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| Torque Mobile Droidz Trend Review: Progression |
INTRODUCTION:
The low-end segment of the mobile market is filled with entry level Android smartphones, especially those from the local brands and day by day it is getting more crowded.
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| CPU-Z |
Torque Mobile has plenty under their portfolio, one of them is the Droidz Trend. It sports a 4-inch touchscreen display with a decent WVGA resolution. Under the hood is a toned down version of MediaTek MT6572 dual core processor clocked at 1GHz each coupled with 4GB of ROM, 256MB of RAM and runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean.
UNBOXING:
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| Retail package |
The box is the usual brown carton, I just hope that they will re-design it soon since there is not a single specification or feature printed on it. Opening the box will reveal the unit, battery, charger, USB cable, wired headset, warranty card and user manual.
HARDWARE:
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| Front |
At the front you will see the TORQUE logo just below the earpiece grill while the Droidz Trend marking is at the upper right of the screen. Below the display you will find the usual capacitive keys. The frame overlaps the front on all sides by about 2mm giving it a striking accent.
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| Back |
The back is prone to fingerprint and smudges, but they are not really visible due to its glossy nature. There is another TORQUE logo on the lower part while the main camera is at the upper part flanked the LED flash and loudspeaker grill on each side.
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| Back without cover |
Removing the back cover is relatively easy, once removed you will find the 1500mAh battery, the micro SD slot, the regular and micros SIM slots.
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| Top |
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| Bottom |
The top and bottom have a metallic-silver finished, this adds contrast to the colorful body. The former holds the 3.5mm audio jack and the micro USB port while the latter has the primary microphone on it.
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| Left |
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| Right |
The left has nothing on it while on the right, you will find the volume rocker and the power button.
The Droidz Trend does not look cheap, even though it has a neon-like finish. The build quality is not bad either, there is no unusual gaps between the frame and the screen, as well as between the frame and the back cover.
DISPLAY:
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| 2-point touch |
The screen has 800x480 resolution, for a 4-inch device, it is already good enough. However, it only uses ordinary TN panel that makes the viewing angles limited, you will experience contrast-shift by simply tilting the device. In terms of multiple touch, it supports up to two fingers.
SENSORS:
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| Sensors |
The Trend has the basic sensors, namely accelerometer, proximity and ambient light. They are all functioning properly on both app testing and in real world application, albeit the light sensor is less sensitive.
BENCHMARKS:
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| Antutu - 9475 |
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| Quadrant - 2825 |
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| NenaMark2 - 35.4fps |
The benchmark scores are typical for a device that has 1GHz dual core processor. However, due to limited RAM, it is not able to run a complete Vellamo test.
INTERFACE:
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| About phone |
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| Interface |
The Droidz Trend runs stock Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with very little to no customization at all. Navigating through the interface is OK if you are coming from a reboot/restart, but as time goes by, it becomes sluggish especially if you have several apps running in the background.
BASIC FUNCTIONS:
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| Basic functions |
The basic phone functions are all working fine, no issue encountered when using telephony, messaging and email.
MULTIMEDIA:
Gallery:
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| Gallery |
The gallery displays all supported videos and photos stored on your phone, you can filter them by albums, locations or times and can be viewed by filmstrip or grid plus you can share them locally or online. In addition, there is also a photo editing tool and video trimming applications.
Video Player, Music Player and FM Radio:
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| Video Player, Music Player & FM Radio |
The music player can play almost all types of video files up to 720p resolution, watching on its 4-inch screen is sufficient enough for personal consumption. Meanwhile, the music player will list all audio files and can be viewed by albums, artists, songs or playlists. The interface displays the album art, the song title, its artist and album as well as the time scroll and the control buttons. On the other hand, the FM radio needs a connected wired headset for it to work, channels can be searched manually or automatically, the broadcast can be played through the headset or loudspeaker plus the option to record it.
Camera and Video:
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| Camera & Video |
The camera and video share the same interface, the default preview size is full screen, you need to change it to standard (4:3) in order to select the 3MP resolution, if you will not do it, the resolution is stuck at 1MP.
Sample Shots:
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| Without flash |
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| With flash |
The first three photos above were taken in broad daylight, the image produced are a bit reddish in color and the details are a bit less. The last two photos were taken in low light, but it is not completely dark, yet the image produced are almost black and the flash does not help either.
Sample Video:
Sample Video
When you check the video details on the phone, it says that the resolution is 1280x720, but using PC viewer it only shows 854x480 or commonly known as FWVGA with frame rate of 20fps.
Browser:
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| Browser |
The Droidz Trend has only stock Android browser, the pages load relatively OK for website in desktop mode while it is quite fast when viewing website in mobile mode. However, I suggest to keep the number of tabs as few as possible to enjoy browsing.
Gaming:
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| Chess Genius |
With only 256MB of RAM, the selections of games are very limited, those games with light graphics and less interactive like Chess Genius and Candy Crush are OK. I also installed Temple Run 2, you can play the game, but you will experience lags and hiccups every now and then.
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| Storage |
It has a total of 4GB of built-in storage, wherein about 194MB is allocated for the internal storage and 1014MB for phone storage. Take note that apps cannot be moved to external SD card, but only to phone storage.
CONNECTIVITY:
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| Connectivity |
The Trend has no 3G, mobile internet connectivity is only 2G. The WiFi and Bluetooth work well plus the 3.5mm audio jack is CTIA compliant.
PRODUCTIVITY:
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| Productivity |
The productivity applications include a clock, calendar, calculator, file manager, sound recorder and to do. There are no PDF viewer and document editor, but you can download them for free in Play Store.
GPS:
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| GPS |
The GPS had A-GPS and it works like a charm, with data pre-load, a satellite locked is achieved in less than five seconds.
BATTERY STATS:
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| Battery Stats |
The battery can last for more than two days for normal phone usage, if you want to use it as your mobile media companion, it can last for more than 4.5 hours of watching videos in a single charge before the battery drops to 15%.
CONCLUSION:
The Torque Mobile Droidz Trend is a good budget starter phone, especially for those new to the world of Android. Aside from having good build quality and bright-appealing look, it is good enough for light browsing, light gaming and as your personal multimedia companion.
For the price of just Php2,099, we already expect that Torque will cut as many corners as possible to achieve this, such as 256MB of RAM, the lack of 3G and below average camera performance.
PROS:
4-inch screen
Dual core processor
4GB of ROM
Good build quality
GPS with A-GPS
CONS:
256MB of RAM
Below average camera performance
No 3G
Specifications:
- Dual SIM (regular+micro) dual standby
- 4-inch capacitive WVGA (800x480) touchscreen display
- Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
- 1GHz Dual Core Cortex-A7 CPU, Mali-400 GPU, MediaTek MT6572 chipset
- 256MB of RAM
- 4GB internal storage, expandable up to 32GB via micro SD
- 3MP fixed focus main camera with LED Flash, 720p video recording
- 2MP secondary camera
- Multimedia Player
- FM Radio
- 3.5 Audio Jack
- WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
- Micro USB 2.0
- Bluetooth
- Sensors: Accelerometer, Proximity, Light
- 1500mAh Li-Ion battery
- Price: Php2,099