USB Type-C with OTG function
- Bluetooth v4.1
- Sensor: fingerprint, accelerometer, light, proximity
- Battery: 2600mAh, non-removable
- Price: Php7,999