Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 Unboxing: Quad-core ng Bayan at Php3,999?

It's time to unbox the "Quad-core ng Bayan"! — It’s time to unbox the “Quad-core ng Bayan”!

Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 Unboxing and Initial Review

As we reported a few hours ago, Cherry Mobile announced that they have three more smartphones coming for the the rest of the year. They already revealed one of the three. Dubbed as the “quad-core ng bayan”, the Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 aims to replicate the smashing success of it’s predecessor, the Cherry Mobile Flare. In terms of specifications it has mostly the innards of the original flare save for the upgraded Qualcomm quad-core processor.

Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 Spec Sheet

1.2GHz Qualcomm 8225Q Quad-core Processor
Adreno 203 GPU
512MB RAM
4GB Internal Storage, expandable via microSD Card
Dual SIM, DUal Standby
5.0-megapixel rear-facing camera with dual LED flash and autofocus
VGA front-facing camera
4.0-inch capacitive touchscreen
3G, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi Hotspot
Android Jelly Bean 4.1
1,500mAH Battery
SRP: Php3,999

We currently have a review unit with us and we wasted no time in unboxing it so we could share with you guys a review by next week. As with our recent unboxing articles we enlisted the help of a superhero. This time we have the one and only Iron Man… Chibi-version (at least he lights up :P).

Packaging and Unboxing

The Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 has the same box and packaging as the generation of smartphones prior to the Cosmos line (we’re not a fan of the packaging they used for the Cosmos series). We get a big rectangular hard carton box with the usual product hero shot up front and the technical specifications listed at the back.

Unboxing was the usual experience. Peel off circular tape, pull off the hard carton lid, and get greeted by a smartphone wrapped in plastic.

Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 is officially unboxed!

Other than the phone we found the manual, certificate, USB to micro USB cable, earphones, and wall charger inside the lower compartment. Unfortunately no extras or freebies but hey this is just Php3,999 so we really don’t have a right to complain, hehe.

Hardware and Software: Initial Impressions

The Cherry Mobile Flare 2.0 in white was all glossy plastic. Gone was the familiar matte finish that we fell in love with for the first generation Cherry Mobile Flare. The good news there is that it will no longer be a finger print and smudge magnet as we saw back then with its predecessor.

All the buttons and ports are located along the sides. The backplate is removable and there we found the slot for the 1,500mAh (parang bitin) battery as well as slots for the SIM cards and microSD card. Up front is all glass and below it are the capacitive buttons.

The device itself isn’t thick or hefty but it definitely isn’t the slimmest smartphone in the block. Over-all it looks good since the glossy white plastic seems to be the norm these days for a lot of manufacturers.

On the software side the device runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.1. In our first few minutes with it there was barely any lag, thanks for the quad-core processor. However as we started firing apps there was a noticeable and unmistakable delay already but that’s probably due to the 512MB RAM (how I wish they made this 1GB and still sell at 3.9k). We’ll have a more comprehensive take on the software in the full review.

Full Review Coming

The Cherry Mobile Flare definitely has a lot of potential since it’s priced ridiculously low given the quad-core processor. We’ll put this device to the test in the next few days so we can get a better idea on over-all performance. Off the top of our head we’re definitely worried about two things: battery life and heavy processing (because of the limited RAM).

Watch out for our full review next week!

PS: Thank you Iron Man.