Two new LTE smartphones
In this blog, we take a look at two of the smartphones included in this week's detection file, both smartphones hailing from the MyPhone Vendor. MyPhone is a Filipino mobile phone brand by Solid Group Incorporated, the local distributor of Sony Philippines.
Phones were originally branded under the "Amoy Solid" name until the MyPhone name was officially registered in 2007. Since 2008 MyPhone has also had a Polish brand operating under the same name. Dual SIM support has always been prominent on MyPhone devices and they went on to become the first mobile phone brand in the country to have a dual active SIM feature.
MyPhone Artis
First up we look at the MyPhone Artis, it's a large smartphone aimed at the budget conscious. There's a 5.5 inch, 1280 x 720 resolution IPS display which produces 267 pixels-per-inch. For a big screen this is a little low; its said that once you go under 330 or so you can spot the negative impact with the naked eye. There's an 8MP camera on the back and a 5MP unit on the front, camera features include autofocus, panoramic shot, HDR and an LED flash. From the front the phone looks a little bit like the Sony M line of devices.
Inside the Artis is a MediaTek MT6735P chipset, one of MediaTek's lower end offerings. This comes complete with a quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU operating at 1GHz and a Mali-T720 MP graphics unit. Despite being lower end it does use the newer generation of technology, which instantly places it above many competing devices performance wise. The internals are paired with 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage and a MicroSD card slot which can support a further 32GB storage, standard for a phone in this range.
Other features include GPS, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro-USB OTG support, a 2600mAh battery unit, dual SIM and 4G LTE support. The MyPhone Artis will set you back about $150, comes with Android Lollipop out of the box and is available now in selected markets. On paper the MyPhone Artis is a completely respectable smartphone for its price; however there have been some reported issues.The battery life and the camera have been called average at best, plus the camera casing is prone to getting scratched due to it being raised out of the back of the unit.
MyPhone Q-Smart LTE
Next up is another MyPhone smartphone, this time around it's the Q-Smart LTE. If we say the Artis was at the centre of the lower end market then we'd say the Q-Smart LTE is on the very low end of the lower end market. There is no pulling punches here, it's an entry level smartphone. You get a 4.5 inch, 854 x 480 resolution IPS display which gives 217 pixels-per-inch. This time there's a 5MP front and 2MP rear camera, quite a difference in specs compared to the Artis. This is reflected in the price, which we'll touch on later.
Now comparing the guts of the device, there's a MediaTek MT6735M chipset, virtually identical to the SoC found in the Artis. The singular difference between these chipsets is the frequency to which the Mali-720 MP GPU is clocked. In the Artis's 'P' model it's 600MHz and in the Q-Smart LTE's 'M' model it's 400MHz. The extra frequency helps to power the Artis's larger screen; real world performance won't differ much. 1GB RAM and 8GB of expandable storage are also included, same as seen on the Artis.
Another big difference is that the Q-Smart LTE has fewer features than the Artis, there's no Micro-USB OTG support, you only get Bluetooth 2.1 and the battery unit clocks in at 1800mAh. However, as the name implies, there is still LTE support. The MyPhone Q-Smart LTE is available in white, red, dark green and dark grey. It ships with Android Lollipop and will burn a hole in your wallet to the tune of approximately $100. If a bare bones LTE device is what you need, then the Q-Smart LTE is one of the cheapest LTE enabled smartphones we've seen so far.
Data Update
- Last week we added support for 155 new devices.
- The current number of Premium profile combinations in our database is 334,510.
- The current number of Enterprise profile combinations in our database is 405,803.
- Recently added software version to our database:
- Apple WatchOS 2
- PS3 System Software 3.55