I'm sharing my thoughts and experience with my Flare 2.1 which I bought from Cherry Mobile's new Concept Store at SM North EDSA Annex Cyberzone.
Cherry Mobile Flare 2.1 is the upgraded Flare 2.0. All Specs are the same except for its RAM which is upgraded from 512mb to 1gb RAM.
Here's the Technical Specification:
4" WVGA Capacitive Touch (3-Point Touch)
1.2 GHz Quad Core CPU (Qualcomm SnapDragon)
4gb ROM / 1gb RAM
5mp Cam w/ Flash (VGA secondary Cam)
Android 4.1.2 (Jellybean)
1600mAh Battery
What's in the Box
The Box is wrapped in plastic. It serves as the warranty seal as well (I think).
When you open it, you will see the Unit (As usual) . Under the unit, there's this
white charger wrapped in plastic, too, the white USB cable for the charger or
connecting the phone to PC, a gray jellycase, the white Earbud Type headset, and
lastly, the instruction manual .
My First touches or clicks on this phone, i think some parts of the touch panel are "not-so-responsive". When I was testing the camera, i had to click a few times.
I dont like earbud headsets but this one's much worse. The cord from the mic to the earphones have equal length, and is quite long; which means you have to hold the mic and put it close to your mouth during calls.
Not beacuse I hate earbud headphones, but for me, this headset really sucks. I think the stock headset of flare s100 is better than the 2.1's. The sound from the stock earphone is weak. When I used my Sony earphones (I'm not sure if it's original but the sound quality is great), the sound from the my earphones were loud, louder than when it is plugged to the flare s100. And a good news, I plugged a desktop speaker
to the Flare 2.1 and played music (music that pauses when played on Flare s100), the music played nonstop.
Almost all features are the same with the Flare s100. The Flashlight widget is gone. I tried the flashlight.apk from Flare s100 but it failed to install.
I decided to replace my Flare s100 because the Flare S was on sale last Feb 15, But the reviews were bad, especially it's "8mp BSI Camera". So I bought Flare 2.1 instead. Though Flare 2.1's Camera is 5mp only, the pictures are good enough. It captures pictures faster than the Flare s100. And I think the pictures from 2.1 is better than from flare s100.
night time,with flash.
I tried to play Alien Vs Predator on Flare 2.1 and it played smoothly. I was using stock ROM and Launcher on s100, rooted, installed Autokiller Memory Optimizer, but the AVP crashes or Force Close. Even with other apps, they either force close or worse, reboot the phone.
I bought my Flare 2.1 around 4pm, and the had about 50% juice. Most of the time, it is connected to my pocket WiFi and the backlight is on. As I remember, I played AVP (more or less 1 hour) until the battery
was drained at 7:30pm. I let it rest for a while to cool down ( it was a little warm), and charged the phone
while turned off at 7:45pm. The charging time took approx. 4 hours. Here's the the graph after a day of average usage (few texts, few games, few surfing via WiFi only)
Some Technical Issues I Experienced
Flare 2.1 saves files on Phone/Internal Memory only. Though it read files from the External Memory card. When you take a Picture, the Preview shown is from the phone memory, but when you view it, it will open the camera folder from the MMC. I downloaded a picture from facebook and the file was saved on the phone memory, too. I tried to reboot the phone but nothing changed. Except after I charged the phone for the first time (The phone shutdown, the batt drained), These issues were fixed. The pictures from the Internal Memory and SD Card can be viewed from the preview button.
There's no G-Sensor Calibration. I guess I don't have to calibrate it.
When you put some apps on the homescreen and put them in a folder, then you sort or move one of them, an error will occur, "Android Launcher unfortunately stopped".
That's it for now. I'll update this blog soon.
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I hope you like my review for the Cherry Mobile Flare 2.1.
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