Does the hype live up to the expectations?

One nice thing about technology is that it’s always evolving in the favor of the consumer. Products and specifications that were top tier last year trickles down to the mid and lower-end of the market a year or two later. That’s what’s happening now with LTE, a technology that was first included in high-end devices a few years ago is now finding its way into local brands. Cherry Mobile managed to be the first of the local brands to introduce an LTE capable device in the form of the aptly named Cherry Mobile W900 LTE. Does the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE live up to its promise to deliver blisteringly fast internet? Let’s see.

• 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM 8260A
• Adreno 225 GPU
• 1GB RAM
• 8GB internal storage, expandable via microSD Card
• 4.3-inch HD OGS, 720 x 1280 resolution
• 12.0-megapixel primary camera with LED flash
• HD 720 front camera
• WiFi, WiFi Hotspot, 3G, HSPA+, LTE Bluetooth, GPS, aGPS
• 1810 mAh battery
• Android 4.2 Jellybean
• SRP: Php 11,499

Simple, traditional design won’t turn heads

The Cherry Mobile W900 isn’t a trailblazer when it comes to design. The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE has rounded corners, along with a gold, almost bronzy strip of plastic running along the sides.

The W900 LTE uses a matte, rubber-like back cover that helps you to get a solid grip on the device when you’re using it.

The 12-megapixel camera is slightly offset to the right, and has an accompanying LED flash. The volume rocker is on the left side, while the power button lies on top. The USB charging port lies on the right side of the device.

As far as build quality is concerned, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is pretty solidly built, as it should be, considering its price range. There were no creaks or flex at all in the device. It still surprises me how good the build quality of local Filipino brands have evolved over the years, which is even more surprising considering the price points they usually sell at. The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is a single SIM smartphone.

Great looking display

While it’s not full HD, the 4.3-inch, 1280 x 720 OGS display of the Cherry Mobile W900 looks good. It’s nice and bright, with the colors really popping on screen. Despite its size, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is capable of handling full HD video, although it does get knocked down to 720p because of the display.

The Qualcomm difference

The phrase “Eh dual-core lang yan eh,” is one of the most common reactions we got when we showed the W900 LTE around to people who asked about it. Yes, the Cherry Mobile may just use a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, but it’s a Qualcomm MSM8260A. We’ve always held a belief that it’s not always the number of cores inside a processor that counts – the architecture of the processor and its manufacturing process also contribute a lot to the performance of the chip.

Antutu’s benchmark numbers prove that point. It managed to grab a benchmark score of 16767, a few hundred points short of the 17207 benchmark score that Cherry Mobile’s own Omega XL got using a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek chip.

As a result, using the device was a definite pleasure, with no noticeable lags. Transition effects were buttery smooth, and gaming (even on the smaller 4-inch display) was a pleasure, though we did notice a bit of lag during some sequences of Despicable Me Minion Rush and Dead Trigger 2, though these were few and far in between.

Finally, LTE

The main selling point of the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is, well, LTE. Possibly one of the main reasons that Cherry Mobile went with Qualcomm’s MSM8260A chip over cheaper MediaTek ones is that at the time of production, there were no MediaTek chips that were capable of LTE. As of January 2014, that’s no longer the case, and we may see future LTE capable devices from Cherry Mobile sporting MediaTek processors.

Long story short, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE delivers on their LTE promise. As you can see on the screenshots above, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE managed to deliver LTE speeds in areas that had LTE coverage. The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE can work with both Smart or Globe’s LTE service, in our review, we mainly used our Smart LTE postpaid SIM. As a reference, we stuck the same SIM used in the review device into our Galaxy S4 and performed the same speedtest in the same areas and we’re happy to report that the results were almost the same. Rememmber, the closer you are to an LTE tower, the better your LTE speeds will be.

Good camera

The 12-megapixel camera on the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is pretty good, and had good color reproduction and clarity overall. It also managed to take good photos indoors.

Troublesome bundled app

We did have some issues with the demo device that was lent to us by Cherry Mobile during the beginning of the review process. We discovered that the device was consistently warm to the touch even when not in use, and had terrible battery life – only five hours on a single charge. We traced the problem to a single app (NQ Android Booster) that was in the device when we got it for review. After disabling the app, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE ran perfect, and the constant heat plauged it dissappeared.

Mediocre battery life

Unfortunately, the fix couldn’t really hide the Cherry Mobile W900’s somewhat lackluster battery life. On a single charge we barely managed to get 7 hours with it with moderate use, including lots of browsing and gaming. You could probably stretch that out a bit longer with some tweaks to your settings. Cherry Mobile will throw in a power bank with every purchase of the W900 LTE, so there’s that.

Verdict: Solid performer that may have been priced a little too high

In all respects, the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is a solid LTE capable device. While its somewhat low 1810 mAh battery drags it down a bit, Cherry Mobile makes up for it by throwing in a power bank with every purchase that should extend battery life quite a bit. That being said, many prospective buyers may balk at the somewhat high Php 11,499 pricetag, especially when products of international brands like Sony’s Xperia SP 4G retails for only a few pesos more (DB Gadgets, Php 13,400). But then again, Php 11,499 is a pretty good price for a LTE smartphone, especially for people looking to jump into the LTE bandwagon for cheap.