The CUBOT H1 Smartphone Test: A Month with 3-4 Days of Battery per Charge
by Ian Cutress on December 23, 2015 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Battery
- CUBOT
Benchmarks
It seems somewhat silly to run performance benchmarks when most media outlets talk about high performance smartphones most of the time, but my point to consider is my old phone, and whether moving from quad core Krait 300 at 1.7GHz to a MediaTek quad core A53 chipset at 1.0 GHz but running a newer Android is better or worse. For some of the regular smartphone tests I don’t actually own the prerequisite hardware of our smartphone team, but here are some tests I was able to run, and the devices I had to hand at the time:
| Devices on Hand for Testing | |
| Cubot H1 | MediaTek 6735P |
| HTC Desire 610 | Snapdragon 400 |
| HTC One Max | Snapdragon 600 |
| Huawei Mate S | Kirin 935 |
| Huawei Nexus 6P | Snapdragon 810 |
| Google Nexus 7 2013 | Snapdragon S4Pro |
| Amazon Fire HD 6 (Limited) | MediaTek MT8135 |
| OnePlus X | Snapdragon 801 |
When we talk about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 family or Intel's partnership with Rockchip partnership for Sofia and Atom, it makes me somewhat sad we don't have many new data points to compare to the MediaTek MT6735P inside the Cubot H1. However the one benchmark were all interested in is the battery life:
So let's put it this way - the H1 on a full charge breaks the Geekbench3 test to the point that it thinks you are cheating. Oops.
With the PCMark test it gets over 15hrs compared to the 6hrs of the Galaxy S6. When you have a large battery and not many pixels to push, with the right efficiency the device will last a night out with only 25% left in the tank in the way that high end smartphones do not. Anecdotally, as I'm writing this, I just spent a few hours in meetings across the other side of London - I spent 30 minutes each way on the tube with Evernote open and being used (albeit with no wireless or updates), and the battery went down from 38% to 33%. That's an hour of solid writing with black text on white for at most 5% of battery.
Initial use, first battery run down and more aggressive use
When I first started using the H1, the graph on the left was my battery usage estimation. Saying ‘approximiately 4 days left’ is almost unheard of, but with a regular 10% screen on time, the result was the graph in the middle, successfully predicting four days of battery. On the right is another example of my use, although a little bit more aggressive with some charging. Yes, I can confirm that there seems to be something wrong with those percentage calculations. But a quick charge in airplane mode for a few minutes gives a few percentage points of battery – while a lot of smartphones offer quick charging for the capacity to fill quickly, it still depends on the capacity drain of the SoC. It helps to have the best of both worlds. Of course, the downside of this is that it can take 3hrs and up to fully charge the H1. The H1 does come with a cable so you can charge other devices though, as 5200 mAh matches some battery packs.
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Notmyusualid - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link
Signal strength! Possibly the most important aspect!Despite living in Denmark for years, I have little Danish - everyone spoke English to me. But I understood a little. So jeg taler ikke Dansk, you see.
But nice to see my trusty S5 in 2nd place. I feel I've still no reason to change my phone, but seeing a battery like the one has on this phone, has me looking at reviews again.
If I use my S5 as a GPS, and connected to the cars hands-free, I can *burn* up my battery in hours. And I can't have an extended-back battery, because I have the Qi-wireless-s-view case on the back... so I've no option. I did however, buy one of those 2.4A car chargers, so it can be used, and charged in a timely manner...
Alexvrb - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
That's only really true if your wireless is the limiting factor. If you're in an area with good LTE signal quality and you're using VoLTE, yes there IS such as thing as better than tolerable voice quality. At that point you may very well find out you're being held back by the phone. Good speakers and mic(s) can make a difference. Especially when using it on speakerphone occasionally.buxe2quec - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
For example, mics can be really different. Mz iPhone 4S can tolerate up to (arbitrary scale) 101 dB before saturating, while my LG G2 only 81 dB. I measured with the two phones next to each other, even if the absolute values are off, the 20 dB difference stays.This can mean a lot in loud environments.
Robalov - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
That'll teach me I guess.But I would've thought call quality would deserve its own heading.
I still believe it won't have the longevity of your previous phone, however.
leexgx - Friday, December 25, 2015 - link
Ian Cutress (not sure if you would like a follow up on my useage as well)i cant use my HTC One M7 without a Mophie battery case and it turns the phone into a brick as only lasts short time without the morphi and has to be plugged in constantly when navigating (even when the HTC one M7 it was in good condition the battery it still lasted as long as i expected and that was 2-3 hours of constant use/SOT) 2400 is yes good for maybe the first 6 months to a year but due to battery not holding as much capacity after 1 year it ends up like a iphone (unless you can replace the battery)
well hopefully it's a good phone as i own it on 27th december (2015 assuming the shop is open so i can do my collect location) see how it goes,
i know it's slower then a HTC ONE M7 and no boomsound speakers, but slower CPU should mean less heat when navigating and same with screen, a slim phone with a 5200mAh battery, it be like using the Old Motorola RAZR Maxx again (just this time its a 5200mAh, quad core, 720p and 2GB of ram and 16GB + the 32GB SD card i got at the same time)
i only paid £110 so worth it to try any way (its from amazon so can send it back if its not fit for purpose, why i got it from amazon not ebay, as amazon is there to make customers happy and sellers unhappy, ebay not that far off really but amazon have better return policy and how they handle it as well),
HTC need to pull there finger out and start making phones that last more than half a day
3200-3500 battery size needs to be the minimum so to last more then 2-4 hours of SOT (not benchmark SOT time or phone with nothing installed) and the battery needs to be replaceable as my HTC ONE M7 is now turning off at 50%, if i could of changed the battery in the M9/M10 i might consider it (M10 hoping replaceable battery) we don't give a dam about Thin phones (as it turns into a iPlug device like where lots of iphone users are hunting for the nearest USB socket to get a small boost) going from 2400mha battery to 3400 might not sound like much but it has so much a dramatic effect on the day use of the phone, most phones nealy Suck More than 1A when phone is in use at times, phone makers need to add 1000mAh on top of there phones if its works fine on light loads (or what Stupid way they test there phones) so if think they can get away with a 2200 2400 2600 battery they should fit a 3200-3600 battery
Notmyusualid - Saturday, January 16, 2016 - link
The battery life (and the slow charging off too), of the M7 is the ONLY reason I changed it.I loved that handset too...
leexgx - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
you say knock off phone so not a real cubot H1 phonef0d - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
if you want to get crazy there is this 10000mah monster (its a bit ugly)http://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_204428.html
or this more sane 6000mah (not so ugly)
http://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_253010.html
im loving these phones that are coming out now with super batteries, battery life is much more important than speed or a lot of other things in a phone for me
SunLord - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
That's more of a battery with a phone built on it...phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
The Cubot H1 has the same size battery (10,000 mAh) as the Oukitel. In fact, just about every spec is the same between the two phones. They're almost identical.