Doogee Kissme Review

Doogee and Elephone are currently launching budget smartphones faster and much more frequently than Samsung and Lenovo are doing. Their current lineup has some really good devices that can fill in for Android first timers or even an old timer who needs a backup phone.

Amongst these new budget phones is the DG580 or Kissme which is basically a Oneplus One clone. The phone came in a recycled paper case like the Xiaomis and other crop of OEMs are doing currently. This unit came with screen protector already fitted, a spare screen protector and the user manual. The charger is placed horizontally to the phone and a usb cable and earpiece placed in a nice slim seperate pack still within the pack that houses the phone and charger.

Design and Hardware
Being an OPO clone the Kissme is indeed a looker especially the white version. At the top of the phone you'll find the 3.5mm jack to the left and the micro usb charging port to the right. On the left side of the phone is the volume rocker, on the right you'll find the power button and beneath it is the microphone.

Being less than 7mm in tickness, the Doogee is easy to hold even at 5.5 inches. Although larger than the ZTE Grand S2 which also has a 5.5 inch screen, the bezels on the Kissme aren't too thick (Sony Xperia users would agree) and the phone is sturdy and doesnt feel cheap.

The phone comes with Mediatek MT6582 variant which of course is the peoples choice. An 8mp camera at the front and behind but with a 2.0 aperture making low light pictures useful together with dual led flash. A 5.5 inch 960*540p screen covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. At 2500mah, the battery is average. The Kissme is one of the few phones to feature Mediatek's NFC rival, the HotKnot. HotKnot, just like the NFC makes data transfer across devices swifter and less complicated.

Display and Software
Powering on the Doogee Kissme i noticed a new bootanimation and audio that was kinda pleasant. The display although being just 540p was easy on the eyes even at 5.5 inches. Although not as crisp as that on my ZTE Grand S2, the Gorrila Glass 3 covered IPS display of the Kissme was quite useful and faired reasonably well outside.

It comes with Android 4.4.2 Kitkat out of the box. Google services and apps also comes preinstalled. The ROM is very light, fairly fluid and free of bloatware leaving users with between 300 to 400mb+ of RAM. There is 4gb memory for storing media and files and 2gb of it for apps and services.

Performance
The MT6582 is a very potent processor and can handly normal and mildly heavy tasks without lagging. Antutu test results shows figures slightly shy of the 19000 mark which is very reasonable. There isn't much to say regarding the performance other than what has been said above.

Camera
The 8mp rear camera is a delight, though the flash is poor, the pictures are quite good. Colour reproduction is fair enough for a phone of this price. HDR, smile detection and continuous burst mode are standard on this camera. Low light pictures are grainy but surprisingly good. Below are some pictures taken with the camera.

Conclusion
Doogee cloned only the looks of the OPO, but every other single thing on the Kissme feels original. I must say that the overall feel of the devices makes it an easy on to use on a daily basis and live with. If you are crazy about cameras? You probably should get yourself a Sony Xperia Z3 or an IPhone 6. But if you need a decent budget device, that can handle several multitaskking activities adequately, that can be used to take decent pictures even when the sun is out of sight and that will cost you much less than the display on a OPO but retains it looks, then the Doogee Kissme is the right phone for the job.

ZTE Grand S2 Review

After 8 months using the Neo N003, I decided to go for a true flagship phone. I needed a phone with the latest and most powerful processor, at least 1080p of resolution, 2 or more gigabytes of RAM and most importantly an sd card slot. The ZTE Grand S2 fits my budget perfectly, it gives me all I need and more; and I didn't have to break the bank to own one.

First Impressions

The ZTE Grand S 2 was given a generous 5.5 inch 1080p laminated display with Corning's Gorilla Glass 3. At the top of the screen is a decent ZTE logo, at the top of the logo is a speaker; a 2mp camera good enough for 1080p videos and a led notification light and sensors on the left.

At the top of the phone you'll find a 3.5mm headset jack. Although ZTE claims this phone comes with 3 mics for noise cancellation, I've only spotted 2 of these mics during my usage of this device which is a little over a week now. This device looks good in the flesh, it has a tapered rear cover with design imitating brushed metal; an F2.2 13mp camera with led flash and speaker to the right and left respectively. A noise cancellation mic that aids video recording and another ZTE labelling at the middle of the rear.

The device feels good, unlike reviewers have insinuated this device feels well made; good quality plastics and everything seems compact. The only issues I have is the on/off buttons and the volume rocker which feels kinda flimsy.

Display

My experience with the Neo N003's display was lovely but the 3 capacitive keys died after 7 months of usage which is extremely disappointing. Unlike the Neo, ZTE's display feels thicker; this is because you can actually see and feel the Neo display misbehave under little pressure from your finger during touches. The Grand S2 didn't feel that way. This is the second 1080p (1920*1080p with pixel density of 401 ppi) phone I've used and as with the first, the display is very vivid and crisp even under sunlight. This display is on par with the Samsung Galaxy S5s display, the HTC M8, Oneplus One, Oppo Find 7a and scores of other flagship devices. Web-surfing is beautiful on this device, the widescreen makes for good views at even odd angles.

Movie viewing is also very good. The touch screen is very responsive. One issue I have currently is the fact that less than an inch horizontally across the top of the screen doesn't respond at all, at first I thought it was a software problem; but after flashing a couple of Roms I am convinced that it is a hardware problem. If there's an icon I have to click there I'll have to try severally before being able to launch it; I hope it won't progress gradually till the whole screen becomes unresponsive. This is very annoying. Other than that the display is very responsive even when touched with wet fingers.

Software

The phone came out of the box with ZTE's Miflavor 2.3 based on the 4.3 jellybean. Notification center is neat, the ROM doesn't lag as it feels very fluid. It came without Google services installed so I had to flash a gapps zip folder for jellybean 4.3 into it. The ZTE Mi assistant is very useful as it serves as a network monitor,  antivirus and security, battery saver and permission manager. Given the lack of privacy with usage of Google's apps this permission manager comes pretty handy. I can control what app I want to get certain permissions. I can also restrict every apps permission on my phone. It comes with voice unlock, so there is voice recognition. In case you've got a kid who just wants to play around and explore your device, no need to worry because there is kids mode; once equipped all your apps remain intact while the kid explores and satisfies his or her curiosity. The issue I have with this ROM is that it is the Chinese version, and so all voice activated features that the phone comes with won't work at least till I flash an English ROM.

Performance

With a 2.3Ghz Qualcomm snapdragon 801 processing unit backed up by Adreno 330 and 2gb of RAM, the Grand S2 delivers when called upon. Gaming was always smooth and crisp. Real Racing 3 plays well with no visible lag whatsoever. Antutu scores varied from run to run, 34522 points on 1st run and 33000 on 5th run.

Am a very heavy user who an almost full 32gb SD card, I must say that this device is still very fast.



Camera

The Grand S2 comes with a 2mp front camera capable of 1080p videos. It also handles selfies very well as pictures taken with the front camera are clear even for a 2mp camera. The rear is a 13mp camera with an aperture of 2.2, this unit is a capable 6 elements camera and can handle photos and videos like a true flagship device. Daytime photos where very detailed, HDR provides better detailing and even at a 100 crop; pictures taken were still good.

Night pictures are quite usable too. Although like every mobile camera noise can be seen in photos. The led flash does a real good job in assisting the rear camera as the light spreads considerably over a large area.

Battery

The battery is a lithium ion battery rated at 3100mah. It is enough to easily last 2 days with moderate usage. But will only last 16 or so with heavy usage and constant data on. 30 mins of Real Racing 3 with WIFI on took out 11% of battery time.

Minimal usage based on average calls, text messages and occasional email checks are enough to reduce juice to 40% after 24 hours.

Leaving network on from night till damn took just 3% of battery life. Which is not at all bad.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the ZTE Grand SII is a capable flagship device for 2014. The level of hardware and design it offers at this price ($325 to $500) dependent on where and whom you purchase from, puts it in contention for the flagship killer position. The Oneplus One can be gotten online for about $380 - $560 which is also very good considering the level of design its got. The ZTE Grand S2 is not a looker, neither is it the most powerful or innovative device 2014 has to offer. Believing the touch glitch is an isolated case, I'll let it slide. But ZTE did a really good job at making a very capable device that delivers in the video and photography department so much that you could compare it's camera to the HTC M8.

Am not a perfectionist, but I do love a device that looks good, performs absolutely well and costs just as much as is justifiable. Considering the price, the ZTE Grand S2 is flawless.

Get To Know Your Smartphone 9

Lesson: 9

Many people look at cell phones and want to see the number of cores in the processor, with the belief that multi-cores perform well and will not be slow. But when they buy eight-core phones and still feel they are slow, then they complain, “why is eight-core still slow?” Here is the answer broken down for you.

1. What processor is not slow?

In fact, a smoothly running system is not closely related to having multiple cores. Here smooth includes two parts. First is the system itself, actually the smoothness of the application starter. Second is the smoothness of operation of different applications.

What affects these two things is not how many cores you have, but rather the performance of individual cores and memory bandwidth.

In most cases, our starter and applications can only use one or two cores, can rarely use four, and to use eight is extremely rare.

So is the deciding factor in speed not having multiple cores, but individual core performance?

The market now offers A7, A9, A15, various editions of Snapdragon, as well as Intel processors, with large differences in performance.

If you are using A7, eight-core is not even as good as an A15 dual-core. When it comes to smoothness, the frequency and type of individual cores is more important, having a larger number of cores is useless.

2. Memory bandwidth is actually more crucial.

Smart phones and tablets are all SOC, meaning the graphics core is integrated, sharing memory bandwidth with the CPU, with no independent memory. And resolution is getting better for phones and tablets, this puts a great demand on memory bandwidth.

Programs need to run inside the internal memory. If the processor is quick, and the memory access speed can not keep up, the system will still be slow. And as resolution increases, so will the demand on memory bandwidth.

When memory bandwidth is not enough and resolution is too high, no matter how fast the processor is the system will still be slow.

In the early days of Android, WVGA resolution was only 800*600=480,000 pixels, not much pressure on memory bandwidth.

But with soaring Android resolution, bandwidth became a problem. So how much bandwidth is needed? Let’s refer to Apple.

The New iPad is a very interesting short-lived product. Its  processor and resolution can be used as a reference.  A5X is actually only a dual-core A9 processor, the host frequency is not high, on the level of MT6577.

Supporting the New iPad’s smooth operation is the powerful A5X graphics performance and memory bandwidth reaching 12.8GB/s.

The New iPad’s resolution is 2048*1536=3,140,000 pixels. That is to say, Apple believes that 4GB/s of bandwidth for every 1,000,000 pixels can guarantee basic smoothness.

At the same time as the A5X, the A9 quad-core bandwidth was only 4.2GB/s and 6.4GB/s. They used a resolution of 1280*720=920,000 pixels. Every 1,000,000 pixels uses 4GB/s of bandwidth, so fundamentally it can guarantee smoothness.

And now with resolution of 1920*1080=2,070,000 pixels, only the 8064 with 8.3GB/s bandwidth can manage to support it.

That is why the first generation 1080P smart phones all used APQ8064.

The latest Qualcomm 801 (8974AC) memory bandwidth reaches 14.9GB/s, supporting 2560*1440=3,680,000 pixels. That is just over the 4GB/s per 1,000,000 pixel bottom line, but is still fundamentally smooth. That is why several of the latest phones dare to support this fundamental resolution.

But, several other processors on the market are not so optimistic. The MT6592 bandwidth is about 5.3GB/s, to support 720P is not a problem; but to support 1080P, each 1,000,000 pixels only gets 2.56GB/s. No matter how optimized the starter is, it will be hard to be smooth, that is why eight-core is still slow.

Similarly, the Huawei Ascend K910 bandwidth is 6.4GB/s, like the MT6592, but strains to support 1080P.

All Credits To www.gizmochina.com

Get To Know Your Smartphone 8

LESSON 8 = PRICE

A typical Nigerian always wants to get the best product at the lowest possible price, however some others just want to get the most expensive product the market has to offer. What determines the price of a product? Name? Quality? Or both?
Believe it or not but all right thinking individuals would love to see the value of what they are paying for. So this brings us to the question? Is a BB Porsche worth over N200,000? Should you pay N114,000 for an 8gb IPhone 5C?
Below are some factors that should be considered before you break the bank for a product.

* Materials - you would agree that a phone made of aluminium or steel should cost more than a plastic shell or frame.

* Customer Satisfaction - every year CNET and other sites conduct customer satisfaction survey and the results can be found online. Do your research and fine out the most reliable brands.

* Design - the design, the innovation, the the research done before a product is put in the market affects its price. To know if a brand is innovative, ask yourself 'what does this product offer that beats the competition at this price?'. If it offers more useful stuffs and same price? Then its worth it.

* Specs - what RAM, Screen, ROM, camera, CPU, battery and OS does the phone come with? The better the specs the more you should be willing to shell out.

Note: quality and durability are both skipped as these are the areas the customer satisfaction survey focuses on. The name factor is seen as irrelevant to the price of a product. As i have seen from experience Samsung is number one, but could you rank them same way based on durability of products? Hardly.

The importance of a branded product is relative to time and subject to history. Past experiences with brands shapes our view of them, but should it blind us so as not to notice newer brands practicing the YPFWYG (you pay for what you get) principle?

Get To Know Your Smartphone 7

Lesson 7 = Camera

We all purchase smartphones for the following reasons: gaming, browsing, photography and versatility. From experience i can tell that everyone needs a phone with an average camera.
Just a few years back a 3.2mp camera phone was a state of the art photographing device, fast forward a years to 2013/2014, big megapixels are the order of the day.

It is noteworthy to point out that megapixels aint all there is to a good camera phone, for example; 5 mp camera on a Lenovo or Blackberry device will kill an 8mp camera on most Tecnos and Infinixes; in the same vein, an 8mp camera on an Apple or Oppo or Xiaomi product will totally bury 13 and 14mp cameras found on almost any phone in the market today. I would also accord honor to whom it is due, the 4mp Ultrapixel camera found on HTC's current flagship phone One, is breathtakingly good.

CHECKLIST
Cameras with good performance at low light conditions are the best. Before purchasing a smartphone, make sure the aperture of the lens is small, the smaller the aperture, the better the picture.
Check the recording definitions of the camera before purchasing. For example, the 5mp camera on the N28, 000 ZTE V967S can do 1080p whereas most N30 to N35k 8mp phones can only manage 720p.

Below are some phones with exceptionally good cameras.
* Oppo N1 @ N89, 000
* Xiaomi Redmi @ N40, 000
* Zopo ZP820 @ N30, 000
* Gionee Elife E7 @ N80, 000
* Inew V3 @ N40, 000
* Lenovo A850 @ N33, 000
* Huawei Honor 3C @ N45, 000
Call MF1GT3R @ 08168432990

Get To Know Your Smartphone 6

Get To Know Your Smartphone 6
Lesson 6 = Battery

A battery is an device that converts stored chemical energy to electrical energy. The battery seen in devices such as the one you are using now is the secondary type of battery. The rechargeable battery.
When purchasing a smartphone you have to be critical about it's battery. Battery is rated in mAH. "The rated capacity of a battery is usually expressed as the product of 20 hours multiplied by the current that a new battery can consistently supply for 20 hours at 68 °F (20 °C), while remaining above a specified terminal voltage per cell. For example, a battery rated at 100 A·h can deliver 5 A over a 20-hour period at room temperature, a battery rated at 2000 mAh for a 10- or 20-hour discharge would not sustain a current of 1 A for a full two hours as its stated capacity implies"- Wikipedia. This literally means that the larger the battery rating in mAH, the longer it should last.
There are however somany factors that affects the battery life of a mobile phone. They are as follows:

* Screen: the better your device's display, the more it will deplete your battery. Thats has been proven time again and again. There is hardly anyone who would want to compromise display quality for longer battery life, if you are one of such; then the N40,000 Neo N003 with a 5.0 inch inch 1080p display and 3000mah battery is what you need. However if a strong battery is all you need, the N13,500 Doogee Collo 120 with 320p screen and 3000mah battery should do the job

* CPU: the more cores a cpu has the more power is required to run them, the higher the clocking speed the more the power consumed. So when opting for a powerful phone, dont think its 2000mah battery will last a day if you are a heavy user.

* OS: some operating system are disigned in such a way that they don't use much battery power, either due to the fact that underground apps are always stopped from running or because the OS is simplistic and practical, such is the case with Windows Phone OS.

* Habits: Overcharging and undercharging are factors that will kill your battery in no time. Avoid using chargers other than the specified charger for your phone else you risk damaging not only your battery but also your screen.

Get To Know Your Smartphone 5

Get To Know Your Smartphone 5
Lesson 5 = CPU

CPU as you may well have known, stands for Central Processing Unit. This is basically the heart of all computers, the CPU aka processor has a large role to play as to how much a device would cost. Usually the more powerful your chip is the better the performance you get. There are so many chip makers like Huawei, Nvidia, Samsung, Intel, Allwinner, Rockchip and Qualcomm just to mention a few. However they are four major chip makers in the industry. 1: MediaTek, 2: Qualcomm, 3: Nvidia and 4: Apple. Select any four phones at random and you will find out that atleast 2 of the devices use one or more of the above mentioned chip makers.

MediaTek; this is a home grown Taiwanese chip making company that decided to make cheap yet powerful processors. Was that really the formular needed for success? Well given that 1 out of every 3 android phone possesses MediaTek heartbeat testifies to the appropriateness of their plan. The MT6582 processor has won the hearts of many giants including HTC, LG, Huawei, and even Sony. Other processors are the MT6589 quadcore processor clocked at 1.2ghz as can be found in Tecno Phantoms and Infinix Alphas; the MT6588; the MT6592 octacore which seriously outdoes the Snapdragon 600, found in THL T100S and HTM H1 the MT6592 can support LTE and is a decent alternative to a snapdragon 800; the MT6582 clocked at just 1.3ghz but turns out to be one of the best, if not the best performing chip in its class.

Qualcomm, the benchmark for all chip makers, this is the one company almost everybody is chasing after. Their Snapdragon 800 is the most powerful chip till date. It can be found in Xiaomi MI3, ZTE Nubia Z5S, Nexus 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, all posting Antutu benchmarking scores northwards of 34,000.

If you are a simple social networker who loves to watch movies and play videos, a simple dualcore should be enough for you. But if you are a heavy user and gamer, the a good old quadcore will be enough.

Processors to watch out for.
*Nvidia Tegra K1
*Samsung Exynos 5 octa (64bit)
*64bit offerings from Allwinner, Huawei and Rockchip.

Type by cores
* Single core x1
* Dualcore x2
* Quadcore x4
* Hexacore x6
* Octacore x8

Most powerful Phone chips in no particular order
1: Snapdragon 800 and the coming 805
2: Mediateks MT6592
3: Nvidia Tegra K1
4: Apple A7
5: Hisilicon K3V3