Gretel A7, a decent budget smartphone

Another smartphone has landed in my hands. This time it’s a very budget-friendly model with a 4.7-inch screen. As usual, it has its pros and cons, so let’s take a look and see whether it might be of interest to buyers.


Since this smartphone is much like most of its “classmates,” this review will be fairly short. I honestly can’t think of much to say about it. Of course, it does have a few distinctive features, both good and not so good.

First, here are the specifications as listed.
Color — Black White Yellow Blue Red Orange Silver
Processor — MTK6580, 4 cores
GPU — Mali-400 MP
Operating system — Android 6.0
Memory — 1 GB RAM, 16 GB flash storage.
Display — 4.7 inches, 1280x720 resolution
Network type GSM: 2G GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
WCDMA: 3G: 900/2100 MHz
Wireless interfaces — WIFI: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
GPS
Memory card slot — MicroSD, supports up to 256 GB.
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack.
SIM card type — 2 micro SIM cards
Front camera 2 MP
Main camera 8 MP, with flash
Notification indicator — ?
Battery 2000 mAh
Dimensions 140x67x9.4 mm
Weight — 127 grams

As you can see, the phone has “nothing extra.” Put more simply, the manufacturer took a fairly standard smartphone based on the basic MTK6580, removed the fingerprint scanner, and left out the secondary camera and front flash, which is no bad thing. But the RAM got “caught in the crossfire” too: there’s only 1 GB. On the other hand, this is meant to be a budget “phone for calls,” and that amount of memory is usually quite enough. For example, I’ve been using a Doogee X5 Max with 1 GB of RAM for over a year, and it’s more than enough for me.
I put a question mark next to the notification indicator because it’s a bit “unusual,” but more on that later.

The phone comes in a plain white cardboard box with a brief list of specifications and a reminder that the battery contacts are covered with tape, which should be removed before use.
The phone sits in a plastic tray, with everything else underneath. Though “everything else underneath” is a bit of a stretch—it’s more like it was carefully dumped in a pile. Still, nothing was damaged in transit, so no complaints there.


The package contents were a pleasant surprise, especially for such a basic phone.
1. Gretel A7 smartphone
2. Charger
3. Silicone case
4. USB-to-microUSB cable
5. Spare screen protector
6. Spare black back cover
7. User manual.



A little more detail.
1. The manual is partly in Russian. It’s not especially useful, but it’s still a nice touch.
2. The cable is a standard one, fairly flexible.
3, 4. The power adapter (charger) has a European plug and outputs 5 V at up to 1 A. Needless to say, there’s no fast-charging protocol here.


The spare screen protector and back cover were a nice surprise. You don’t often get those even with expensive phones.
Interestingly, the smartphone is sold in yellow, but the spare cover is black. I think the manufacturer was trying to kill two birds with one stone: include a spare cover and give buyers a choice of color. Good on them.


It reminded me of some Ulefone model—the same shape, and the same silicone case included. Even the price is about the same.


But I do like the way it looks. Mainly because of its simplicity; to me, there’s nothing unnecessary about it. A typical “phone for calls.”


The case fits evenly for the most part, with a slight gap around the buttons, just like on the Ulefone. The cable plugs in without any trouble. I remember one of the phones I tested had issues with that.


If I’m not mistaken, this is my first smartphone in a “colorful” design. The others have been black, white, or a few shades of “gold.”
The color really is lemon yellow. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, just unusual. I didn’t choose the color in this case, but oddly enough, it works. The back of the case has cutouts for the camera, flash, and speaker. Unfortunately, there are no protective port covers like on the Doogee Y6.


The case is very soft. I still shudder a little when I think of the rock-hard Cubot cases. This one is an exact copy of the Ulefone 007 case: soft and pleasant. At least there’s something to be happy about.


There’s a physical “home” button below the screen. It lights up in two colors, red and green. It can blink red when the phone is low on battery and green when it’s fully charged. That's it for the event indicator: it doesn't work. This is what I meant above by "sort of".
At the top are the earpiece and camera. If you look closely, you can see the proximity sensor's red dot glowing on the right when it's working (not visible in the photo).


While taking photos, I also noticed the spots for the touch buttons to the left and right of the "home" button: a pair of slightly darker circles. You can only see them in flash photos or under very bright light. I'll come back to them later.


The case is thin, but the smartphone looks a little better without it. The back cover is glossy, literally like a mirror, but because the phone is so light, it doesn't try to "slip away" from your hand. Also, fingerprints are barely visible on the yellow finish, another plus for such an unusual color.


At the bottom is the main speaker grille. The sound is fine, with no crackling or other unwanted noises, but the volume is a bit low.
The bottom edge has the charging port and microphone. Unfortunately, the phone doesn't support OTG, so you can't connect a USB flash drive to it.
At the top are the main camera and an LED light, grandly called a "flash" :)


The top edge has a headset jack, and the right side has the three standard buttons: volume and power. The buttons are very soft—I might even say too soft.


I tried the smartphone with both the yellow and black covers. It looks fine in black, but loses some of its individuality. Of course, that's a matter of taste, but I think it's good that the manufacturer gives you a choice.


The first thing I noticed when I removed the cover was the battery's unusual shape. Batteries are usually closer to square, but this one runs almost the full length of the phone. Personally, I don't think this is a great design, since there are far fewer batteries of this size to choose from.
I've always wondered why there's a hologram on the battery. Are they really counterfeiting them, so they need protection?


The smartphone has two slots for microSIM cards and a slot for a microSD memory card. It's nice that the SIM and memory card slots aren't combined into one, which is more convenient for me. For obvious reasons, you can't hot-swap the cards; you'll have to power the phone off first.

The battery is rated at 2000 mAh, but I'll check that later. The speaker is covered by a protective mesh—or rather, something like fabric.


The first thing you notice when you pick up the phone (apart from the color, of course) is its weight. After my Doogee, it feels weightless. That's no surprise: 129 grams versus 190, almost one and a half times lighter. It's also a little smaller because of the smaller screen, so it feels tiny in your hand.
With the case on, it weighs a little more, around 142 grams.


The GSM antenna is at the bottom, while the WiFi and GPS antennas are at the top. I expected some trouble with mobile reception, since your hand partly covers the lower antenna when you're using the phone, but I didn't notice any problems.


The rear frame is held in place by 13 screws. The middle screws at the top and bottom are longer than the rest, so keep that in mind if you decide to take the phone apart.


The internal layout is also different from the phones I've seen before. I'm not saying it's good or bad, just unusual. Most often, the main board is at the top of the phone, with a separate board at the bottom for the USB connector, speaker, antenna, and so on. Here there's just one board running the full length of the phone.


I didn't lift the board, but from what I could see, most of the electronics are probably in the long section. The camera, LED light, and charging circuitry are at the top; the microphone, speaker, and microUSB connector are at the bottom.


And here's why the phone is so light: it doesn't have the usual aluminum chassis, at least I couldn't find one.


Since the battery is removable, measuring its capacity was just a matter of a little tinkering and a few paper clips :)
I decided to use my usual test procedure:
1. Discharge the phone until it shuts down automatically. It shuts down at 1% charge.
2. Connect the battery to an electronic load, draw 1 A for 10–20 seconds, and note the voltage.
3. Charge the battery to 4.35 V at 1 A (the smartphone's standard charging current), then disconnect it when the current drops to 1/10 of that.
4. Discharge the battery at 1 A down to the voltage at which the phone shut down on its own (determined in step 2).
5. Discharging the battery down to 2.8 V.
The first figure is the capacity used by the phone; the first and second figures added together give the battery's total capacity.


I got a surprise right at the first stage. I’ve already tested quite a few different devices, and in almost every case the cutoff voltage was around 3.15–3.18 V. I even considered skipping the measurement of the voltage at which the phone decides the battery is discharged. But in the end, I decided to stick to the method I’d used before.
It turned out that this smartphone shuts down at 3.45 V, not 3.15 V, which is quite unusual.


All right, let’s start the test. It delivered 1584 mAh while charging, so let’s discharge it:
1. Capacity used by the smartphone: 1500 mAh
2. Total capacity: 1500+260+18=1778 mAh.
Clearly short of the claimed capacity: instead of the stated 2000 mAh, I got less than 1800 mAh—a discrepancy of over 10%.


I’ll charge it to 100%. It took 1798 mAh, which checks out: the discharge/charge test showed a capacity of no more than 1800 mAh.


I’ll come back to the battery tests a little later. For now, let’s take a look at the display.

This phone has a 1280×720-pixel screen with a 4.7-inch diagonal. Some might say 5 inches would be better, or even 6. But it looks perfectly fine here. It’s a compact device, and I’m sure there are people who prefer relatively small smartphones.
Viewing angles aren’t a problem; the image looks fine from any angle.


But what really amazed me was the screen brightness. This is the first device I’ve seen that basically doesn’t need a flashlight. Just display a white or light-colored image, turn the brightness all the way up, and there’s enough light to use it as a small flashlight.
Here it is compared with my Doogee.


Even at an angle and with the flash on, the image is clearly brighter than on my smartphone. There is one small caveat: in the photo, the reviewed phone’s background is black, while mine is gray. In reality, they’re about the same—somewhere between my phone and the one under review. Either way, the image is easy to see even in bright sunlight.


The previous photos might make the reviewed phone’s screen look tiny. In fact, it just displays photos at a slightly smaller size, without filling the entire screen. Display the home screen, and it becomes clear: the screen is just under 5 inches.


Now for the software and tests. This section will be very short, since there’s not much to look at.
The first thing you notice is the icons, which have a slightly childish style. They look nice, but they’re rather inconvenient: your eyes are used to the familiar icons, so you have to stop and search the screen for the file manager or settings. As the saying goes, “the best OS is the one you don’t notice.” The phone icon stands out in particular—it reminds me of something else.
The second thing you’ll notice is the on-screen “buttons.” Yes, that’s what this phone uses. I should point out that when I was taking the photos, I noticed spaces for sensors to the left and right of the center button—but the spaces are there, and the sensors aren’t.
I can live with on-screen “buttons.” In fact, I’ve seen people enable this kind of control on smartphones that already have the usual touch sensors. But there’s one catch: you can’t change the button layout using the standard settings. And I don’t know what the developers were smoking, but the outer buttons are swapped compared with the usual layout. It’s INCONVENIENT, and you’ll definitely have to get used to it, just like the icons, even though they look nice.


The smartphone runs Android 6.0. Given that it has just 1 GB of RAM, I can see how this might actually be a better choice than 7.x.
Unfortunately, there are no updates. They may be available for download somewhere, but I haven’t looked into it.
The phone has 16 GB of flash storage, about 5 GB of which is taken up by the system software, leaving around 11 GB for the user. That’s pretty good, especially since you can use a memory card and two SIM cards at the same time.


There’s nothing particularly noteworthy in the first screenshot, except for the last item. When you enable this mode, the smartphone flashes the backlight of the center button (red/green) for a few seconds after you press it. I still can’t see the point of this feature, but as far as I can tell, all it does is flash the button’s backlight.

The preinstalled software selection is fairly modest: basic apps, a gallery, a player, and so on.


As I’ve already mentioned, the smartphone uses the rather old MT6580 SoC. On the one hand, that's a drawback; it would be nice to use something faster. On the other hand, this device doesn't need anything more.
There is no root access. CPU-Z doesn't show this, and I don't want to clutter things up with screenshots from AIDA, but the device only has 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi.


A few tests.
The selection of sensors is more than modest:
1. Proximity sensor, which is standard these days.
2. Accelerometer, likewise.
3. Noise meter. I can hardly imagine a phone without a microphone.
4. Light sensor. Nothing unusual here either; I haven't seen a device without one yet.

That's it.

I should note, though, that despite the device's price, it has a 10-point touchscreen. In my opinion, 5 points would have been enough.
I recently saw someone ask why a touchscreen needs to support more than 2 touches, so I'll try to explain.

Basically, 2 touch points are enough for most operations, but sensors like that have a drawback: they don't correctly recognize touches when the contact points lie on the same line (horizontal or vertical). So in practice, you end up with a touchscreen that supports "1.5 touches". That's why I said 5 points are really enough, since I haven't come across 3- or 4-point screens yet.

But although this touchscreen supports 10 touches, it has one drawback: phantom touches while the smartphone is charging. At first I blamed the stock charger, but exactly the same thing happened when powering it from a tested power supply that I use to charge all my devices. The problem is with the smartphone itself; it's very difficult to use while charging.


The AnTuTu results are straightforward and unsurprising: nobody expected high performance from this "basic phone". You can still play some older, simple games on it, but you'll hit another limitation before you run into the processor's performance limits. I'll get to that later.
The flash memory is fairly fast at reading and rather mediocre at writing. It's good to see that memory card performance is quite decent; with a fast card, speeds should be pretty good.


Its computational performance is typical for the MT6580, perhaps a little below that of competitors (for example, the Cubot Rainbow 2), but not by much—probably within the measurement error.


In 3DMark, performance is exactly the same as the Cubot Rainbow 2's, while in PCMark it's noticeably lower, though I can't explain why: the processor and RAM capacity are the same.


The Epic Citadel test produced a somewhat strange result: performance was higher than the Cubot Rainbow 2's (31.8 and 16.9), but lower than the first-generation Cubot Rainbow's (48.9 and 25.3).
Still, as I said, you can play games, but the problem lies elsewhere.


There were no surprises in this test: 3D performance is the same as that of its "classmates". In other words, the performance test results are, on average, what you'd expect from any smartphone with an MT6580 processor.


As I already mentioned, Wi-Fi only works on the 2.4 GHz band. On the other hand, I can't remember seeing any inexpensive devices with 5 GHz Wi-Fi.
My router was detected right away, and the phone connected to it without any problems. At a relatively short distance from the router, the connection speed was 65 Mbps. This time I decided not to test the speed with iPerf and just use SpeedTest.
The only problem was at the farthest point in the apartment, about 12 m from the router, with lots of concrete walls in between. Interestingly, moving just 3–4 m away made it possible to receive the reflected signal, and the speed became perfectly decent. It stayed around that level almost all the way to a near line of sight with the router; only the upload speed fluctuated.
The screenshot shows tests from the farthest and nearest points, with intermediate results in between.


Like all modern smartphones, this one also has GPS. It works as GPS only, though; GLONASS isn't supported, so it doesn't see many satellites. Its sensitivity is also about average, since some of my smartphones have detected 12–15 satellites. This one sees only 9–12.
Navigation is quite stable, though. The screenshot on the right shows the track; the phone was in my shirt pocket. It's a little uneven in places, but overall it's accurate to within a few meters.


Now I've reached the point I mentioned when discussing gaming performance.
As I wrote above, even if the performance is enough for games, that won't help you much.
For starters, battery life under CPU load and at 100% screen brightness is no more than 3.5 hours.


All right, forget games—I don't play them at all, for example. So I decided to check battery life while watching movies. To keep with tradition, I used the same test movie I use when testing other smartphones.
2.5 hours, yes, that's all. So, forget about games and movies.
I checked battery life while playing a 720p file with the screen brightness at 100%. It lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes.



But there's YouTube, and sometimes you just want to watch a video or two.
The results are practically identical to playing video from a flash drive: the same 2.5 hours.

So the problem with games and watching videos isn't limited to the processor's performance.
There are three reasons for this:
1. Battery life with the processor under load and the screen brightness set to 100% is only about 3–3.5 hours.
2. Even if you want to play a game, let alone watch a movie, "near a power outlet," you'll run into another problem: phantom touchscreen inputs while charging.
3. And even if the phantom touches don't bother you, the phone will barely charge while you're using it. In other words, its charging time is almost the same as its discharge time, at least when playing video.

The last screenshot shows the discharge time while watching YouTube compared with the charging time using the supplied charger. The difference is about 10–15%, which means that the smartphone will charge while you're watching a movie, but the process will take roughly 7–10 times longer. This clearly points to poor software optimization. The same goes for the low-battery shutdown threshold. Perhaps this will be fixed in an update, but the phone has been on sale for a while now, and there's still no sign of one.
A full charge takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes.

There are no problems in phone mode. If you use it as a phone (strange as that may sound), it lasts all day without any trouble. But you'll have to forget about games, YouTube, and the like, or use them only for limited periods.


After that, I ran another test. I set the brightness to minimum and decided to test video playback. But first, here's the minimum brightness compared with my Doogee X5. The first photo shows the Doogee at maximum brightness, the second at minimum.
Above, I showed a comparison of the maximum brightness on these smartphones. I can say that the screen brightness on the phone under review can be adjusted across a very wide range. At minimum, it probably won't be comfortable to use in sunlight, but it's perfectly fine indoors.


But back to the test. With a 720p file, playback lasted twice as long (6 hours and 23 minutes versus 3 hours and 10 minutes) as at maximum brightness. I have to admit, this is the first device I've tested with such a large difference in power consumption between the maximum and minimum brightness settings. That's why I hadn't focused on this test before.



Now I've finally reached the cameras—or, more precisely, the rear camera, which is considered the main one.
Honestly, after some of this device's "quirks," I expected something mediocre, so I was a little surprised by the results. Of course, it uses an inexpensive sensor—no surprise there—but the image quality was better than I expected.
One positive point is that the camera records video at 1920x1080, rather than 1280x720, as is often the case with cheap smartphones. The video format is 3gp.

But judge for yourself. The images have been compressed, of course, otherwise they simply wouldn't fit on the site, but they give you a good general idea.
As always, I compared it with the Vernee Thor. I've already mentioned that few Chinese phones have a better camera. There was a small mistake in the caption, though: it says A5 instead of A7.
In terms of sharpness, the phone under review will of course lose, but it costs half as much. Overall, though, I wouldn't say there's a huge difference.


Here are two similar photos, but one focuses on the background and the other on the foreground.



A few photos around town. It was getting close to evening, as you can probably tell from the length of the shadow.



All the photos were taken in "auto" mode, and in my opinion the white balance is a little better on the phone under review.


Unfortunately, evening shots are a different story. Photos in poor lighting don't turn out very well.


As an extra, here are some macro shots. The minimum distance is about 5–6 cm; get any closer and the quality starts to drop.
Below is a 1600x1200 crop from the full frame. As with all the images in this review, click the picture to enlarge it.


I was also asked to post a photo of a printed sheet. No problem. Both photos are cropped from the same original frame, but when taking them I tried to make the sheet fill as much of the frame as possible.
The camera behaves differently here because it is farther from the sheet.


When the camera is moved closer, the spot in the center of the image becomes more pronounced.


That’s probably all. I’ll try to sum up the main points, advantages and disadvantages.

For the most part, I liked the phone. It’s definitely comfortable to hold, especially in a woman’s or child’s hand. It lacks the trendy second rear camera and fingerprint scanner. The phone doesn’t lag, its Wi-Fi and GPS work reliably, and the screen is quite good, with bright backlighting. The extra accessories are also a welcome bonus: a second back cover, a silicone case and a screen protector. I was impressed by the 10-point touchscreen—you don’t often see that in the budget segment. I won’t criticize the camera either; for a $50 phone, it’s quite good and more than adequate for most tasks. Some people may also appreciate the phone’s low weight, which is a fairly important factor.

But as you’ve already gathered from the review, there are some drawbacks too. First, the battery has a low capacity, and the cutoff voltage is set rather high, so of its already modest 1800 mAh capacity, only 1500 mAh is usable. As I mentioned, you can forget about gaming, YouTube and movies. You can browse the internet for a while, though; power consumption is noticeably lower in that mode. In second place are the on-screen buttons, which take some getting used to because there are no built-in settings for them. And in third place is the notification LED: they started making it, but never finished the job.
At maximum brightness, the phone draws a lot of power and charges slowly. Charging is accompanied by phantom touches: you can touch one spot and get a touch registered somewhere else.


As I said at the very beginning, this is a typical “call-and-text” phone—a phone is just a phone, nothing more. The battery is the main thing limiting what you can use it for. In my opinion, it’s aimed at children, and might also suit undemanding users who only need to make calls and occasionally browse the internet.
As for reception, it works normally as a phone—not worse, but not better than others. I haven’t encountered any problems during the entire time I’ve used it.

Update: I added the runtime for video playback at 720p and minimum brightness: 6 hours 23 minutes. That’s twice as long as at maximum brightness, which is quite good. Indoors or under artificial lighting, the image is comfortable to view. The phone also has a wider brightness adjustment range than my Doogee X5.
In conclusion, the high power consumption is due to the screen’s high brightness. Lowering the brightness noticeably reduces power consumption and can double battery life. In real-world use, the phone proved capable of running for a full day without problems, even with internet use. If you “conserve” a little, I think it could last two days.