Cubot Cheetah 2 mobile phone: an honest battery and a healthy appetite

Yes, it's another smartphone, this time a new model called CHEETAH 2 from Cubot.
As usual, the phone has its quirks and peculiarities, but I'll take it apart and test it just like all the others.

I've reviewed a phone from this company before, but that model was in a different price range, so I was curious to see whether this one was actually better.

I'll try not to make the review too long, but I'll definitely take it apart and measure the battery capacity properly.

The phone comes in the same brown box as last time.


The only useful information on the box is a brief list of specifications.


Full phone specifications:
Color: Blue/Gold
Processor — MTK6753, 8 cores
GPU: ARM Mali-T720 MP3 450MHz
Operating system — Android 6.0
Memory — 3 GB RAM, 32 GB flash storage.
Display — 5.5 inches, 1920x1080 resolution
Network type: GSM: 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
3G: WCDMA 850/900/2100MHz
4G: FDD-LTE 800/1800/2100/2600MHz
Wireless interfaces — Wi-Fi 2.4/5 GHz, Bluetooth 4.0
GPS, A-GPS
OTG — Supported
Sensors: Accelerometer, Light, Geomagnetic, Gravity, Gyroscope, Proximity
Memory card slot — MicroSD
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack.
SIM card type — 1 micro SIM and 1 nano SIM.
Front camera: 8 (13) MP
Main camera: 13 (16) MP
Battery: 3000 mAh
Size: 153x75x8.5 mm

The packaging is familiar, but there are dedicated trays inside for the cable and charger, so they won't rattle around in the box.


In my opinion, the bundle is pretty modest for this price range. It includes:
1. Cubot Cheetah 2 smartphone
2. Charger
3. USB to USB Type-C cable
4. Instructions and a quick-start guide.

They could have included an OTG adapter (we'll come back to that) or headphones.


1. The manual is multilingual and includes Russian, but there's not much of it.
2. The cable is quite soft and easy to handle.
3, 4. The charger is rated for just 1 A, so charging the phone takes about 3 hours. On the plus side, it has a European plug.


No, your monitor hasn't suddenly started displaying a bad picture—that's the protective film on the phone. It's useful enough, except for one thing: it's very awkward to remove.


The phone actually looks better :)
The protective film was hard to remove because of the silicone case, which is also included. That's useful too, and something we're seeing more often these days. In this case, though, the case looks a bit rough because of the raised corners. Still, compared with the previous Cubot, this one is at least a little neater.


The case fits perfectly along the sides, but there are small gaps at the top and bottom.


The back of the case is—no, not bumpy, but perfectly smooth. All the little bumps stick inward, which seems a bit odd to me.


Let's take the case off. It really reminds me of those protective rubber accessories for multimeters :)


To give you a better idea of what the phone looks like, I took a comparison photo of the phone under review, the Cubot Rainbow, and the Doogee X5.


Although the Cubot Rainbow looks noticeably different from the phone under review, they do share a decorative detail: a light coffee-colored trim around the perimeter. In my photos, this trim kept coming out white, even though it actually looks darker.


The phone weighs 196 grams without the case and about 25 grams more with it. I wouldn't call it light, but that's perfectly reasonable for a 5.5-inch phone.
I was initially skeptical of phones weighing close to 200 grams, but spending a long time with the Doogee max x5 helped me come to terms with this drawback.


The USB Type-C port is on the end. It's all good—the connector is convenient and seems to be actively promoted these days—if not for a couple of caveats. Cables with this connector are less common, so you could find yourself far from home with no way to charge your phone.
The second issue is that although the phone supports OTG (I haven't tested this), not only did they leave out an adapter, but you also can't connect the phone to a computer to sync or transfer files. All the previous phones I've had worked without any particular problems. In the end, I had to copy all the test software to a flash drive, and download anything I was missing remotely from my home server.
Overall, in my personal opinion, the manufacturer has overcomplicated things a bit here.


The controls are familiar to most smartphone users: the same standard three buttons on the right, three buttons at the bottom, and a headset jack.

The only significant difference is that the Home button on this phone is entirely hardware-based—or, more precisely, mechanical. What's more, the manufacturer combined it with a fingerprint sensor. Since I've never used this method to unlock a phone, I was pretty skeptical. But in practice, the sensor turned out to be quite good: with one fingerprint stored, it recognized it successfully about 8 times out of 10. When I added the same finger to memory twice, I got 20 out of 20—excellent recognition.


The back cover is styled to look like brushed metal, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) it's just plastic, and it shows fingerprints very easily. The photo shows it after I'd already wiped it down.


The rear camera and dual LED flash are on the back; the flash can also be used as a flashlight. After using a Doogee phone for a long time, I got used to turning on the flashlight by holding down the Home button while the screen was locked. This phone doesn't have that feature, though.


The phone isn't very slippery; I'd say it's about average, especially compared with the Leagoo M5. It feels much nicer in the hand than the rainbow.


To install a SIM card and memory card, you have to remove the back cover. Let's take a look inside the phone while we're at it.


The Wi-Fi antenna is at the bottom (presumably), with the GSM and GPS antennas at the top.
This photo shows the plastic inserts in the frame in their true color.
Although there are a couple of holes at the bottom of the phone, there's only one speaker, just like on the Doogee Max. The speaker sounds pretty good, but I wouldn't call it loud; the one on the Doogee is louder.


There I go comparing this phone with the Doogee again. They're similar in that both phones let you use two SIM cards and a memory card at the same time, but both have one MicroSIM slot and one NanoSIM slot, which I personally find rather inconvenient. Two MicroSIM slots would be more convenient. But that's just my opinion.


The manufacturer secured the back with no fewer than 20 screws. If only they'd used screws all the same size, it would have been perfect :). I had to photograph the screws as I removed them so I wouldn't forget where each one went.


The cover over the electronics is made of several pieces. Otherwise, everything is pretty standard.


The battery isn't removable without taking the phone apart. It has an additional protective cover and is held in place by the same screws as the back cover.


Overall, the build quality is perfectly decent. I've come across phones with better build quality (the Leagoo T1 Plus), but this one is more on par with the Leagoo M5.
The phone has a fairly substantial chassis inside, as you can see in the photo. It's what accounts for most of the phone's weight.


There is a metal section running around the perimeter of the phone, but the part around the USB port is separate.
The board has the USB port itself, antenna contacts, microphone, speaker, and vibration motor.


Everything else is arranged conventionally in the upper part of the phone.
You can see the camera module, a pair of flash LEDs, and the card slots. I tried to remove the board, but decided against it because it's connected to a whole bunch of ribbon cables.


The control buttons are visible on the left, and the cable to the lower antenna is on the right. Everything looks quite neat.


The phone uses a 3.8 V battery rated at 3000 mAh. Since I only trust a “direct connection” for testing, I measured its capacity with a battery tester. The connection is extremely awkward, so I recommend thinking seven times before trying anything like this :)


I've already explained my testing method in previous reviews, so here's a simplified step-by-step version:
1. Discharge the phone until it shuts down automatically.
2. Apply a 1 A load (the current used throughout the test).
3. Measure the battery voltage under this load. This is the “zero” point.
4. Fully charge the battery.
5. Discharge the battery to the phone's cutoff voltage (the zero point).
6. Discharge the battery to 2.8 V (fully discharged).
7. Charge the battery back to the zero point so as not to “throw off the figures.”

That's it. The result is a usable capacity of 3010 mAh—the amount the phone can use—and a total capacity of 3010+69=3079 mAh, which is very good considering the rated capacity is 3000 mAh.
I can already hear the question: was the test done with a new battery? No, it was tested after several weeks of use during the review.


Based on indirect evidence, the phone has a Full HD screen with no air gap, protected by 2.5D glass.
Full HD is easy to verify, but I won't make any claims about the rest; I'll leave that to the manufacturer's conscience.
The viewing angles are decent, although in my opinion the screen itself is quite ordinary.


The backlight shows up in the most “unforgiving” test. It's barely noticeable with a bright image, but with a black screen the picture turns gray. Unfortunately, most screens suffer from this.


Since I'm comparing it with my Doogee in this review, I might as well compare the screens too, even though the phones are in different weight price classes.
The Cubot's screen is clearly brighter, by about one and a half times. Both phones are set to 100% brightness in the photo. But so far, my favorite screen has been the one on the Leagoo T1 Plus—probably the “brightest” of all the phones I've tested.


Because the Cubot's backlight is brighter, backlight bleed is more noticeable, although the image itself looks brighter and better.


That wraps up the hardware; now I'll take a look at the software.
The home screen and app list are more than standard for Chinese phones. The only difference from the Cubot Rainbow is that this one has a gallery app. Why the Rainbow didn't have one remains a mystery to me.
There's no point going through the apps, since they're the usual browser, file manager, media player, and so on.


Device information. An update arrived while I was preparing this review, but I didn't notice any difference, so all the descriptions and tests in the review were done before the update.
The phone has 32 GB of flash storage and 3 GB of RAM. Since not many apps are installed, only 176 MB of flash storage is in use.


As I mentioned above, problems connecting to a computer meant I had to install a memory card with various software right away. I didn't mention, though, that there were a few quirks here too. The phone wouldn't work with the card until I formatted it in the phone itself. Then I had to take it out, copy all the necessary software onto it, and only then could I use it. It seems like a minor thing, but I hadn't run into this before.


According to CPU-Z, the phone has an eight-core MT6735 SoC, although the specifications list an MTK6753.
Here's where things get a little confusing: according to information online, the MT6735 has—
The MTK6735 is built on a 64-bit ARM architecture and contains 4 cores of Cortex-A53, a 16-core Mali-T720 graphics accelerator, and a 4G LTE modem. So I'm inclined to think CPU-Z is reporting it incorrectly.


The sensor lineup was a pleasant surprise. The only things missing from the list are pressure and temperature sensors.




Above, I mentioned the uncertainty about which processor is installed. Aida says it's actually an MT6753. The Vernee Thor phone has exactly the same SoC.
You can't see it in the screenshot above, and this information didn't make it into the frame either, but the software shows that there is no root access.


Additional information from Aida.

For my first test, I decided to check the WiFi connection quality, especially since I now had the opportunity to test the 5 GHz band properly. Along the way, I found out that I’m the only one nearby using the 5 GHz band.

All tests were performed with an Asus router, following the diagram in the review that shows the test locations.
Although the phone detected many different access points nearby, it could connect to my router from the farthest location, but the connection was very unstable.
Here are the test locations:
1. 12 m, several walls
2. 7–8 m, several walls.
3. 5 m, almost line of sight, in the room next to the one with the router.


1. Line of sight, about 1 meter from the router.
2. Sometimes I got this result at this location too: almost 100 Mbps.


On the 2.4 GHz band, speeds were lower, but the connection was a little more stable.
1. 12 m, several walls
2. 7–8 m, several walls.
3. Line of sight, about 1 meter from the router.


Internet access, 50/100 Mbps connection.
1. As I mentioned above, there was a connection at the farthest location, but I usually couldn't run the test.
2. 12 m, several walls
3. Line of sight, 1 meter from the router.


The phone has not only GPS but GLONASS on board, and together with A-GPS support, this delivers really good results. For the experiment, I went out to an almost open field and gave it a try. It takes just a few seconds to determine the location, even though there was no WiFi and no SIM card was inserted (I only inserted one after the test). In other words, the phone had no means of communication at all.


The touchscreen supports 5 simultaneous touches. I found no problems during use or while charging.
The internal flash and RAM speeds are comparable to those of most smartphones in this class, but the SD card performance was a pleasant surprise: 41 MB/s read and 20 MB/s write.


Performance was tested using the usual synthetic benchmarks familiar to many, but since this processor is already quite well known, the results are more of statistical interest.
For example, in most tests this phone scored almost exactly the same as the Vernee Thor, while in some it fell behind.


I hadn't run the AnTuTu 6.2.1 test before, so I decided to include it as well.
PCMark scored 3766 points, compared with 4095 for the Thor. I think that's because its memory is slightly slower: the Thor scored 3829 MB/s, while the Cubot managed 3333 MB/s. So performance here was lower.
3DMark gave it “as many as” 186 points, but this is more likely an issue with the test software itself, since I've seen the same thing with the Leagoo T1 Plus.


GeekBench is a more popular performance test these days.
The first screenshot shows the results from version 3 of the program, and the second and third are from version 4.
The Cubot performs noticeably better here than the Leagoo T1 Plus mentioned above.


As usual, Epic Citadel was tested in two modes: High Quality and Ultra High Quality.
In the first mode, our “test subject” performed slightly worse than its “classmate,” the Vernee Thor: 51.6 versus 54.7. In Ultra High Quality, however, performance dropped noticeably, and the phone managed just 26.1 versus 43.4. That's because the Vernee has a 1280x720 display, while the Cubot's is 1920x1080. Sometimes you have to pay for higher resolution with lower performance; that's just how it is.


The AnTuTu Video test gives a score of 600, but again, that's a typical result for most smartphones.


We've reached the section that gave this review its title. We already know why the battery is honest, but now I'll explain why it has a healthy appetite.
The battery life tests were a bit disappointing. As usual, I checked how long it lasted while watching Full HD videos on YouTube and playing videos at the same resolution from a flash drive (I always use the same file).
I set the brightness to 75%, as I usually do.
Battery life was:
YouTube video — 4 hours
Video from a flash drive — 5 hours.

The phone is nowhere near as good as the Leagoo T1 Plus, which lasted 6 and 9 hours respectively (with a 2660 mAh battery and the same screen size). The results are more like those of the Leagoo M5, which lasted 5 hours on YouTube and 4 hours from a flash drive—but it has a 2300 mAh battery, clearly smaller than 3000 mAh.

The bottom of the phone got noticeably warm while playing video, which points more to poor software optimization when decoding the video stream. During normal use, the phone lasted the usual 1–2 days. It's impossible to give an exact figure, since everyone uses their phone differently.


And finally, as usual, a camera test—or rather, a test of the phone's rear camera. I compared it with the already familiar Vernee Thor. The camera didn't impress me much; in my opinion, it's a little worse than the Vernee's. The AWB sometimes behaves incorrectly, and the overall level of detail is a bit lower too. But since I'm no expert on cameras in Chinese phones—or phones of any kind, for that matter—for a more detailed analysis I'm posting the original comparison photos.
As you can see, the test was done both in daylight and in the evening. No color correction was applied, and I didn't cherry-pick the photos either.














I’m not including a photo of the printed page because I haven’t had a chance to take one in decent natural light; it’s been overcast all the time. I can take one under a halogen lamp if needed.

That’s it. I tried to keep the review fairly short, but tested everything I could, so I think I can draw a few conclusions.

Pros
Stable software
5 GHz band support
Good Wi-Fi performance
Excellent GPS/GLONASS performance
Front-mounted fingerprint sensor, very convenient
Battery capacity matches the stated value
Lots of sensors.

Cons
Poor software optimization, resulting in high power consumption when playing video.
Average camera quality.
Unclear whether the memory card needs to be formatted in the phone.
No OTG adapter included.

My opinion. Yes, I know that some users have a low opinion of Cubot smartphones, but looking at what this phone can do, it’s a step above the Vernee Thor, even though the latter is much less well known and has been performing quite well for over six months now. Basically, compared with the Vernee, this phone adds:
Full HD screen
5.5 inches instead of 5
More sensors
GLONASS
A-GPS
3000 mAh battery instead of 2800 mAh (although the Full HD screen easily eats up the difference)
Front-mounted fingerprint sensor
USB Type-C
5 GHz band support
16 GB more flash storage
Silicone case, though it’s a little stiff
About $25 more expensive (at launch)

Aside from the inconvenient but modern USB Type-C port, the power-hungry large screen, and the rather old processor, it’s a perfectly decent phone. Time will tell how it holds up; I’ve only shown you the device itself.

As always, I look forward to your questions in the comments.

The product was provided by the store for review.