INTRODUCTION:
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| Kata M4s Review; Road To Redemption |
Kata has always been on the hit or miss side in terms of releases. They made some questionable decisions in terms of some of their devices. However, they delivered a great smartphone with the Kata M4s.
PHYSICAL:
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| Back |
The Kata M4s improved upon the M4. To be honest, the M4 really is a great device, however for the price it had it never really gave much back. Kata took note of that and redesigned the M4s. It feels more premium due to the great glass and metal sandwich design. It's smooth, sleek and sexy.
Another asset of the Kata M4s is its nice display. It has a gorgeous 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display at 1280 x 720 resolution with a 2.5D curved glass on top of it. The pixel density leaves a lot to be desired, at least for those who love QHD or FHD, as it only has 267 PPI. The color reproduction is not the most accurate among its peers, but it is good enough, moreover it tends to be on the saturated side, which is preferred by a lot of people. In addition, it is also very much usable under daylight with great viewing angles too.
The 2.5D glass really feels good to the touch. Your finger just slides effortlessly when swiping to navigate. It really feels premium. Meanwhile, the glass back has a certain grip to it and doesn't slide off your hand easily, which for me is a good thing.
The fingerprint scanner is found under the home capacitive button. It is not the fastest, and usually takes around 2 to 3 attempts before it works.
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| Right |
The power button and volume rocker are on the right side of the phone. They are placed on a spot where I can personally reach them easily when using the phone with just one-hand. However, it can benefit more in terms of a more tactile click when you press the button. It actually feels mushy or too soft when you press it. It is a minor thing though since the buttons are pretty responsive.
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| Top |
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| Bottom |
The 3.5mm headphone jack is located at the top, while the USB Type-C port, primary microphone, and loudspeaker grill are all placed at the bottom.
SOFTWARE:
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| Homescreens |
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| Notification Panel and Quick Settings Toggle |
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| App Settings |
The Kata M4s is running an almost stock version of Android 7.0 Nougat. The default skin is a bare to the bones Android experience. The notification panel is the standard Nougat design along with the toggles. Even if you go digging into to the Settings App, you will noticed that there is no skins or themes applied whatsoever. That's is why the M4s has a snappy feel when scrolling or multi tasking.
PERFORMANCE:
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| Geekbench and Antutu Scores |
The Kata M4s has a MediaTek MT6750 SoC that has a 64-bit octa-core 1.5GHz Cortex A53 CPU along with dual core ARM Mali-T860 GPU. This chipset along with 3GB of RAM is adequate for everyday tasks such as social media usage, browsing the web and streaming media, and light gaming. This has been proven with other phones with the same silicon chip that we reviewed before, and the M4s is no difference. However, we have to accept the fact that the MT6750 is already an ageing chipset, and we are most likely to experience some lags when playing some newer games or some stutter when playing HD content at 60fps.
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| Sensors and 10-Point Touch |
For our benchmark-geek readers, it scored 38,979 in Antutu and posted a 600 Single Core Score in Geekbench. By the way, as seen on the above image, its display supports up to 10 fingers simultaneously, and the M4s is equipped with basic sensors including gyroscope.
See Also: Kata V5 Review; Good for Basic Usage and Beyond
CAMERA:
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| Camera Interface |
The stock camera software is also basic at its best. It has the essential settings and toggles. HDR mode is also present, but manual mode is absent unfortunately. It has the ability to save RAW images which is a welcome addition. The camera suite is pretty limited, which is a bummer as its competitor in this price range has a more feature packed camera suite. But then again, that's how stock Android usually looks like,
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| Main Camera |
The 18MP main camera did its job pretty well and can produce remarkable photos, at least when lighting is decent. It captured daylight photos pretty accurately with lots of details and great color reproduction. In lowlight situations, on the other hand, is a hit or miss, so we recommend to take multiple shots during these times.
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| Front Camera |
The 8MP fixed focus selfie camera works wonder under good lighting conditions with pretty accurate colors, However, noise is evident in not so ideal lighting scenarios, but do not get me wrong here, images are still very much usable.
Rear Camera Samples:
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| Close up with HDR |
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| Close up without HDR |
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| Daylight Scenic Shot with HDR |
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| Daylight Scenic Shot without HDR |
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| Indoor without HDR |
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| Indoor with HDR |
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| Night, Moving Subject |
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| Indoor (Subpar Lighting) with HDR |
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| Indoor (Subpar Lighting) without HDR |
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| Kata M4s Main Camera Sample - Night, Scenic |
Front Camera Samples:
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| Indoor (Good Lighting) |
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| Indoor (Subpar Lighting) |
CONNECTIVITY:
The Kata M4s has dual Nano SIM card slots. It can also tap into great mobile internet speeds via LTE connectivity. WiFi works really as well, but it only has a single band at 2.4GHz. It has USB Type-C port with USB OTG functionality. The 3.5mm audio jack is also present.
BATTERY:
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| PC Mark Battery Life Score |
The biggest advantage of the Kata M4s over the competition is its battery life. It has a huge 4,350mAh battery and during the PC Mark Work 2.0 benchmark, it posted 10 hours and 53 minutes. That is more than enough to last you a full day at work with some spare juice left.
CONCLUSION:
Kata did not cut corners with M4s and it shows. They made a lot of improvements on the build and feel of the smartphone along with the performance of it. The Super AMOLED display, the premium feeling of metal and glass body, and the big 4350mAh battery all points to the right direction. At its current price of Php10,999, we can say that it is a good option to look at.
Kata M4s Specs:
- Dual (Micro+Nano) SIM, dual standby, supports LTE connectivity
- 5.5-inch Super AMOLED HD (1280x720) touchscreen display
- Dimensions: 153.5mm x 76.5mm x 8.5mm
- Weight: 181 grams
- Android 7.0 Nougat
- 64-bit octa core CPU Cortex-A53 (4x1.5GHz + 4x1.0GHz), ARM Mali-T860MP2 GPU, MediaTek MT6750 chipset
- 3GB of RAM
- 32GB internal storage, expandable via micro SD card, uses SIM 2 slot
- 18MP auto focus main camera with LED flash
- 8MP fixed-foucs secondary camera
- Multimedia player
- FM Radio
- 3.5mm audio jack
- GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS
- WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
- USB Type-C with OTG function
- Bluetooth v4.1
- Sensor: fingerprint, accelerometer, light, proximity, gyroscope
- Battery: 4,350mAh, non-removable
- Price: Php10,999
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