Cherry Mobile Omega OHD vs MyPhone A919i Duo

When the Cherry Mobile Omega HD first came out, everyone was wowed by its impressive 5 inch HD IPS display and 12 mp autofocus BSI camera. However, it was severely underpowered, resulting in responsiveness that was a bit sluggish, which is why many consumers started looking toward the MyPhone A919i Duo to hopefully address the Omega HD’s shortcomings. However while the A919i Duo is undeniably the more powerful of the two, there are still a few areas where it falls short of being the perfect upgrade over the Omega HD. Find yourself deciding between the two? You might find this Omega HD vs A919i Duo comparison interesting 🙂

Build Quality and Design

The Omega HD is hands down the clear winner in this area. Both of them feature 5 inch screens, but the Omega HD features a slimmer bezel and overall build while maintaining a slim 8.8mm profile. The battery cover is made of thick plastic and the glossy finish feels nice too. It simply handles like a solidly made flagship.

That’s not to say that the A919i doesn’t look good in its own right, because it does. From afar, you might even mistake one for the other since they share similar design elements, particularly the silver accent strip that runs across the edges of both devices. However, the A919i is a bit thicker. It’s actually 10.7mm thick at its thickest point, while the Omega HD is only 8.8mm thick. For it’s size, it’s also quite light, which goes both ways, and the battery cover feels especially cheap. There’s no satisfying heft while handling the phone, but to its credit, it doesn’t feel heavy either.

Winner: Omega HD

The Chipset

If there’s anything you should be buying the A919i Duo for, it’s the 1.2GHz MediaTek MT6589 quad core processor  and the PowerVR SGX544 GPU. This configuration provides very power-efficient computing that can handle just about any app or game you can throw at it. Only while playing the most taxing games will any lag become evident on the A919i Duo, and even then, they will still be largely playable. Antutu Score: 12,377

On the other hand, the Omega HD is powered by the 1GHz MediaTek MT6577 dual core processor, coupled with the PowerVR SGX531. The MT6577 SoC was designed for WVGA/FWVGA phones and even starts to show signs of sluggishness at qHD resolutions. Coupled with an HD screen as on the Omega HD, the MT6577 simply performs poorly, as evidenced in the benchmarks and overall user experience. Antutu Score: 5,491

Winner: A919i Duo

The Screen

The Omega HD and A919i Duo both sport a 1280 x 720 IPS display, equating to a pixel density of 294ppi. On paper, they’re essentially the same screen, but in real life, there is a slight yet negligible difference. The Omega HD’s display has been calibrated to be slightly brighter compared to the A919i. It’s not as if everyone would prefer max brightness, but if it’s something you feel should be a key criterion, then the Omega HD has a slight advantage.

Of course, there’s another thing that gives the Omega HD the advantage, and it’s the Dragontrail glass that protects the display. It’s the same glass that’s on the Sony Xperia Z, and it makes the Omega HD’s display both scratch-proof and shatter-proof. Not bad for something that only costs Php7,999.

Winner: Omega HD

The Software and UI

Both the Cherry Mobile Omega HD and the MyPhone A919i Duo run Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box so neither one really has the advantage in terms of functionality. However, they have a different set of stock icons and wallpapers between the two of them. Some of the Omega HD’s icons look like they were ripped off from Samsung’s Touchwiz UI while the A919i Duo’s look like they belong on a circa Gingerbread handset.

Winner: Tie

Messaging

The Omega HD basically uses the stock app that comes with Android. That’s nothing notable in itself, but the app has problems loading message threads quickly enough where the conversation has piled up with a lot of texts. For example, if you’re in the middle of a thread with over 100 messages and you try to scroll back down to the very first message, you’ll find that when you reach the end, there’ll still be a few messages that show up as loading. Then once those messages have loaded up and expanded, you’ll have to start scrolling again to reach the very end. This is annoying to say the least, but at least it’s easy enough to download a third party messaging app to avoid it.

The A919i Duo on the other hand uses a somewhat modified messaging app. It still looks a bit similar to the stock messaging app, except that it comes with a varied collection of emoticons that you can easily insert into your messages. There’s quite a lot of them so heavy texters will likely appreciate them. Also, the MT6589 SoC gives it a boost in performance so that there are no loading issues within longer conversations. One thing I don’t like though is that when you press the Call button from within a conversation, it doesn’t automatically call the contact but instead, launches the dialer, meaning you have to press Send again just to initiate the call. It’s just a small issue, but it’s still an extra keypress that you don’t need.

Winner: A919i Duo

3G Connectivity

Both phones come with a full suite of connectivity options, from Bluetooth to WiFi and 3G. However, the A919i Duo has the advantage in that it supports 3G connectivity all the way up to HSPA+, whereas the Omega HD only supports regular HSPA speeds. What does this mean? Well, the HSPA can reach theoretical download speeds of 7.2Mbps while HSPA+ can give you faux 4G speeds of up to 21Mbps. Not that our telecoms will actually allow us to reach those speeds, but long story short, downloads are noticeably faster on the A919i Duo when there’s good coverage.

Winner: A919i Duo

Still Images

The A919i Duo sports a fairly decent 8mp autofocus shooter. It’s not a bad quality sensor either, as shots have a fair bit of detail to them. The colors can be a bit washed out in normal to bright outdoor lighting, but once you take things indoors and under fluorescent lighting, shots start looking a bit cold. The flash is a good remedy though, and it does illuminate shots nicely, even in a dark room.

The Omega HD on the other hand sports a much better 12mp BSI autofocus camera as its main shooter. The details in the shots are much better and it performs better in a wide array of lighting situations as well, even in poor lighting.

Winner: Omega HD

Video Capture

Update: Thanks to an anonymous commenter who pointed out that the Omega HD does indeed record at Full HD.

The Omega HD has the better camera sensor and despite the limited abilities of the MT6577, it’s actually able to record at Full HD, although the actual resolution is 1920 x 1088 (standard Full HD is 1920 x 1080). Similarly, the A919i Duo is able to capture Full HD videos at the same resolution as the Omega HD, although the sensor is good enough to produce a decent video even at that resolution.

However, one downside to the A919i Duo’s video recording capabilities is that it doesn’t use the full sensor. The sensor has an aspect ratio of 4:3 while Full HD videos are 16:9. So instead of using the full 3264 x 2448 frame that the sensor is capable of, the camera software only utilizes a 1920 x 1088 portion of the frame. What you get is a zoomed-in look as a result of the narrower field of view. The Omega HD doesn’t have that problem.

Winner: Omega HD

Video Playback

Since both phones sport 720 HD IPS screens, this makes them great candidates for a lot of on-the-go movie marathons, especially when you couple them with a 32Gb micro SD card. However, video playback using hardware decoding tends to stutter on the Omega HD, even when playing just 480p videos. Switching to software decoding eliminates the stuttering and 720p videos start to play just fine. On the other hand, the A919i Duo is much better at video playback. Hey, it records in Full HD so it should play them just fine, right? Not that I see the practicality of playing a Full HD movie on your phone, but if that’s your thing, the A919i Duo can do it for you.

Winner: A919i Duo

Gaming

This is where the MT6577 and PowerVR SGX531 of the Omega HD really starts to show its age. They simply weren’t meant to power phones with screen resolutions in excess of WVGA or FWVGA. qHD phones with the MT6577 chipset already exhibit a bit of sluggishness, so it becomes especially apparent on the Omega HD with its 720 screen. Even when you crank down the graphics quality to low on Temple Run 2 and Dead Trigger, there is still a millisecond of lag before the onscreen character reacts to your gestures, and it’s especially bad on Real Racing 3 where controlled turns are important to winning the game.

The MT6589 and PowerVR SGX544 is a much more formidable SoC, and whatever lagginess you might encounter in Temple Run 2 and Dead Trigger on the Omega HD is almost completely eliminated on the A919i Duo. Real Racing is another matter as there is still a bit of frame rate stuttering, but it’s still much more playable compared to playing it on the Omega HD.

Winner: A919i Duo

Battery Life

There are plenty of criteria that can be used to evaluate the battery life of a smartphone, but the most important thing to me is that it’s able to last a day at the office or at school without having to recharge until you get back home. The Omega HD and the A919i Duo sport 2,100mAh and 2,000mAh batteries respectively. If that were to be the basis alone, the slight 100mAh advantage of the Omega HD would be negligible, but there are a few other things that can impact battery life between the two.

The most obvious is that the A919i Duo is powered by a more powerful CPU and GPU when compared to the Omega HD. That extra snappiness is worth it of course, but the quad core MT6589 burns through the battery faster compared to the older but less energy-hungry MT6577 of the Omega HD. Also, the A919i Duo is capable of HSPA+ speeds, while the Omega HD can only go up to regular HSPA. The faster download and upload speeds are nice, but it still consumes more battery.

To get a better picture of what kind of battery life you can expect between the two, I installed a battery drain analyzer app to track battery usage. The A919i Duo lasted 17-18 hours on days when I had the phone at home and constantly connected to WiFi. I only used it for the occasional call or text and for reading pre-cached RSS feeds every now and then. On the one day that I used the phone on an errand, it only lasted 13 hours. That time, I was out the whole afternoon and I would connect to mobile data every now and then to download RSS feeds or check out my location using Google Maps.

On the other hand, the Omega HD would last me 19-20 hours on days that I was home and connected to WiFi. On days that I was out most of the time and had to connect to mobile data to download my feeds or check out my location, that number would go down to about 15 hours.

A typical work or school day for most Filipinos is 9 hours plus 2 to 4 hours commuting back and forth. So if your smartphone is able to last at least 13 hours, it passes my single most important criterion. Both the Omega HD and the A919i Duo can be called all-day phones, but we have to give credit where it’s due, and the Omega HD wins this final round because of the 1-2 extra hours that it’s able to eke out of the battery.

Winner: Omega HD

Conclusion

The purpose of this comparison isn’t to tell you that one phone scores better than the other across various areas of critique, but if that’s the kind of thing your looking for, it’s a tie at 5 – 5. What this comparison aims to do, however, is to help you discover which aspects these two phones excel at against each other and help you choose the one that is perfect for your needs.

Do you need a good camera phone and a great screen? The Omega HD is the ideal choice. Do you prefer a phone that’s better rounded when it comes to performance? Then go with A919i Duo. However, I will point out that at Php9,590, the MyPhone A919i Duo doesn’t feel like a definitive upgrade over the Cherry Mobile Omega HD, which only sells for Php7,999. Still, I hope this Omega HD vs A919i Duo comparison will help you decide between the two if you haven’t yet made up your mind already.