Cherry Mobile Cruize Unboxed!

Priced at Php4,499, the Cherry Mobile Cruize is the most affordable “phablet” in the market today. It has a 5.2-inch capacitive touch screen (WVGA resolution) which gives you more than enough real estate to enjoy watching videos or browsing the web. Other specs though aren’t that compelling but hey this is a budget-friendly offering so we can’t expect all the bells and whistles. Under the hood you’ll find a single core processor, 512MB RAM, and Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Not bad for a Php4,499 offering if you ask me. While we haven’t put this through the paces yet, the Cruize promises to be a good portable media player that also happes to be a phone.

Cherry Mobile Cruize Spec Sheet

• 1GHz single-core processor
• 512MB RAM
• 4GB internal storage, expandable up to 32GB via microSD
• 5.2-inch WVGA display, 800×480 resolution (~179 ppi)
• 3G/HSDPA/WiFi/WiFi HotSpot/GPS/Bluetooth
• 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and LED flash
• VGA front-facing camera
• Dual SIM, Dual Standby
• 2,500mAh Battery
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich

Promising. It doesn’t have the dual-core processor of the Flare but it’s supposed to make up for that with the bigger 5.2-inch display. Anyway, let’s move on to the unboxing and our initial review.

Cherry Mobile Cruize Unboxing Video

Here’s our unboxing video of the Cherry Mobile Cruize. To make things more interesting we added a quick portion at the end of the video showing the Cruize side-by-side with the Cherry Mobile Omega. They two devices look identical but their innards are definitely different. If you haven’t read it yet here’s a link to our unboxing and initial review of the Omega.

Initial Impressions

Hardware and Build
When it comes to the chasis of the Cruize, we instantly remembered the Samsung Galaxy S WiFi 5.0 portable media player. It had the same plastic body with chrome band finish along the sides. The only thing missing really is the physical home button. The Cruize sports 4 capacitive touch buttons below the display.

An interesting design element with the Cruize is the “ribbed” back plate. This is a welcome aesthetic since we’ve pretty much had it already with the usual glossy white plastic back plates.

Software
As far as software performance is concerned the single-core processor is enough for the usual tasks like web browsing, social networking, and casual gaming. However it does start to bog down when you have multiple widgets, a live wall paper, or when you’re playing a graphics intensive application.

Full Review Coming Soon

So how did we find it over-all after a day of use? The Cherry Mobile Cruize is a promising portable media player with telephony. Gamers might get frustrated though since the single-core processor really isn’t powerful enough for heavy hitter games. For example, the Cruize had some difficulty playing Dead Trigger especially when there were a lot of zombies on-screen already. We’ll know more in the next few days when we do our complete review. 😀

The Cherry Mobile Cruize is available for in the market already for just Php4,499. We saw some stocks in the Cherry Mobile kiosk in SM Megamall and a bunch of units available at the Cherry Mobile store in SM North Edsa Annex.