Neo N003 review

Neo N003 Advanced Full Review


Hardly has there been a smartphone that made so many persons bite their nails in expectation of its launch as did the Neo N003. Expectation spanned almost a year, I for my part 1st ordered a Neo N003 sometime in June 2013, but when the store later said it was on presale/preorder (actually, they didn’t state or indicate that in anyway earlier) I opted for a Zopo ZP810 which turned out to be one surprisingly good workhorse; but that’s a story for another day. The Neo N003 Youth later launched sometime in August/September but I wanted more, as i was later taught by my use of the ZP810 1gb ram wasn’t enough; and neither was 4gb rom nor
2000mah battery (it is absolutely necessary to let you know that the ZP810 did miraculously well with just 2000mah) and so I ordered the Advanced variant of the Neo N003 and about 6 weeks later the pack was in my arms.
It is now 3 weeks later and I’m here to give my viewpoint of the Neo N003 Advanced so far. I’ll keep this as just and unbiased as possible (prior to the Neo N003 I have owned and used a THL V11, Lenovo A800 and Zopo ZP810). Let’s get going.

Built
Would it be unfair to compare the Neo N003 to a Zopo ZP810? Whatever your responses are, I did and it turned out that the Neo N003 feels really solid; nicely made plastic back cover; metal rim around the Dragon Trail covered 1080p OGS screen and the beautifully designed speaker point at the back. Detail-wise the phone is well put together and I must confess, it looks good in the flesh. However there are some areas where the Neo N003 fails to impress, for example the led indicating light leaking from several areas doesn’t look so good and the very much visible space between the screen and the metal rim. Pay a blind eye to those and you have a perfectly built flagship device.
The N003 is about 10.5mm thick, its not as thick as the numbers suggests; probably because it’s a 5inch smartphone.
          
Hardware
Neo’s N003 Advanced isn’t lacking in this department as it boosts a MediaTek 6589T quadcore processor with ARM Cortex – A7 architecture clocked at 1.51GHz; a PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU renderer; it also has 2GB of ram and 32GB rom leaving you with roughly 20GB of user memory. A 13mp Sony camera behind backed up by led lights, a 3mp front camera and led indicating lights also in the front.
Regarding the performance of the camera, it didn’t give me the sort of wow experience I would expect from a 13mp shooter. The pictures taken using the default camera software was too dark and noisy, the LED light wasn’t even helping matters because it was also flawed, the LED light points instead of spreads; making night pictures impossible. In order to rectify the problem I had to install a Lenovo Super Camera app extracted from a Taiwan 101, it doesn’t change the LED backlight but it produces fractionally brighter pictures.
The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS worked just fine.
There are however a few issues with this phone, first the phone keeps changing it’s ringtone to an annoying “gring gring” default ringtone and no matter how many times I changed it; it kept returning to that silly ringtone. Another noteworthy problem was the fact that during the first few days the phone wasn’t able to notice the memory card, pictures taken could not be found neither was music in the phone’s internal memory or the sdcard. It took quite a long time before the phone kinda rectified it’s fault. Another thing I noticed was the fact that the stock launcher on the phone showed little lags which wasn’t pretty for a flagship phone, that problem can be solved by installing a custom launcher.

Gaming
I installed Real Racing 3, Golf Star and ROC games on this device. Everything played well from launch except one; Real Racing 3 took a few soft resetting (literally had to remove the battery since the phone froze severally after launching the game). But once it picked up, everything ran smoothly. The battery despite being 3000mah runs down as any other normal battery would, thanks to a 1080p screen and of course a quadcore processor. A fully charged battery easily lasts a day plus, with 3G data services on all day, about 1:30 hours of accumulated phone calls, an hour of browsing and about 3 hours of gaming.
It is necessary to point out that this phone takes a lot of time to charge from 5% to 100% with only radio services on, say a little above 5 hours.



Conclusion
Being my first 5.0 inch 1080p 441ppi 2GB ram 32GB rom phone I must say I love it. It’s not as thin as a Galaxy S4, not as fast as an Xperia Z; nowhere close as good as the above mentioned in the photography or performance department; it is not even as good looking as the Gionee Elife series; but it does have an edge above them all, the bigger battery means longer gaming times (actually two edges; it is by far cheaper than the above mentioned; and it boasts hardwares that are way above standard).
If $280 can get me a looker, Asahi Dragon Trail glass covered screen, Android 4.2.1, 2GB RAM, 32GB ROM, 3000mah battery and a 1080p 441ppi 5 inch display all in a solid yet attractive pack; then it is a good .
Being my first 5.0 inch 1080p 441ppi 2GB ram 32GB rom phone I must say I love it. It’s not as thin as a Galaxy S4, not as fast as an Xperia Z; nowhere close as good as the above mentioned in the photography or performance department; it is not even as good looking as the Gionee Elife series; but it does have an edge above them all, the bigger battery means longer gaming times (actually two edges; it is by far cheaper than the above mentioned; and it boasts hardwares that are way above standard).
If $280 can get me a looker, Asahi Dragon Trail glass covered screen, Android 4.2.1, 2GB RAM, 32GB ROM, 3000mah battery and a 1080p 441ppi 5 inch display all in a solid yet attractive pack; then it is a good .