Starmobile Engage 7 TV Initial Review: Made for TV Junkies (Php5,290)

Starmobile Engage 7 TV Initial Review: Made for TV Junkies (Php5,290)

Definitely made for TV junkes!
Definitely made for TV junkes!

Watch Be Careful With My Heart on the go! (Lol)

One of the products that surprised us the most from Starmobile is their newest tablet — the Starmobile Engage 7 TV. It’s not because the specs are spectacular but mostly due to the unique feature set. The Starmobile Engage 7 TV, as the name implies, is tailor made for people who love watching TV. Starmobile put in three different ways you watch your favorite TV shows on the device: analog (with antena), digital (only a few stations broadcast digitally right now though), or through streaming from some of the more famous streaming services. What was also impressive was the price — Php5,290. Check out the spec sheet below followed by our initial impressions.

SEE ALSO: Starmobile Jump — Starmobile’s newest entry level smartphone!
Starmobile Engage 7 TV Spec Sheet

  • 1.2GHz Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex A8 Processor
  • 1GB RAM
  • 4GB Internal Storage, expandable up to 32GB
  • 7.0-inches Capacitive Multi-Touch Display
  • WVGA 800×480 resolution, 133 pixels per inch
  • 3.0-megapixels rear-facing camera
  • VGA front-facing camera
  • WiFi, GPS/aGPS
  • Analog, Digital, and Streaming TV
  • Supports 3.5G USB Modem
  • Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
  • 4,000mAh Battery

Hardware and Feature Check

Much better construction
Much better construction

The Starmobile Engage 7 TV continues the evolution of the tablet line for Starmobile. Not only does it have a pretty unique feature set, it also has respectable specifications (1GB RAM for a Php5,290 tablet?) and solid hardware construction. As you’ll see in the following photos, the device is made mostly from plastic but they put in a brushed dark metal finish which we first saw with the Starmobile Engage 7 HD. They also addressed one of our criticisms of the original Engage, they made the body more compact and tight so that you don’t feel the plastic bending downwards if you press hard on it.

Looking good!
Looking good!
Yes, the logo still lights up, hehe.
Yes, the logo still lights up, hehe.

For the software part it’s a full Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich experience. You get to download all the apps you want from Google Play (yes you can play Candy Crush on this). You can also stuff in your favorite movies in it since it has expandable storage of up to 32GB via microSD card. Social networking apps also were quite fluid thanks to the processor and the generous serving of RAM.

The real story here of course is the TV. Starmobile Engage 7 TV lets you enjoy TV via three sources: analog, digital, and streaming. Analog is what we’ve seen already with the TV phones of late like the Starmobile Astra. Streaming is also something we’re familiar with. What’s really interesting though is digital. By 2015 all TV networks will be required to broadcast in digital. This means that you don’t actually need a huge ass antena coming out of your machine to get the content, hehe. Also the awesome thing about digital broadcast is as long as you have signal, even if it’s just a sliver, you get clear video.

Digital TV broadcast FTW!
Digital TV broadcast FTW!
Android through and through folks. Download all the apps you want!
Android through and through folks. Download all the apps you want!

Everything considered we believe that the Starmobile Engage 7 TV offers tremendous value, especially if you love watching local TV. It delivers the full Android experience on top of that making it an affordable (Php5,290 folks), portable, and reliable entertainment machine. We’ll try to get our hands on a review unit so we can put it through the paces for a more rigorous review!

Starmobile Engage 7 TV on the Unbox Video Podcast

If you want to see the Starmobile Engage 7 TV on video, check out the latest episode of the Unbox Video Podcast which we’ve embedded below. The whole episode features executives from Starmobile sharing the news on their latest products. If you want to skip straight to the Engage 7 TV though just go to 13:20.

In case you missed our recent write-ups about Starmobile’s latest smartphones, click any of the links below:

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