Cherry Mobile W900 LTE Unboxing: Cherry’s First LTE Smartphone

Cherry Mobile starts the year right with the W900 LTE

Today, we’ll be unboxing one of the most anticipated smartphones made by Cherry Mobile: the W900 LTE. This is the first ever LTE handset that the company has released, and naturally there’s a large amount of buzz surrounding it. The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is notable for a number of things – it’s the first LTE smartphone of the brand, it’s one of the few devices that they have that use only a single SIM, and it’s one of the few devices that Cherry Mobile has that uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip instead of a MediaTek one.

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

Packaging and Unboxing

The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE came in the typical red box that most of their other phones come in. There’s a photo of the W900 LTE on the front, and the specifications on the back.

Aside from the typical specs that include processor speed OS and the like, what drew our eye was the listing for the GSM frequencies used by the W900 LTE. Under LTE, it lists B1/B3, which we assume is Band 1 and Band 3. A quick check in Wikipedia states that Smart and Globe use Band 1 and 3, respectively (Smart also uses 3 and 5 for their LTE). That means that the W900 LTE should work with both networks as far as LTE is concerned.

Opening the box reveals the actual unit, protected with a protective sheet that lists the phone’s specs. Diving deeper into the box reveals a user manual, charger, USB cable, heaphones and the head for the charger.

First Impressions: Incredibly Solid and Responsive

Our initial impression of the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE is overwhelmingly positive. The build quality of the W900 LTE is solid, and try as we might to find a flaw in its construction, we couldn’t. There’s definitely some heft to the W900 LTE, and that’s a good thing, as it prevents it from feeling cheap and plasticky.

The display of the W900 LTE is pretty good, and while it’s not a full HD display, the 4.3-inch screen looked great nonetheless.

The 12-megapixel camera is located on the back, and is slightly offset to the right, accompanied by a LED flash. The back of the W900 LTE is a semi-matte deal that’s pleasant enough to touch. On the top of the phone sits the power button and 3.5mm jack, while the volume rocker is placed on the left side. You charge the phone via the micro USB port on the right side.

The Cherry Mobile W900 LTE was extremely responsive when we booted it up. Navigating through the menus in the phone was pleasant, and during our brief time with it, we did not notice any lags or slowdown at all. Even though this is just a dual-core processor, the superior quality of Qualcomm’s chip is apparent, which reinforces our belief that it’s not the number of cores that count – it’s the quality of the processor and the architecture used.

As a quick test, we ran Antutu to get a rough idea of the performance of the Cherry Mobile W900 LTE, and the results are pretty positive. It got a score of 16767, which is pretty good. As a reference, Cherry Mobile’s own Omega XL, which ran a quadcore 1.3GHz processor got an Antutu score of 17207. Even with only two cores, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor is already pretty close to the performance of 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek chip in the Omega XL.