Cherry Mobile's Terrible Trio

The Cherry Mobile Flare

I have been pretty impressed with Cherry Mobile's current offerings. Something just wanting a functional smartphone has little reason to look beyond Cherry Mobile Terrible Trio: the Flare, the Flame and the Titan.

Price. What makes this three so "terrible" insofar as the competition is concerned is the price. The Flame will set you back just Php3,999, the Flame is priced substantially higher at Php6,299 which in turn gives you a larger higher resolution screen and the Titan, is priced just a bit higher, at Php6,499, gives users a low cost monster phone option.

Operating System. None of the three phones run the latest version of Android, which is Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Instead all three phones run Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. I have devices that run on Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean, and I really don't miss Jelly Bean when on a Ice Cream Sandwich. Jelly Bean's most innovative feature is Google Now, a voice assistant is not all that useful in the Philippines. Running on Ice Cream Sandwich does mean you can run all the apps on Google Play, which I think for most users is good enough. A note, Google Now can actually run on Ice Cream Sandwich, it is just that Google has restricted its use to Jelly Bean phones.

Performance. The Flare, Flame and Titan all run on lower cost dual core chipsets. The Flare and Flame run on Qualcomm chipsets. The Titan on a MediaTek chipset. Low cost, does not mean poor performance. The three phones can score upwards of 6,700 points on AnTuTu benchmarks. Basically, it means that they can blow away anything built in 2010 in terms of performance, and are faster than most 2011 models, except for the dual core flagship phones. With a one year warranty, they are a better deal than looking for a one year old or two year old phone on the second hand market. These three will wreck havoc on the second hand market, attracting all except for brand conscious buyers.

These phones are fast enough except for the hardcore gamer, who really wont be satisfied with any of the options under 20K.