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
The Feel
The device fits in my hand comfortably, although not easily to use one handed as I mentioned above. I've been using it in the silicone case, and I have no issues with that - it gives the edges a curve meaning I'm not subject to something sharper such as the Galaxy S6 Edge or One M9. Actually more often than not I'm playing with the case when bored, flicking it off at the edge and reattaching it, in some weird sense of being therapeutic. People who are used to small or light phones are going to notice a difference here as it certainly isn't either of those, but neither are excessive. There's a reason the 7 inch P8 max smartphone sells well in China, for example.
Audio quality is satisfactory on the H1 - my use case for this as of late has involved taking it into the bathroom and leaving it on the side playing music while I shower. This way if I know how long the track is, I can ensure I don't spend too in there if I'm in a hurry. I place the single speaker facing a wall to act as an odd form of amplification, and it only needs to be at around 90% volume to be over the sound of the water. That being said, there is a jump up in the last 5%, causing some minor distortion. As anecdotal as that seems, if you're playing something to a group of people in a noisy environment, it is worth noting. I've mainly been playing melodic or 8-bit speed metal and the clarity at reasonable volume levels are not degraded by a fast paced tune.
Phone call connection quality is also good, despite the fact that I live in an area that seems to have lead paint in the walls. Using it both for audio calls through the air or Skype video calls over Wi-Fi while on business trips came through without issue.
The Camera
On the camera side, of course we weren't expecting anything great and my own results confirm that. Based on my broken DSLR, I was left with the H1 as my photography device for the recent SuperComputing 15 conference. In the interests of taking pictures to as reference material it was good, as long as I was sitting in the first few rows. In the varied light of the show floor, bad light photos were pretty junk even after post processing in Windows but in light photographs were satisfactory for publication.
For home use, in natural light, the camera provided a much nicer response, giving shots suitable for family albums assuming the subject was still. Cue pictures of cats, food, the theatre and a bookshop (click through for full resolution):
London Coliseum, before The Nutcracker
Carturesti Carusel, A Bookshop in Bucharest, Romania
The camera software is the standard android app, and with the H1 it is noticeably slow when taking an image. Focusing is noticably longer than a high end device but if you need to capture one photo in an ongoing scene, it is best to hold down and take up to 40 continuous photographs and then delete most of them. The camera does come with a form of EIS which is great, but the stability range is limited, making a burst capture of at least 2 or 3 required to get the best shot. There are motion capture modes, as well as beautify and panorama also. With Lightroom now free for Android, at least basic photo editing can be done almost immediately.
For an image comparison, I took photographs of three scenes using the devices at my disposal (caution, large images). It is worth noting that the HTC One Max I have suffers from the purple effect, due to the image low-light amplifiers burning out on some early models.
The Competition | Other Devices to Hand |
The Competition | Other Devices to Hand |
The Competition | Other Devices to Hand |
A quick note on the rest of the software - despite the origins of the phone, mine came with an English based kernel / OS. I changed the default home screen to Google Now (because I'm using it a fair bit these days) and all of my usual software and games (Kairosoft, naturally) including Fallout Shelter seem to work and can be switched between easily using the long press on the home button. I have noticed in the past month two apps that seem to close without an error message - it happened once after a crop in Lightroom that involved rotation, and any time I want to start TrickShot. I'm not sure if this is a compatibility issue based on the OS, the platform or the chipset, but I was expecting the H1 to handle it properly.
The Video
At this point the 16GB storage on the device hasn't become a burden, perhaps due to the microSD. Pictures come out at ~2MB each and videos at just over 1MB a second using the fine detail settings (720p) saved in 3gp format. From what I have read, the video mode on the H1 gets a lot of criticism due to the low quality or the EIS being very basic. It's true it's not the best to capture long lasting memories on, because at distance there is not much detail and requires a good light source, but it's more of an add on than a focal point.
For video comparisons, the garden and night-time road scenes were used for motion and static video:
The Competition | Other Devices to Hand |
The Competition | Other Devices to Hand |
116 Comments
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beggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
you don't understand because you are hard glued to the mentality " more expensive = better"well, news flash, you are WRONG, most of the time.
people get this device for its battery longevity, not to cheap out. I'd trade this over a $1000 device with 1/3 the battery any day any time.
zeeBomb - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
ggPissedoffyouth - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Best of both worlds - get an LG G4 with the big zerolemon battery.I used to have THL's W8s which was an S4 clone. great phone, but lack of updates, small battery and slow charging killed it for me.
I doubt I'd go back to China phones, but I may be forced to as it seems almost no new phones have a battery that I can swap zerolemon or similar into. I love not having to charge my phone for days when I travel.
Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Forgot to say nothing can really replace my 10,000mah battery Note 3 except for the Note 4.devione - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
I'm actually using a Note 4 on CM with the stock factory battery and that gets me about 5/6 hours of screen on time on one charge, just a little under my now deprecated Z2. What 10,000mah battery would you recommend?Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
The zerolemon batteries are fantastic. I get 15-20h SOT with mine depending on what I'm doing with CM13devione - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Thanks.bernstein - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
well to each his own i guess...after years of bashing (my) iphone for it's tiny battery i realized that i have adapted enough (e.g. plugging it in when coming home, getting in the car/train, arriving at the office. taking a battery pack when trekking - all "trained" to the point where i don't even think about it) that in years i've never been with a dead phone. no more angst there. :-)
same goes with the price... including music playback i use it at least a few hours daily, whereas my desktop gets love at most twice a week, same goes for the tv or notebook... and don't even get me started on the tablet... so for me $900 for a smartphone isn't too much, especially if your only other electronic device is a $500 dell laptop...
and when i think about it, for an iphone
jjj - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
IHS iphone 6s teardownPricing: $649 US
Total cost (direct materials and manufacturing): $183.58
KPOM - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Apple's margins are about 38%. Still high, but they aren't making $500 per iPhone. There are R&D, shipping, marketing, retail, and other costs that those bills of material don't consider.