CUBOT Magic smartphone, another Cubot

I've already reviewed several phones from this rather well-known company: two budget “rainbows,” the first and the second, as well as a more “advanced” model called Cubot Cheetah 2. I chose this phone for review out of curiosity, after reading quite a lot of positive reviews on the store page. Someone even bought two of these phones. I thought, maybe there's something interesting here.
So, this is a review in my usual style. The only thing is, I didn't take it apart; there's not much point.



To back up what I said about the reviews, here's a screenshot of literally the first four. You can find the rest via the link to the product page.



To give you an idea of what this review is about and whether it's worth reading on or closing the page, here are the specifications:
Color: Black, Rose Gold
Processor — MTK6737, 4 cores
GPU: ARM Mali-T720 MP3, 450 MHz
Operating system — Android 7.0
Memory — 3 GB RAM, 16 GB flash storage.
Display — 5 inches, 1280x720 resolution
Network type: FDD-LTE, GSM, WCDMA
2G: GSM 1800 MHz, GSM 1900 MHz, GSM 850 MHz, GSM 900 MHz
3G: WCDMA B1 2100 MHz, WCDMA B8 900 MHz
4G LTE: FDD B1 2100 MHz, FDD B20 800 MHz, FDD B3 1800 MHz, FDD B7 2600 MHz
Wireless interfaces — Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
GPS
Memory card slot — MicroSD
OTG is not supported
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack.
SIM card type — 2 Micro SIM cards
Front camera: 5 MP
Main camera: 13 MP + 2 MP
Battery: 2600 mAh
Dimensions: 145x71x9.3 mm
Weight — 120 grams

The closest phone with similar specs that I've reviewed is the Leagoo T1 Plus. It had the same processor, memory capacity, screen resolution, and even a battery with almost identical capacity. Its screen was 5.5 inches rather than 5, but I don't think that's significant. I may compare the two from time to time.

But first, the packaging. It's relatively large and sturdy, with a nice picture and the main technical information.
I'll note that at least the charger inside was secured, and the box itself hadn't been opened before I received it.


The package includes:
1. CUBOT Magic smartphone
2. Charger (power adapter)
3. USB-to-microUSB cable
4. Case
5. Manual



1, 2. The manual is nothing special: a small, neat booklet, and it includes Russian as well.
3. The cable is quite soft and flat, which takes a little getting used to.
4. The charger has an output voltage of 5 V and can supply up to 1 A. It's extremely compact, about the size of a matchbox.


To protect it from scratches during shipping, the smartphone comes in a matte plastic sleeve.


It's interesting that there's no screen protector, even though sometimes they include a spare. Is this a cost-saving measure, or did they just think it wasn't needed?


1. At the top are the proximity sensor, notification LED, camera with a claimed resolution of 5 MP, earpiece, and even a flash, which is relatively uncommon.
2. There are three touch buttons at the bottom, unfortunately without backlighting.
3. The volume and power buttons are traditionally placed on the right edge of the phone. They're behind the case in the photo, but that doesn't change anything.
4. The MicroUSB port and headset jack are on the top edge. The headset jack is in its usual place, but I'm more used to seeing MicroUSB on the bottom, although it's also on top on my Doogee.


The main speaker's openings are on the bottom. As is often the case, there's only one speaker, but I'd describe the sound as perfectly decent.


As I mentioned above, a case was included, and the phone comes in it from the start. The case is quite soft, unlike the “wooden” cases like the one that came with the first “rainbow.”


There are two cameras (13 and 2 MP) and a flash at the top of the back. Dual cameras have become pretty common in phones like this, which I can't approve of, but the lack of the usual fingerprint sensor surprised me quite a bit, since even very cheap phones have them these days.

Because the body tapers quite sharply, the ports are set well inside it. Or rather, that's not quite right: the steep taper makes the ports look recessed. All the USB cables I had on hand worked, but I can't guarantee that every cable will work.


The back cover is plastic, but very glossy, so without a case the phone will quickly start looking shabby.


Without the case, the phone looks like a pebble that's been worn smooth by the sea for years; it's rounded on literally every side. I don't see any point in saying whether I like it or not, since people have different tastes, and what one person likes may be completely unacceptable to someone else.


Even the glass looks a bit like a lens. But the fit and finish are pretty good: no creaks or play.


The store page says the phone weighs 120 grams. Well, that's not quite right—it's almost one and a half times that :)
Without the case it weighs 165 grams, and 183 with it. I'd say it's on the heavy side, especially considering the stated battery capacity.


Let's remove the back cover. We'll have to do it anyway, since to turn the phone on we need to at least remove the protective film from the battery contacts, not to mention installing the SIM cards.


This is what I'm willing to forgive the developers for the unnecessary extra camera: separate slots for the SIM cards and memory card, with no trays.


No complaints about the viewing angles; the colors don't shift. There is some backlight bleed against a black background, but unfortunately that's inherent to how LCD panels work—more specifically, to their backlighting. I'll just say that this is far from the worst result.


I'd go even further: the screen is pretty good—bright and with good color reproduction. My budget Doogee is on the right for comparison. Both phones are set to maximum brightness.


To stay focused on the exterior inspection, I'll also include the battery capacity test here. Although lithium batteries don't need to be "conditioned," I still ran the test after a few cycles, as it happened.
First, I discharged the battery until the phone shut down automatically, then connected it to an electronic load. The battery voltage was 3.44 V.


For about half a minute, load the battery at the current that will be used for the test. This tells us the voltage at which the smartphone shuts down automatically; in this case, it's 3.30 V. Users often get confused when measuring battery voltage with no load, because the battery itself has internal resistance, and the protection board's transistors add even more. You need to check it under load.


After that, I fully charge the battery in the phone, remove it, and connect it to the electronic load again.

In this case, the test was run at 520 mA, or 0.2C.
1. Discharge to 3.30 V. This voltage was determined in the previous test.
2. Discharge in two stages down to 2.8 V.
3. A small charge so the phone can then turn on and charge.

The final capacity was:
Usable by the phone — 2339 mAh
"Reserve" — 37+9=48 mAh
Total — 2339+48=2387 mAh.
Manufacturer's stated capacity — 2600 mAh.

There's an obvious shortfall of about 10%, which is a lot for a new battery. There is one small caveat, though: when I tried charging the battery after removing it from the phone, it happily kept taking charge, which suggests it wasn't quite fully charged. I should also note that the phone uses almost the entire battery capacity, leaving very little in reserve.
But in any case, a 10% shortfall is a lot.


Software.
"Home screen" looks fairly familiar. Perhaps the only unusual thing is that there’s no camera shortcut on it by default.
The phone comes with the basic apps you might need when using it.


The phone runs Android 7.0, although it’s quite hard to find phones with other versions these days, even though they do exist.
The firmware update check ended with the message “You are using the latest version,” which didn’t surprise me at all.

About 11 GB of the 16 GB of built-in flash storage is available to the user. However, since you can easily add a memory card, this doesn’t really matter.
The phone also has 3 GB of RAM, although in my opinion that doesn’t help much, and 2 GB would have been enough.


Phone settings.
For the most part, the settings are much like those on similar phones: mobile data controls, and an option to enable the notification LED. Unfortunately, the LED is single-color, and you can’t configure notifications—only turn it on or off.


There are settings for changing the wallpaper and taking screenshots by swiping your fingers across the screen. The latter is at least somewhat useful, but the practical value of the former is questionable.
There’s also a handy option to launch the camera by double-pressing the power button. Maybe that’s why they didn’t put its icon on the home screen.
The file manager is quite convenient, but very sluggish. The phone itself is quite responsive and doesn’t lag, but as soon as you launch the file manager... The lag shows up as slow file icon updates, which makes it rather inconvenient to use.


General information about the software and hardware.
CPU-Z and Device Info.


Interestingly, Device Info identified the main camera module as Samsung and reported the front camera resolution as 23 MP.
I might believe the first, but the second is clearly an error.
It’s also curious that the settings list the battery capacity as 2400 mAh, not 2600 mAh as printed on the battery and listed in the phone’s specs. And, as noted earlier in my test, I also got around 2400 mAh.


Operating frequencies and bands.


The sensor selection is very limited, on par with ordinary budget phones. Although I recently posted a review of the Vernee Thor Plus, and it had exactly the same set of sensors.
The touchscreen supports 5-point multitouch. The result is quite predictable: more than enough for most tasks.


Performance tests.
In AnTuTu versions 5.x and 6.x, performance is slightly lower than on the Leagoo T1 Plus and noticeably lower than on models with the MTK6753 processor.
On the other hand, the flash storage speed was a pleasant surprise.


Geekbench shows roughly the same performance as the Leagoo T1 Plus, but compared with the MTK6753, multicore performance is half as high. That’s quite logical, since it has half as many cores.


In PCMark, the difference from the Leagoo is small, while in 3DMark it’s almost nonexistent. Compared with models based on the MTK6753 processor, the difference is much greater—almost twofold in 3DMark.
The reason I’m comparing it with the MTK6753 is that phones based on this processor are in a similar price range to the one under review.


The other tests are much the same: the Leagoo is a little faster, while models with the MTK6753 are almost 1.5 times faster.



Navigation.
This phone (or, more precisely, its processor) supports GPS only; GLONASS is not supported.
Its sensitivity is pretty good overall, but I think this sort of thing is best tested in real-world conditions.


This time I ran two tests. The first was with Navitel, which usually shows greater variation when plotting a route.
But the variation didn’t seem all that large to me. At least there were no “jumps” to a neighboring district, as happened with one of my previous phones, I think my Doogee.


For the PROgorod test, I checked the track in both directions over most of the route to see how closely the two matched.


In short, it works quite consistently. The maximum deviation was about 8–10 meters; otherwise, the difference was around 4–5 meters.


Battery life test.
Above, I tested the battery’s capacity. Now I’ll test how efficiently the phone can use it.
Three tests are shown below.
1. Maximum screen brightness
2. Minimum
3. Maximum.

For a phone, I’d say the battery life is a bit short. But for a battery with a real capacity of just 2400 mAh, it’s quite acceptable. You won’t be able to play games for long on the go, though, and if you use the internet, play games, and so on, the charge won’t last until evening. If you use it as a phone, with a little Skype and internet browsing, it lasts a day.


When watching YouTube at around 70% brightness, the battery lasted about 5 hours. I didn’t take a screenshot at the end of the test, but the discharge graph is very linear (which is quite convenient), so it’s easy enough to work it out.


Next, I ran my usual test with House M.D. in Full HD. The battery lasted almost 6 hours, which is pretty good considering its low capacity.


Camera.
I didn’t test the front camera or the pseudo-bokeh effect. Instead, I focused on checking the main camera, which is supposedly made by Samsung. Though it could well be a Samsung camera.
There are lots of settings, but on this phone they’re all lumped together instead of being split into the usual three groups: general/photo/video. That’s a bit inconvenient.
The third screenshot is the only one that shows the “Bokeh” effect. I tested this feature once before and concluded that it’s pointless for now—all cheap phones work exactly the same way.


Besides regular shooting, there are Beauty effects, as well as:
1. Panorama
2. Black and white
3. Night. Essentially, it differs from the regular mode by having a slightly longer maximum exposure time: 1/5 second instead of 1/8. It helps a little in low light, by about the amount mentioned above


As usual, I compared it with the Vernee Thor, which has so far produced better photos than other smartphones in its price range (and sometimes even in a higher one).
The photos have been compressed for the site; I uploaded the originals to Yandex Disk and Google Drive.

While testing, I noticed that the Cubot’s camera has a noticeably wider field of view than the Thor’s, which inevitably affects the quality of fine details. Keep that in mind when comparing them.






At a glance, the overall photo quality looks about the same—until you decide to take a closer look at something.
First, the Cubot.


And now the Vernee Thor.
It’s clear that the photos shown above were probably upscaled through interpolation, and the camera doesn’t actually have the advertised 13 MP. But if you just want to “snap a quick photo,” it’ll do just fine.


A printed page in natural light, shown in three versions.
1. Auto white balance, autofocus.
2. Manual white balance, “cloudy” mode, autofocus
3. Manual white balance, “cloudy” mode, forced focus.


Macro mode, minimum focusing distance about 4 cm. The board was lit by a halogen lamp here. When shooting from farther away, the photos had a cool color cast; up close, they had a warm one.


The full photo that the crop was taken from.


Evening shots: the first with autofocus, the second with forced focus.
I originally went out to take comparison shots in night and regular modes, but there’s no difference in this scene; night mode is enabled in both photos.



So, what can I say in conclusion?
To me, it’s a very ordinary phone that doesn’t stand out for its performance or battery capacity.
It looks quite neat, but the design is a matter of taste. I think it would probably suit a woman more than a man, though that’s very subjective.
I was pleasantly surprised by the pretty good screen and the reasonably decent main camera, although it lost out to the Vernee I used for comparison.
WiFi sensitivity isn’t great. If your router is in the middle of the apartment, there won’t be any problems, but if it’s in a far corner (like mine), you may have trouble in the most distant room.
The phone runs reliably, and the interface is quite responsive, though I can’t say the same for the stock file manager.
There’s no tray for the SIM cards and memory card, so you can use them all at once—a nice change from the many phones with trays.

At the end of the review, I compared this phone’s camera with the one on an older Vernee Thor. In my opinion, at roughly the same price, the Vernee is noticeably better in every respect (performance, camera, usability). Honestly, I just don’t get this Cubot.

I think this device is just an ordinary “phone for calls”: it looks neat but doesn’t last long, has a good screen, but will probably never get any firmware updates. It has decent GPS, but weak WiFi.

I hope you found the review useful. As usual, I look forward to your questions in the comments.