SMART PHONE: AS CHEAP AS PHP 3,999

Good news for people who wants to own a smart phones: there’s one that is definitely within reach of your budget. It’s extremely affordable Cherry Mobile Flare. A barrier to joining in the big smartphone party happens to be the cost. That is something that affects all demographics, from your tech-savvy younger sibling to your “new technology” older relatives.

The built quality seems to be on the average side for a 152g phone. If you’re one of those people who can’t stand to see a single smudge or fingerprint on your phone, you’re in luck – the back panel is plastic, with a soft matte finish. The buttons and camera lenses on this phone are all in their usual places – you’ve got four Android capacities touch icons at the bottom (Home, Menu, Back and Search), the power button on the top, and the volume rocker off to the left, along with a micro USB port for charging and data transfer. Off to the upper right, you’ll see the font-facing VGA camera, and on the upper center in the back you have a 5-megapixel camera lens. It is very pleasing to know that it is a dual SIM card.

With its dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8625 going along at 1.2 GHz, it intends to make it through some basic tasks, such as viewing texts and playing some games such as Temple Run. You’ve also got only 512MB of RAM to work with, putting it a little bit behind its competition, but still performed well, but well enough to not experience any lag or stuttering. You also have 4GB of internal storage, but only 3GB is free, so if you plan on making this phone into an MP3, camera or video recorder, be prepared to pony up some money for microSD card.

The web browser that comes with the phone is Opera Mobile, a rather interesting addition, as it is not as well known or used as Safari, Google, Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer. For those who want the familiarity of Google Chrome, you can just go the the android marketplace and get it from there. Browsing on Opera was a bit awkward, as some pages didn’t render correctly, so in this case it is better to stick with what you know.

Watching standard quality videos on the Cherry Mobile Flare was fine, but HD videos’ quality will suffer due to its display limitations. The cameras are a lot better than one would expect from 5-megapixel snapper, but standard photography protocol applies even more to the Cherry Mobile Flare – have steady shots and decent lightning when you will take your photo, or the photo quality will be significantly lower.

Overall, the Cherry Mobile Flare is great value for money and can even double as a camera and mp3 player. It is a good dual sim phone that you can get if you don’t want to break the bank. However, its battery life will find you reaching for a charger pretty often, so if you’re out and about the whole day, make sure you bring some extra juice with you in a form of a charger or can find a wall outlet in time to get the best out of this phone.