We go hands-on with the Flash Plus 2!

The original Flash Plus was one of the best budget devices sold in the PH last year, and quickly became the benchmark for affordable, bang-for-the-buck phones from international brands. It was a no brainer that the company would release a follow up this year, though it’s now being done under the auspices of Flash themselves as a fully independent brand. Slated to launch a few days from now, the Flash 2 hopes to recapture the same magic that propelled the first phone to great heights last year.

Here’s the specs of the Flash Plus 2, as it arrived on our test bench:

Flash Plus 2 specs:

• 1.8GHz MediaTek MT6755 octa-core processor
• 2GB of RAM
• 5.5-inch full HD OGS display, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 16GB of storage, expandable via microSD
• 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, PDAF and dual LED flash
• 5-megapixel front camera with LED flash
• Dual SIM
• 3G, LTE
• WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, GLONASS, Fingerprint sensor, HiFi audio
• 3000mAh battery
• Android 6.0 Marshmallow

Initial Impressions: Feels more like a mid-range phone than a budget device

The biggest criticism we had with the original Flash Plus last year was how it looked. To put it bluntly, it looked terrible – it was a generic looking, plasticky hot mess. This year’s iteration is a complete 180, and looks and feels like a phone for the mid-range, not the budget segment of the market.

The most obvious change now the use of metal in the phone’s construction. Not a metal body mind you – a metal shell. The phone uses a removable metal shell that cleverly keeps the plastic bits as well as the SIM, microSD slots and battery of the phone out of sight, giving the device the illusion of having a full metal body without the associated production costs.

The phone does bear more than a passing resemblance to Huawei’s GR5, though obviously there’s no fingerprint scanner stuck on the rear like the one in Huawei’s offering.

Instead, Flash has stuck the fingerprint scanner on the front, on the physical home button that resides below the 5.5-inch full HD display. The display is bright, has good colors and contrast despite being an IPS panel.

As far as the fingerprint scanner goes, it’s fast, responsive and unlocks the phone rather quickly. You do have to press in a little bit on the home button to get the phone to unlock from sleep though.

Inside the Flash Plus 2 resides MediaTek’s Helio P10 octa-core processor. It’s fast becoming the standard SoC for mid-range devices with budget price tags, and it performs well, for the most part.

AnTuTu benchmarks peg the synthetic score of the Flash Plus 2 at 41578, which is a little low for the P10 chipset. It might be because of the software on the phone and the 2GB of RAM (the phone’s running Android Marshmallow 6.0 with some funky overlay on top) but that’s just conjecture on our part.

We have no idea how much the phone will retail for since it’s slated for a local launch this week. We’ll be updating this article by then.