Cherry Mobile W500 Titan Review

(Before It's News)

Cherry Mobile made a huge splash the past week with the introduction of their really, I mean really affordable Android smartphones having very decent specs. One of which is their largest smartphone to date, the aptly-named Cherry Mobile Titan.

The 5-inch Cherry Mobile Titan turned a lot of heads due to its affordable Php6,499 price for the specs you are getting. We’ve been playing with this phone for the past week and we’re here to help you decide whether it’s a phone you should consider getting.

Design

If you’re familiar with Cherry Mobile phones, they love to look at OEM phones that would fit in our market and rebrand it as their own. The CM Titan is no different as it’s a rebranded Konka W990 which looks good on white by the way.

The Titan sports an all-glass front to cover its 5-inch screen which has a nice thin bezel on both sides. Below the screen you’ll see the three familiar Android ICS buttons – Menu, Home and Back. Thank goodness they removed the useless Search button on this phone. On top of the display you’ll see the VGA front camera.

Top side you’ll find the power button, microUSB port for data and charging and the 3.5mm audio port. On the right side is just the volume rocker and nothing else. Talk about simplicity.

The back plate is made up of a matte hard plastic with the branding stamped on it which looks like something that might rub off over time. You’ll also see the 5-megapixel autofocus camera with flash on top beside the speaker holes.

This phone includes two back plates in the box. An ordinary one and one with a faux leather flip cover attached to it making the phone look snazzy when you whip it out. Saves you money from getting a separate case as well. What’s also cool with this cover is that puts your phone into sleep automatically when you close it, and wakes it up when you flip it open.

Opening the back is as simple as prying it it with your fingernail. Inside you’ll find the two slots for your two full-sized SIMs with the microSD slot right in the middle. There’s also the huge 2350mAh battery that keeps this phone running.

Overall, the phone looks really simple with only the flip cover to add class. It has a very hefty feel with a weight of 205g so it’s not light for a phone at all. Although you can grasp it in one hand, it feels uncomfortable to do thumb typing on it unless you’re using two hands. You might want to hold it in one hand and use your other hand to navigate this device.

Display

Even if the CM Titan has a huge 5-inch screen, the resolution is stuck at just 800 x 480 with 16 million colors, the same as its smaller sibling, the 4-inch Cherry Mobile Flare. If you’re a sucker for a sharp display, you will be disappointed with this one. The screen also lacks the necessary brightness for proper use under the sun.

It runs on a slightly untouched version of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich which is nice if you want to keep your phone lean. Gives you a lot of opportunities to customize using launchers from Google Play as well.

Performance

Running the show on the Cherry Mobile Titan is a 1.0GHz Cortex-A9 dual-core processor from Mediatek along with 512MB RAM.

Using Quadrant, a synthetic benchmarking tool, this phone got a really good score of 2564. For comparison, it’s better than the dual-core Novathor chip of the Sony Xperia P, at par with the dual-core TI OMAP of the LG Prada 3.0.

What does it mean in real-world usage? Well, I’ve no problems navigating within the UI nor launching common apps like Messaging and Phone. There’s tiny to negligible bit of lag all around but it shouldn’t be a problem.

There’s only 4GB of internal storage here with about a GB reserved for the phone’s use so you’d want to make use of a microSD here.

Tried gaming with a handful of titles – Dead Trigger, Jetpack Joyride, and Temple Run. Although I prefer a much higher resolution when gaming on a big screen, the games went fairly smooth. There’s a little bit of stuttering but only if you’ve been continuously gaming for quite a long time. The top portion grows warm by the way as you play for hours.

Web browsing is generally fast except for the pinching part. The built-in Android browser also renders poorly. You would want to download a browser on Google Play pronto. Try Chrome.

This phone also comes with the popular TouchPal Keyboard which supports swipe texting. A handy feature for composing long messages or e-mail. Feel free to download other keyboards or switch to the generic Android if you wish though.

Multimedia

Multimedia is not a strong suit for the CM Titan mainly because of its poor resolution. I also tried watching high-def trailers in the YouTube app and there’s strong pixilation due to the big screen and low-reso combination. Colors appear over saturated as well.

Sound coming from this phone is quite loud, too loud even although a bit hollow. The speaker just can’t give you quality audio output so you’re better off using your own good pair of headphones.

Dual-SIM

This phone is equipped with dual-SIM, dual-standby support. What’s nice is that you can use 3G (up to HSPA+) on both SIM slots.

What we don’t like is how switching to a SIM when texting or making a call requires an extra couple of steps (swipe from top then click the other SIM). Other phones (like the CM Flare) give you two Send or Call buttons so you can switch to either one easily.

Camera

Camera is fully-loaded with features and settings customization and even supports touch to focus.

Here are a few sample photos taken with auto settings for you to look at.

Not really good quality if you ask me but what can you expect from a phone with this price huh? Colors are washed out and at closer inspection you’ll start seeing noise on the photos. Better mask them with filters and effects to make it upload-worthy.

The rear camera is also capable of 720p video recording in 3GP format for a maximum of 30 minutes. The VGA front camera works just fine for video chat apps like Skype although don’t expect good quality picture on the other end.

Battery life

This phone boasts of an above-average 2350mAh battery which should support the huge screen well. Here are the results of my simple battery test.

For my normal use with WiFi On, moderate calls and text, very light gaming and surfing, I was able to get a day and a half with it. Just around 16 hours if you use data on it for a few hours. I also tried it with data always on, and at the same time using it as a WiFi hotspot until it gives out. The Titan lasted 5 hours.

Verdict

So what can we say about the Cherry Mobile W500 Titan? Well it’s big and hefty for our taste, for my hands at least. This phone is made for people with big fingers who want big keys on their touchscreen. The screen’s poor resolution might turn off people especially those who are planning to use this for watching a lot of videos. What you’ll get out of this is solid performance on a dual-SIM phone with all the necessities for a smartphone.

At only Php6,499, you’ll be getting more than what you paid for when you get the Cherry Mobile Titan. However, if you don’t want it big and heavy I would suggest to just stick with their 4-inch Cherry Mobile Flare.

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