We unbox the Cherry Mobile Equinox Night!

Today we’ll be unboxing Cherry Mobile’s higher end Equinox Night at Unbox HQ. The Equinox Night is the company’s more premium quad-core, full HD smartphone offering, coming in at Php 9,999. We’re a bit concerned about the hardware combination of the Equinox Night, because in our experience MediaTek’s turbo quad-core has a bit of trouble when it comes to overall performance when paired with a full HD display. Anyways, let’s check out the specs of this bad boy:

Cherry Mobile Equinox Night Specs

• 1.5GHz turbo quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor
• 1GB of RAM
• PowerVR SGX 544MP
• 5-inch Full HD OGS display with Asahi Dragon Trail glass protection, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 4GB of storage, expandable to 64GB via microSD
• 18-megapixel rear camera with AF and BSI, dual LED flash
• 3-megapixel front camera
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
• Dual-SIM
• 3G, HSPA+
• Android 4.2
• 2300mAh non-removable battery
• Php 9,999

Packaging and contents

The Cherry Mobile Equinox Night ships in a box that’s similar to the company’s Omega series of phones. The box uses a die-cut cardboard sleeve with the picture of the device on the front and the relevant features of the smartphone printed on the back.

Inside, you’ll find accessories that’s typical of Cherry Mobile’s offerings: a user manual, USB cable plus charger, as well as some nice looking in-ear headphones

Initial Impressions: sexy as heck, but the hardware is a bit worrying

Cherry Mobile gave the Equinox Night a tagline of Sheer Elegance, and they’re pretty much spot on. While it’s not apparent in the initial product shots Equinox Night is definitely a very elegant and premium looking phone in person. The 5-inch, full HD display uses a OGS solution that makes it pop, especially when you turn up the brightness.

The display is actually raised a bit and you can see the curves on the edges of the bezel. One thing we did notice is that the Equinox Night is a real magnet for smudges. A small price to pay we guess for having such a sexy glass front. The power button and volume rocker is located on the right side, while the 3.5mm jack and USB port are located on the top and bottom, respectively. 

The back of the Equinox Night uses a matte black finish that just adds to the elegance of the smartphone. The 18-megapixel camera with BSI and dual LED flash resides on the upper left corner of the back of the Equinox Night.

Although the Equinox Night is undoubtedly a looker, there are a few trouble spots in the spec sheet. The most prominent of which is the 1.5GHz turbo quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor that powers the entire affair. We’ve run into the same processor in the similarly spec’d Kata M1 phablet, and we encountered lag when using graphically demanding apps. The M1 had the advantage of having 2GB of RAM, something that the Equinox Night doesn’t have, settling for just 1GB of RAM.

While it’s initial AnTuTu score pretty much matches the M1 and the UI shows little signs of lag, we’re cautiously optimistic about its performance when we take it for a spin later on in the week.