Starmobile Quest Review: Great Cameraphone Spoiled by Little Niggles

Starmobile Quest Review: Great Cameraphone Spoiled by Little Niggles

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We review the Starmobile Quest!

Today we’ll be reviewing the Starmobile Quest. The Quest is actually one of the new smartphones that the company released a few months ago that uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor instead of the more common MediaTek ones. Instead of trying to compete spec by spec with its competitors, Starmobile has decided to fall back to their core competency which is imaging, outfitting the Quest with a 12-megapixel camera with a BSI Sony sensor and f/2.0 lens. While the camera on the Quest is decent enough, the experience is spoiled a bit by a few issues as you’ll find out in the review below.

Starmobile Quest specs

  • 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8212 Snapdragon 200
  • Adreno 302 GPU
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 4.5-inch qHD OGS IPS display, 540 x 960 resolution
  • 4GB of storage, expandable via microSD
  • 12-megapixel AF BSI (Sony sensor) rear camera, f/2.0 aperture
  • 5-megapixel camera with Toshiba sensor
  • Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS
  • Dual-SIM (micro SIM)
  • 3G, HSPA+
  • 2000mAh battery
  • Android 4.3 

See also: Starmobile Quest unboxing

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Colorful design that’s not for everyone

When we first unboxed the Quest, we said that we were a bit harsh with our comments with the overall design. Since then we’ve grown fond of the colorful design of the Quest, but again, the design definitely isn’t for everyone. The Quest has rounded corners that allow you to grip the phone easily. While the phone is primarily made out of plastic, it doesn’t feel cheap.

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Control layout is typical for a sub 5-inch smartphone – you have the volume rocker on the left, with the power button on the right side. The top holds the 3.5mm jack and the USB port. You’ll find the 12-megapixel camera (interpolated) right smack dab in middle of the back of the Quest, with the LED flash located right above it. The Android navigation keys light up, and are located right below the display, on the bottom bezel.

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As far as the screen is concerned, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that it’s only a qHD panel as opposed to an HD panel and only measures around 4.5-inches, which is a bummer considering that the offerings of Starmobile’s competitors on the same price range use HD panels and bigger displays. The good news is that while it’s a qHD panel, it still does a good job overall, delivering good viewing angles all around and is still readable even under direct sunlight.

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Only Snapdragon 200? Not a problem

One of the initial worries that we had was that the Quest, which had a Snapdragon 200 processor, would lag behind its contemporaries packing its faster brother, the Snapdragon 400. In truth, this wasn’t the case, as the Quest managed to score synthetic benchmarks that are higher than the ones we saw on Snapdragon 400 equipped smartphones. One possible explanation is that since the Quest uses a qHD display rather than an HD one, more processing power is diverted to apps like AnTuTu, increasing its score.

As far as gaming is concerned, you shouldn’t have a problem with the Quest. Android games we played like Dead Trigger 2 ran smoothly on the Quest without any problems. General navigation is also pretty seamless as well, though we did detect just a smidge of lag during transitions. The 4.5-inch display is a bit small though to actually game on properly, though that may not be an issue for people with smaller digits.

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Camera can take decent snaps, but suffers from white balance issue

 

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Starmobile has equipped the Quest with a 12-megapixel camera that has a fairly large f/2.0 opening that’s supposed to capture good photos with fairly low lighting. In practice, the Quest delivers, as it was able to give us good quality photos in relatively low light environments as well as in places where only indoor lighting was present. 

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Unfortunately, not everything is perfect with the camera of the Quest. We noticed some fairly troubling blue/green tint in some of the photos that we took with the Quest with fairly decent lighting outside. That tint also extended to some of the photos that we took using the Quest’s built-in LED flash as well.

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Another issue that we noticed is that the Quest takes a bit of time to actually take a snap from the time you press the camera’s shutter. This made taking photos of fast moving subjects difficult. It took a lot of tries to get a good photo of the skateboarder above.

Can go all day

One nice thing about the smaller display and the lower qHD resolution is that the Quest can go all day with a single charge. With moderate use (calls, texts, a few games and internet) the Quest managed to log in around 10 hours before needing to be charged.

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Verdict: Could have been a good camera phone, but has issues

While the Quest can generally take good photos, it’s hampered by the white balance issue that we pointed out earlier. We can’t wholly recommend the phone until the issue is fixed, unfortunately. Aside from that, the Quest is a solid performer all things considered, has great battery life and relatively good performance when compared to other phones in the same price range.

The good news is that Starmobile is aware of the issues that we encountered during our review and has said that they will look into it. Hopefully they’ll be able to send out a software fix for the issues that we’ve laid out in this review.

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