Cherry Mobile has been releasing increasingly higher end smartphones in the past few months, however, not everyone has a need for the best specs they can afford. If you’re new to smartphones and Android or just want an affordable secondary phone but still want that Android experience, a budget Android phone might be a better option for you. The Cherry Mobile Click is exactly that, offering a near-complete Android experience with a price low enough to make jaws drop. Curious about this little bugger? Here is my full Cherry Mobile Click review.
What’s in the Box?
The retail box of the Cherry Mobile Click is quite large relative to its size. It comes with the standard accessories that I’ve come to expect from the local brand
- phone
- headset with built-in mic
- USB transfer cable
- battery
- charger
Build Quality and Design
Unlike the build quality of the Cherry Mobile W100 that I had reviewed in the past, the Click is actually much more solid. There’s no creaking whatsoever when I press against the body. There’s also some surprising heft to it, unlike the W100, which was really light and plasticky. It won’t win any awards in terms of design though.
On the front, you’ll find the 3.5 inch touchscreen with a wide earpiece above it and the capacitive navigation keys along the bottom. The bezels aren’t too big, but there’s a lot of wasted space on top considering the Cherry Mobile Click doesn’t have a front-facing camera or front-facing sensors.
On the left, you’ll find the weirdly placed micro USB port.
On the right, there’s the volume rocker and a small notch to pry the battery cover open. Interestingly, there’s also a lanyard hole, but it’s inside that same notch for prying open the battery cover. This makes it easier to attach a lanyard accessory like a wrist wrap or neck strap.
At the top is the 3.5mm headset jack and power/lock button. The bottom is totally bare.
The back is where you’ll find a very basic 2mp fixed focus camera, Click and Cherry Mobile branding, and finally, the loudspeaker toward the bottom left. The battery cover features a matte finish, which is nice because fingerprints and other smudges aren’t as apparent as they would be on a surface with a glossy finish.
The Chipset: Single Core Workhorse
The Cherry Mobile Click features a 1GHz single core MediaTek MT6575 processor coupled with a PowerVR SGX 531 GPU. It might not seem like that much these days, but it’s plenty snappy since the HVGA screen doesn’t have that many pixels to be processed. It’s also worth mentioning that the PowerVR SGX 531 GPU is the same one that’s been used on a lot of locally branded dual core phones like the Cherry Mobile Blaze and MyPhone A888 Duo that have a pretty decent gaming experience so the Cherry Mobile Click is still quite capable despite its entry level pricing.
Now, this wouldn’t be a proper review if we didn’t run the Click through a few benchmark tests. I ran the review unit through Quadrant and Nenamark 2 to give you guys a perspective on how well this phone ranks against other popular phones. Check out the results below.
The Screen: As Basic as It Gets
Considering its budget pricing, don’t expect too much in terms of screen quality. It’s about as basic as it gets for an entry level smartphone. The Cherry Mobile Click features a 3.5 inch LCD TFT display with a resolution of 320 x 480 (HVGA). That gives it a pixel density of 165ppi.
It’s most likely a TN (Twisted Nematic) TFT display, which is a basic kind of TFT screen that has great brightness, but produces washed out colors. The screen of the Cherry Mobile Click exhibits these same properties, except that the max brightness seems to have been dialed down so that the colors don’t appear as washed out. It’s fine for the most part, but it’s kind of dark when you look at the screen head on.
The Software: No, It’s Not Gingerbread
For the longest time, entry level Android phones would come in Gingerbread flavors or worse. The Cherry Mobile W100 and more recently reviewed Sonic are just a couple of good examples. However, the Cherry Mobile Click surprised me by running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. Yes, ICS isn’t the latest version of Android, but it certainly gives the Click much more functionality and more intuitive UI than similarly-priced Gingerbread phones.
Another thing I like is that the Cherry Mobile Click runs on as close to vanilla ICS as you can get. The only thing that isn’t stock Android are the Cherry Mobile-themed wallpapers and that’s it. There’s a bit of bloatware though, namely the Cherry Mobile Fun Club app, eWarranty and the preinstalled TouchPal Keyboard.
Telephony and Network Connectivity: Complete Up to 3G
A phone should function as a phone and the Cherry Mobile Click is no different. It comes with your stock Android messaging and dialer apps, not to mention the E-mail and Gmail apps for composing and receiving email.
Texting on the small screen is doable since typing is quite accurate, but you’ll still want to switch to typing in landscape so you have more space to work with. Typing using the onscreen keyboard will feel a little cramped for people with large hands like me, but it is fairly accurate, and things are much better if you switch over and type in landscape.
The call quality on the Cherry Mobile Click suffers because of the weak earpiece. Its small size means the mic will be situated farther from your voice during calls than it would be on a larger phone like my Omega HD 2.0. So while you might hear the caller just fine as you would on any other phone, the one on the other end of the line might not have it as easy.
Imaging: As Basic as it Gets
The Cherry Mobile Click is as basic as it gets when it comes to smartphone cameras. All you get is a 2Mp fixed focus camera on the back. I took some sample shots at 4 o’clock in the afternoon under a cloudy sky. As you can see, there’s hardly any detail to speak of.
The limited camera performs rather poorly and low-light performance is next to none so I didn’t bother showing you guys any low-light shots. And it doesn’t come with a flash, meaning you’ll get absolutely no illumination in poor lighting even if you tried. However, something’s got to give to get the price as low as it is.
Gaming and Entertainment
While the Cherry Mobile Click is an entry-level handset, it’s still powered by a respectable PowerVR SGX531 GPU. That’s the same one found on phones like the Cherry Mobile Blaze and Titan TV, so I was intrigued if such a dinky little phone could handle some heavy 3D gaming.
The first game I installed was Dead Trigger, which is a popular first person shooter that can be downloaded for free from the Play Store. I like to test a phone’s gaming capabilities with it because the graphics settings are adjustable. To my surprise, the Cherry Mobile Click was able to play it just fine, even when I turned up the graphics to the high setting. It did start showing some evident slow-down in frame rates, but on the low or medium setting it was quite snappy.
Another game that I tried to install was Temple Run 2. Like Dead Trigger, it too has an adjustable graphics setting. I didn’t even have to set it to good or better quality. I started playing the game on best quality right away and was surprised by how responsive the controls still were.
Audio output was decent, but not as loud as what I’ve become used to on the Cherry Mobile Omega HD 2.0. Just use it with a micro SD card and fill it with your favorite songs from your library. Or if you want a bit of a change from your usual music, you can use the FM radio app. Either way, it will function just fine as an inexpensive music player.
Where the Click doesn’t excel though is video playback. And it’s not because of the MT6575 SoC, as it should be powerful enough to play videos at up to 720p. What messes up the video playback experience is the screen. The pixel density is so low that the pixellation is evident. It’s fine for the occasional YouTube video, but people who watch videos a lot will not appreciate the screen very much.
Storage: One Big Compromise
If you have plans of getting the Cherry Mobile Click, make sure that you get a micro SD card too, as its internal storage is pretty limited. It only has 192Mb of user accessible storage and a chunk of that is already used up by preinstalled apps.
Battery Life
The Cherry Mobile Click is equipped with a 1,200mAh battery, which might not seem all that much, but you have to keep in mind that it doesn’t come with a large screen or a quad/dual core processor. The Click can get away with such a dinky battery simply because its components don’t use as much power as some of the phones that are coming out these days. To test the battery, I installed an that passively monitors power consumption as it is drained.
The first day of owning a smartphone is usually kalikot day where you set it up just the way you want and play around with it. Because of the phone’s limited space for installing apps, it didn’t take long for me to customize it to just the way I like it, but despite that, haptic feedback was left on, so it ended up consuming a lot of power even though I didn’t use it that much after setting it up. It ended up lasting only 12 hours that day.
The second day with the Cherry Mobile Click was as a secondary phone. I barely used it for texting and calling although it was constantly connected to WiFi. That day, it was able to last 31 hours.
On the third and last day of using the Click, I used it as my primary phone. In addition to normal texting and calling, I also installed and played with a few games. It lasted 21 hours with WiFi constantly connected at home.
So Should You Buy the Cherry Mobile Click?
Whereas any other Android device in its price range would typically run Gingerbread 2.3, the Cherry Mobile Click runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It even surprised me by being able to play games like Dead Trigger and Temple Run 2, both on high graphics settings, with barely any discernible lag. The only real downside to it is its limited internal storage, mainly because it limits the number of apps you can install on it. If you’re planning to get your child their first smartphone or if you want a secondary phone but don’t want to give up the functionality of Android, the Cherry Mobile Click is a steal at Php2,999. However, if you’re able to save up an extra Php1k, I’d still recommend getting something like the Cherry Mobile Flare instead.
Multitouch po ba to? Like pag priness nyo po ung 2 keys sa keyboard di po ba cya mapapapunta sa gitna? (main issue on CM Flare)
2pt multitouch sya sir. kaso same issue as CM Flare na pag masyado malapet sa isa’t isa ang simultaneous keypress, nadedetect lang sya as one keypress.
kasi i’m searching for an affordable phone na kaya ung gnung circumstances. (like my Alcatel OT-918N which has the same issue)
To avoid the keypress issue with 2pt multitouch screen, go for one with at least 5pt multitouch. Try the MyPhone A848i or Cherry Mobile Thunder. Those are the most affordable 5pt multitouch phones I’m aware of.