My First MTK6589 Phone: iOcean X7 Elite

Hello readers!

After a very long hiatus, I finally have a new device in hand to review! I now have a permanent job which can support this (expensive) hobby of mine :)...

As you can see from the title, the item is the relatively old iOcean X7 Elite.

Released way back in September, it was only recently that I have enough money to spend on this gadget. 

The specifications are as follows: 

CPU: MediaTek MTK6589T Quad-Core Cortex A7 at 1.5GHz

GPU: PowerVR SGX 544 286MHz

RAM: 2GB

OS: MIUI 3.11.1

Internal Memory: 1.59GB Apps, 28.75GB internal.

Screen Size: 5.0"

Screen Resolution: 1920x1080.

Webcam: 13.0MP Rear and 2MP Front.

Battery: 2000mAH Li-Ion.

So enough with the rambles, lets go hands-on!

Unboxing

The box itself it pretty bare but I kind of like the simplistic approach. Perhaps iOcean will move to greener options in the future? After all, for most of the users, the box is a one time affair. You open it and then you simply discard it so why not make it less environmentally-costly?

Once opened, you will find the phone itself, with the usual sets of chinese manual, a charger, battery, and a USB cable. Somehow the seller included a blue plastic cover and a screen cover as well.

This is how it looks like with the blue cover on.

Build Quality

So here is the phone. The front is basically one piece of glass forming the screen as well as three capacitive buttons which are annoyingly not backlit. They are also located way too close to the screen in my opinion causing me to repeatedly clicking home instead of space while typing.

There is only the power button on the right side. The buttons on this phone are responsive and gives enough feedback so generally using them feels satisfying.

On the top are the usual 3.5mm headphone jack, the speaker, the front camera and an LED light notification which can be configured to be blue, red or green according to the kind of notifications you have pending.

On the left side you have the volume control buttons.

There is only microUSB port at the bottom.

Finally, at the back there's the loudspeaker at the bottom, a 13MP rear camera and a single LED flash.

Generally I like the build quality. It does not inspire a high quality feeling like phones with a single unibody construction like the HTC one but is comparable to most phones currently on the market. Overall, I would say its comparable, if not better, than that of many Samsung phones. 

Screen

Before continuing, I must confess that this is my first full HD phone but I have used HTC One as well as Samsung S4 before so I can roughly compare quality. And the conclusion? Its a damn good display. You think OGS is a gimmick? Well you are wrong. Seriously, the almost non-existing gap between the touch panel massively improve the usability in a lot of situations. For example, I find that the screen is easier to see under direct sunlight provided that you turned up the brightness all the way. Glare is also greatly reduced and the touch experience is just much better in general. 

Colour is vibrant, viewing angle is excellent due to the IPS panel, white is pretty white and black is quite black. Obviously the black is not as deep as those AMOLED display but its good. The high PPI count makes browsing and viewing videos a pleasure. There is only one downside which is a pretty uneven backlighting particularly in the lower left area in my unit but its not that obvious and even then it is still a good panel!

Camera (TBA)

Rear camera

Front camera

Loudspeaker and Headphone Output

The phone only has one loudspeaker and if you ask me to describe it in one word, it would be 'meh'. I mean it is acceptable but with all the attention other manufacturers such as HTC and Nokia are giving to their loudspeaker's sonic quality, I was hoping for a lot more. Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic in the first place but really even if I have a low expectation to start with, I am pretty certain that I would still be disappointed. 

The maximum volume is barely audible in a quiet small sized room. The output is generally clean, obviously lacking of any bass but the rest of the frequencies sounded pretty decent. If only its louder....  The location obviously does not help in anyway where you can almost block most of the sound simply by putting it on a sofa.

Fortunately, the headphone output is excellent! It has enough power to drive most consumer-grade headphones and it does so pretty well. The output sounds clean with no audible static noise even while charging. Its quite balanced but with a slight tendency to sound a little on the warm side but honestly I quite like this quality. 

Battery Life

With the stock 2000mAH battery, I manage to survive one whole work day but would need to charge it once I get home. I get about 4 hours of screen time but I know that's a rather average figure and obviously there are other devices out there which can survive longer. Generally, the battery life is good but in no way impressive. You can always buy the official 3000mAH extended battery so you can get about 6 hours of screen time but I have yet to purchase it. A typical workload for me would be:

• Automatic brightness. I find this feature works quite well on this phone and that it suits my preference.
• Constant email syncing on both Wi-Fi and data.
• Send about 15 sms and make few minutes of phone calls.

I do not usually use the GPS so if you do then prepare for a massive battery drain and shorter battery life than this. 

Connectivity

If you ask me what the achilles heel of this device, I would straight away answer that its definitely its radios. Although I have not found any other reviewers complain about this but somehow on my unit, both the cellular and WiFi suck. They are both always inconsistent, sometimes fast but most of the times would just stop transmitting data intermittently. I would be fine if the overall speed was lower as long as it remains stable. The WiFi range is also average and so is the network reception.

I am not sure if this can be fixed via software either as I have used both the stock firmware as well as few other custom ROMs and I did not find any noticeable difference between the radio performance. This is a bit of a surprise to me as the exterior of this phone are made entirely of plastic.

GPS

I do not use this feature often but for the sake of completeness, I tried using it a couple of times outside my house only to consistently find that it took forever (not literally) to lock but once it does, it will usually just continue to work. Sometimes it works better but I am guessing that's thanks to the clearer sky. If you absolutely need good GPS performance then unfortunately this is not for you. I tried enabling EPO in an effort to improve the performance but for me that did not help a bit.

MTK6589 (WIP)

General Performance

Please note that I am using a custom ROM (MIUI 3.11.1) to run these benchmarks if you are using a different ROM then the result will most definitely be different. I have forgotten how it works with the stock firmware but you are almost always better off with custom firmwares anyway. 

Using the MIUI ROM, I have to say the general performance is rather excellent! Navigating throughout the system feels smooth although not as smooth as those Snapdragon 800 phones but smooth enough. To be honest, I like the fact that Mediatek opted to use A7 instead of A15 cores although much of this would be due to cost constraint but the positive side effect for me would be a better thermal performance as well as battery life while still providing a good enough performance. Starting apps took some time and is not instantaneous but is never unacceptably long.

The phone only heats up during charging and if I were to heavily use the mobile data connection and maxed out the brightness. In any other situation, I honestly don't recall finding the phone to be uncomfortably hot and most of the time it remains cool even if you were to play games or surf the internet. Overall, I am satisfied with the performance of the SOC and the ROM. Good job Mediatek and whoever developed this ROM! 

Sunspider

Rightware Browsermark

GLBenchmark

Antutu

Call Quality 

Since my day job now requires me to call people on a daily basis (I HATE DEALING WITH HUMANS), I think I can conclude that the call quality is very good. I have no idea how well the noise cancelling works (if any) but none of the people I called have any trouble understanding me and on the other side, I also have no trouble understanding them. The ear phone is appreciably loud, sometimes too loud that I have to lower the volume. All in all, this is a good phone to make a phone call with. 

Issues

As I said before, the radios would have to be the weakest point of this phone but is still usable. Camera performance is sub-par but again sub-par. The loudspeaker, as always, is just too quiet. GPS is slow but that is common across MTK6589 phones so I am not too sure if iOcean is at fault. All that and the minor backlight bleed.

BUT on the positive side, it has a gorgeous screen! So good that I am willing to live with all the other downside. The headphone output is clean, uncoloured and have ample of power. Performance and battery life is more than acceptable. Although the camera is very average, the fast focusing action actually makes it useful in many conditions other than very low light conditions. Finally, the most important positive point in my opinion would be that there are enough ROM developers for this phone out there to ensure that we would at least see Android KitKat run on this phone although God knows how long that will take (I am feeling very optimistic lately).

Conclusion 

Would I recommend this phone to everybody? Err, that would be a no. Would I recommend this to those trying to find a good budget full HD phone and willing to compromise by having to install custom ROMs and live with all the shortcomings? My answer would be a very enthusiastic yes. 

You see, unlike my previous Freelander i20 where the kernel is so obviously flawed and is closed to the developers making it a horrible device to use most of the time, the iOcean X7 has no major fault that would prevent me from enjoying it. It is also backed by quite a few ROM developers so you actually have a choice in which stable ROM to use.

That does not sound like a conclusion but to be honest, I myself have not decided on what to think of this phone yet. I am sorry if the conclusion is not helpful so you would have to read all the wordy reviews and decide on your own!

Rating: 

3.5/5

Regards,

YS

My Next Mobile?

Warning: This was written way back in April. Just didn't have enough time to actually finish it up and post it. 

Now is a terrible time for people who are looking for a a new phone and/or tablet to buy simply because there are so many exciting products announced yet you do not know exactly when they will come out! Even then you would have to play the waiting game for retailers to stock up for us international customers. Fortunately, I am broke right now so I share none of your frustration :).

For this post, I just wanted to share the criteria for my next ideal phone.

1) Full HD Screen
Yes, I know its an overkill. Nobody needs a full HD screen, you can barely see the pixels on the 720p blablabla... but I still want it :) You see, I KNOW that 720p is enough but all the hype about the 1080p mobile phones recently introduced, I can't help but WANT one :) Greed.

This is the reason why I want a full HD screen.. that or maybe I just want the HTC one. 

Pure perfection...

2) 2GB RAM

Again, haters are going to say that 1GB is enough for your phone, why would you want that much RAM on your phone anyway, 2GB will just reduce the battery life and so on. BUT again, you see.. I know that but I still WANT my next phone to have at least 2GB of RAM. Since most phones are equipped with at least 1GB of RAM nowadays, I would say that the extra RAM is more for future proofing than anything else. Of course there are people out there who would benefit from it (i.e. heavy multitasker) but in my opinion, improvements in the flash NAND performance would improve the multitasking experience just as much, if not more. 

3) >2500mAh Battery

Having played around with several phones in the past, I now know that given my usage pattern, I should only consider phones with >2500mAh of battery capacity especially with all those extra pixels to process. There are select few phones with >3000mAh batteries but I don't really think the added premium is worth it. My current phone (Newman N2 with 2500mAh battery) I can usually get about 2 days of day-to-day operation so that is a pretty good deal to me.

4) Quad Core

On this day and age, why would anyone settle for a dual core anymore? Unless you are using the WP8 (in which case you don't really have any choice but use a dual core :D ), you should really only consider buying quad core phones. They barely carry any price premium nowadays so it really doesn't make sense to buy a dual core Android phone anymore (at least not in the Chinese market).

This brings me to the next BIG topic: A15 vs. A9 vs. A7 vs. A8 vs. A5. 

To those who did not know, A15 refers to the currently shipping highest performance ARM core and as you go down to A5, the performance also decrease. Fortunately, with the performance deficit also comes lower power consumption hence heat dissipation (most of the times). 

Most of the currently shipping flagship phones are using the Snapdragon 600 SOC which contains 4 Krait cores. Krait is a custom Qualcomm design but for most parts you can imagine its performance being close to A15 cores although with better power profile. Currently, all the SOC manufacturers/designers seem to be focusing on improving performance at whatever cost. This reminds me of the Pentium 4 era a.k.a. the Gigahertz war. Hopefully the Conroe era will come soon where performance improvements will only be considered worthy if it does not significantly increases the power consumption.

Samsung also uses their own Octa-core Exynos 5 SOC which is a bit deceiving for me as you don't actually get to use all the 8 cores at the same time. Simply put, they basically have four A15 cores and four A7 cores on the same die and will dynamically choose which cluster to use depending on the workload. Think of it like the Tegra 3 four A9 cores and its companion core where in this case instead of just a core, the Exynos 5 have a companion cluster. I personally think its a bit too much. Wouldn't two A7 cores suffice for non-demanding tasks? But then again, what do I know.... One thing for sure, octa-core is far more marketable then a hexa-core but then again Nvidia could've said that the Tegra 3 is a penta-core. Marketings..

Enough rant for now, so for us Chinese phone buyers, what the currently available choices?

Well, basically you have MTK6589,MTK6589,MTK6589,MTK6589, and the APQ8064 :) Basically you have no choice really. The APQ8064 is only used in more expensive options such as the Oppo Find 5 and the Xiaomi Mi2. So I will only talk about the MTK6589. 

In a nutshell, the MTK6589/MT6589 contains four A7 cores. Thats right, we are only getting the companion clusters in the Exynos 5. The clock varies, the vanilla MT6589 version runs at 1.2GHz whereas the newer Turbo version runs at 1.5GHz. The GPU is PowerVR SGX 544MP running at 286MHz whereas the Turbo version runs at 357MHz. This is the same type of GPU found in the Exynos 5 Octa BUT the major difference being this is the single core version whereas the Exynos 5 have the triple core version. 

Just how much performance do we actually lose going from A15 to A7? Well, it is impossible to say just how much the difference is as it depends on the workload. Really, it makes no sense to compare these two as they are in two very different classes. The A15 is designed ground up for maximum performance while the A7 was designed for energy efficiency. It makes more sense to compare the A7 to the currently still-shipping A9 cores such as Tegra 3 and the Exynos 4412 (exactly the one I have in my Newman N2). 

As a wild guestimate, a 1.2GHz A7 would perform close to a 1.0GHz A9 but keep also in-mind that the A9 is an Out-Of-Order micro-architecture wherease the A7 is an In-Order so do not expect the same level of 'snappiness'. Since I currently clock my phone at 1.0GHz, getting a new phone with the stock MTK6589 would not be much of an upgrade could even be considered a downgrade in some aspects. 

However, I believe that the performance decrease should be worth it considering that the new SOC should run cooler and also uses less power hence longer battery life. I have been playing some online games on my phone and it does get rather toasty. The same problem also occurs while playing the same games on Galaxy S3 and the HTC One so I guess the pursuit of extreme performance comes with a clear cost. If the MTK6589 would in any way improve on this, I would gladly switch to it even at the expense of some performance. 

5) Android >4.0 at launch

After being stuck with Android 4.0 on my current phone (Freelander i20 aka Newman N2), I now vow to never purchase an Android phone which launched with the last 2 generation OS. Remember, these Chinese companies rarely provide any after sales support. For example, we were promised a Jelly Bean ROM for the Newman N2 "early April" but still nothing. To be fair, they didn't actually state the year so maybe I was wrong to assume it would be this year..

Hopefully I will find a phone with all these specifications while also being cheap. I guess I can keep on dreaming :)

Regards,
YS.

Full HD and 2GB RAM Phones

Hello guys,

It has been a long time since I last posted here so an update is due.. Finally finished my degree (am now officially a Computer Science graduate! Phewww). Am pretty happy for finally completing my degree but also sad as that means I will stop receiving allowance from my sponsor next month. That also means no more money to buy Chinese gadgets! :( Somebody please send me review samples to review! Being an independent and honest reviewer sucks as you would have to spend your own money to review stuffs..

Anyway, a lot has changed since I last posted an entry here. The latest buzz is on the high-resolution phones, quad core SOCs as well as having 2GB of RAM. Yes, my current Newman N2 is a quad core phone but its 'only' has a 720p screen and a meager 1GB of RAM. And lets face it, the kernel sucks and I think the limit as to which the custom ROMs can improve on this has been reached. Newman sucks! There, you have my words :)

So, what options are there now if you are in the market for a full HD phone and 2GB of RAM? Turns out, there's plenty of options for you!

1) UMI X2 

SOC: MTK6589 1.2GHz
RAM: 2GB
ROM: 32GB
Screen: 5.0" Full HD IPS Screen
Cameras: 13.0MP (Rear) and 2.0MP (Front)
Battery: 2500mAh
Typical Selling Price (without shipping): USD 300


2) iocean X7 Elite

SOC: MTK6589T 1.5GHz
RAM: 2GB
ROM: 32GB
Screen: 5.0" Full HD IPS Screen
Cameras: 13.0MP (Rear) and 3.0MP (Front)
Battery: 2000mAh
Typical Selling Price (without shipping): USD 300


3) HLD I9500

SOC: MTK6589T 1.5GHz
RAM: 2GB
ROM: 4GB
Screen: 5.0" Full HD IPS Screen
Cameras: 12.8MP (Rear) and 2.1MP (Front)
Battery: 2600mAh/3000mAh (depending on where you look)
Typical Selling Price (without shipping): USD 200


4) TCL Idol X

SOC: MTK6589T 1.5GHz
RAM: 2GB
ROM: 16GB
Screen: 5.0" Full HD IPS Screen
Cameras: 13.0MP (Rear) and 2.0MP (Front)
Battery: 2000mAh
Typical Selling Price (without shipping): USD 330

This is, of course, not a complete list but its all that I can find AND can be purchased NOW (which is precisely why Neo is not in the list) for a reasonable price. Personally, if I have unlimited money, I would have purchased an HTC One on a heartbeat! Seriously, that thing is a beautiful work of art. But if you give me 500 bucks to spend, I would probably spend it on the TCL above. The battery might not have the most capacity but I think TCL (which is really Alcatel, just a FYI) should have enough resources to actually optimize the firmware to make it competitive with the others.

Thank you for reading this far, and as a reward here's an exciting news; I have ordered the Galaxy S4 clone! Even more exciting is the fact I only paid about USD 150 for it! To be honest, on paper the specifications looked too good to be true. I guess we will just have to wait for a week for it to arrive. See you guys next week?

Regards,
YS.

Freelander I20/Newman N2 Review

Freelander I20/Newman N2 Review

Why

I sold my M1S and wanted to buy a quad core phone. This was among the cheapest quad core phone available and it also have a 13MP camera! Camera, speed and sound quality. If you offer me something exciting in any of those three category then you can be sure I will be wasting my money to try it out!

Specifications

SOC: Samsung Exynos 4412 1.5GHz quad core
GPU: ARM Mali-400 MP4
RAM: 1GB DDR3
OS: Android 4.0.3
Internal Memory: 2GB Apps, 5GB internal.
Screen Size: 4.7" IPS
Screen Resolution: 1280*720
Webcam: 13.0MP Rear and 2MP Front.
Battery: 2500 mAH Li-Ion.

Cost

I bought it off Aliexpress.com for about USD 300.

Packaging

The accessories included were an additional back cover (an ugly orange one), USB cable and charger and a fake Beats headphone (at least I assumed it was fake. Not that it matters though. Not into overly bassy headphones anyway. ).

Build Quality

Overall, the build quality is just alright. Not excellent but not too bad either. The front consists of the huge screen, the front camera and the 4 capacitive buttons which I hate.

The back cover is removable and is made entirely from plastic. The cover has a textured finish to help users grip the phone easier. In practice, the texture does not bother me but it doesn't improve the grip either when used one handed. 

Also at the back, you have the 13.0MP camera, a single LED flash and the loudspeaker. 

At one side you have the microUSB port and a space for you to insert your nail to open the back cover.

On the other side, you have the power/unlock button, volume buttons and the camera button. The volume buttons feel rather mushy but still workable. The camera button is a 2-stage button where you half-press to focus and full press to take a shot. The power button also feels good.

Screen

The IPS screen is huge (compared to my M1S) and since its an IPS screen, the viewing angle and colour reproduction look subjectively good. Here are the pictures comparing it to my Pipo M3.

The brightness is plenty although the screen will still not be visible under direct sunlight. What I like about the brightness is that the minimum brightness setting is just perfect for using the phone in the dark (in your bedroom before you sleep). There is no obvious light bleeding from the screen itself but....

There are obvious light bleeding from the lights of the capacitive buttons. In general use, it won't be very noticable but when you start watching movies with dark screen then it will be quite obvious. Good thing is it turns off after some time so it won't be that disruptive during long movie sessions. Why can't the manufacturer just go for the onscreen button!

Camera

Now for the main selling point of the phone, I present to you the 13.0MP camera! But before that, I would have to talk about the snapping experience. The camera is noticably slower at taking a picture (compared to the M1S) and as a result, you would have to hold still for a little bit longer than usual or you will get a blurry picture. The flash performance is also sub-optimal. There has been a firmware update file for the camera but I have yet to try it.

Rear Camera

Indoors Performance

Normal mode with adequate lighting.

100% crop. Click for bigger image.

No flash in low light.

100% crop. Click for bigger image.

Low light with flash.

100% crop. Click for bigger image.

Night mode in low light.

100% crop. Click for bigger image.

Outdoors Performance

Outdoor 1. Window view.

Outdoor 1 100% crop.

Outdoor 2. Stairs.

Outdoor 2 100% crop.

Outdoor 3. Local train station.

Outdoor 3 100% crop.

Outdoor 4.Train station 2.

Outdoor 4 100% crop.

Overall, I find images in well lit environment to be very detailed thanks to the overkill amount of pixels. The images look clean with noises only visible at native resolution. The colours are very true to life, which is a surprise considering the recent trend towards over saturating images in other devices. However, as it usual is with camera phones with small sensors, it falters in low light condition and the untimely flash did not help either. If you do want to take a photo in the dark, I would suggest using the flash light instead of relying on the night mode as it introduces too much noise and very little detail, if any.

Front Camera

Front camera is the usual stuff. Fixed focus = always blurry. I think it's good enough for skype considering most of the built-in webcam in notebooks are just as horrible.

Speakers and Headphone jack

The loud speaker is pretty boring, to be honest. The sound output level is very limited (you can barely hear it at full volume if you use it while in the shower). Its definitely on the quiet side compared to most of the other smartphones I have used before. The sound is clean so would be okay if you mainly use it to watch youtube videos but music does not sound pleasant at all due to the tinny quality.

Thankfully, the headphone port works alright and the sound output is sufficiently loud and have no obvious coloration which is nice. Bass in particular does sound a little soft to me but overall is still usable and would be an alright source to use with your low-impedence headphones although it does sound a little dull to me. A brief search on the Google Play would easily fix that though :).

Battery Life

The phone regularly lasts 3 days although on average I have to charge it every 2 days under my typical usage which is pretty much a typical user's usage. I make calls/SMS/browse the internet/play games using my phone everyday and sometimes use it to listen to musics either through my headphones or through the bluetooth speaker. I am still not used to not charging my phone every day but hey, this is definitely something I look forward to getting used to :))). However, if you do some google searches on this topic, some users are reporting that their battery quickly drains from 100% to 80% for no reason and then last for days. I have not personally experienced it but just thought it would be good to let you guys know that YMMV. I think even the heaviest power user would get at least a day out of this phone.

Wireless Performance

One word; mediocre  The wireless module performs alright but its range is much less than most of the other phones (from Sony, Nokia, Samsung and even ThL) that I have used before. If you are close to the router then it will perform fine and speedwise, it can utilize all the bandwidth I have (30Mbps) so cannot comment more on that.

Now, my room is about 10m away from the router but is separated by 2 thick brick walls and understandably some devices have difficulty staying connected which is why I am not totally blaming the phone for this for the boring performance. However, after using it for about one month, I found out that it definitely disconnects more often than any of my previous devices.

Just to put offer some objective information here, my notebook (of course will perform better since it has multiple antennas and uses way more power for the wireless module) reports the wireless signal strength at -59dBm whereas the phone reports -82dBm. Keep in mind that the unit (dBm) does not scale linearly (its logarithmic) so you can see just how much worst the performance is. As another reference, my Pipo M3 tablet reports the signal strength as -71dBm at about the same spot.

GPS

I don't actually use this feature a lot but during the few times when I did actually use the GPS, it worked although it does take longer than usual to get a location fix. Will update this when I have some concrete numbers (how long does it take to get a fix outside etc).

Signal Quality

My unit performs fine with it managing to stick to my network almost at all times (O2) and the 3.5G connection was fine too. However, a quick google search online reveals many users reporting lost signal and having to restart their unit to resume operation. So your mileage may(will) vary.

Exynos 4412

Performance

Sunspider 0.9.1

Browser

Chrome

Firefox

Rightware Browsermark

Browser.

Chrome.

GLBenchmark 2.1.4

Basemark Taiji

Linpack

Antutu

Epic Citadel

Call Quality

The phone performs fine during calls although it could be more sensitive as people would sometimes ask me to repeat myself. Not perfect but bearable and usable most of the times.

Issues

As usual, buyers of new Chinese gadgets are often used as guinea pigs by the manufacturers to test their hardware, or in the case of the Newman N2, their software. Throughout my testing period, I have no major complain about the hardware of the phone except the capacitive button light bleed and the horrible loud speaker.

*Before continuing, I must remind you that I am running the stock version of the phone's firmware which came with the phone. Clicking on the check for updates did not find anything. I planned to update the software once I finished writing this review because I think it would make an interesting follow up post.

My main issue with the phone lies in the software, it is really unoptimized at best and just horrible at worst. The performance wildly varies, take for example, the Antutu score will wildly varies from one run to another with no clear indicator as to what might have caused it. At first I thought it might have been overheating so I took it outside (0 degree Celsius) and re-ran the benchmarks and guess what? Its still as wild as as hookworm. If you run it after restarting the phone then it starts to get a little more consistent.

Sometimes, my unit would slows down for no reason taking ages to load up apps. 3D games would lag so bad that I can't believe the phone is running on a quad core. The only solution I found which worked was again to restart. Also, although my unit comes with Play Store installed, it cannot sync with the Google servers so for example your calendar events won't be synced into your phone. Of course that can be fixed manually but if you are expecting a more pleasant experience then this is not the phone for you. From what I have read, Newman is not the only one to blame here as many other Chinese manufacturers are doing the same due to some weird Google/Chinese government licensing terms.

The camera also have many issues with the software version loaded on my unit from factory. One of it is that if you use flash to capture, you will get this blueish image as it snapped the photo at the wrong time (not synchronised with the flash). Annoying. Oh and the focus is also a hit and miss most of the times. Newman has released an update file to update the camera firmware but I have yet to test it. Will post a follow up post regarding the performance after update in the future.

Just to emphasize just how unfinished the software is, Newman has released more than 5 software updates since the introduction of this phone. Well, you can look at this situation from 2 different angles. First, you could say that Newman after sales support exists and is actively supporting the device. From my perspective, it just shows how many bugs are there in the current software and from the feedbacks on the forum, it is apparent that they are not efficiently addressing them either.

Conclusion

This is the easiest conclusion I ever have to write so far. The phone is an unfinished product and hence is not fit to be sold to the general public in its current software status. Fortunately, the guys at the Vondroid forum are working on multiple ROMs to try and compensate for this but make no mistake, I am not endorsing manufacturers that sell products that are still in their Alpha stage. If you want a good, tested and cheap phone, I still would recommend any Xiaomi phones. Heck, even the ThL phone I tested before performed better and more consistent overall. On the bright side, it was still fun experience reviewing this product.

Newman N2 Quad Core 1.4 GHZ CPU android4.0 4.7inch IPS Touchscreen 1GB/8GB 13MP Camera Newman N2 Quad Core 1.4 GHZ CPU android4.0 4.7" 8GB ROM + 1GB RAM 13MP Camera with Wifi