Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 Unboxing: First NFC Equipped CM Smartphone

CM’s newest smartphone has NFC on board

Today, we’ll be unboxing the Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0. The Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 has been announced and released late about a month or two ago, and we finally have a review device with us. The Rave 2.0 is CM’s first ever smartphone that has NFC capability, which allows it to pair and communicate with other NFC equipped smartphones and devices.

Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 specs

1.2GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor
PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU
1GB RAM
5.3-inch IPS qHD display, 540 x 960 resolution
4GB internal storage, expandable via microSD up to 32GB
13 megapixel AF rear camera w/ LED flash
5 megapixel front-facing
dual-SIM, dual standby
3G, HSPA+
WiFi b/g/n, NFC, Bluetooth 2.1
2,400mAh battery
Android 4.2.1 Jellybean
Php 8,999

Packaging and Contents

The Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 comes in a nice looking box with a large photo of the device in the front. In the back lies the specifications of the device. The Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 also comes with a nice NFC speaker, although we didn’t get one since our unit was only a demo device.

In the box you’ll find Cherry Mobile’s typical freebies – a charger, a USB cable, warranty card and headphones.

We were surprised to discover that the headphones included in the package had silicone tips instead of the cheaper foam ones, which is a nice touch.

Initial Impressions: Solid build, but looks too generic

When we first saw the Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0, we weren’t particularly impressed by its overall design. It’s as vanilla as they come, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference.

One nice thing about it is that the device has a nice matte finish all over, which helped immensely in grip, which you’ll probably need, considering how hefty it is. The 5.3-inch display is a IPS qHD one, which looked pleasant enough during our short time with it. The volume rocker is located on the left side while the power/unlock button is located on the right. On the back lies the 13-megapixel camera, while the front of the device holds the smaller, 5-megapixel front facing camera.

One thing that we didn’t like about the build quality of this device is that it takes quite a bit of force to tear the plastic back cover away to reveal the dual-SIM slots and the other bits, force that we feared could wreck the thin, otherwise flimsy plastic backing.

Once you remove the plastic back, you’ll see the NFC sensor that’s on the opposite side of the plastic back that makes the NFC magic happen.

Good performance, generally responsive hardware

As is par for the course, we ran an AnTuTu test on the Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 and got a score of 13138, which is pretty much par for the course for a device like this. As far as responsiveness goes, you’ll be happy to know that the Cherry Mobile Rave 2.0 is very responsive, and we rarely got hit by any significant lag while navigating through the device. The NFC functionality is also good to go – we paired it up with the Samsung DA-F61 Bluetooth speaker that we reviewed using NFC, and it paired up with it almost immediately.