CUBOT POWER, a strange smartphone

I wasn’t even planning to write this review anymore, but fate had other ideas this time, and a new phone from Cubot eventually found its way to me by a rather roundabout route. Its full name is the Cubot Power. The manufacturer came up with this straightforward name for its creation. On the one hand, the concept is pretty good: there’s no “notch,” dual camera, or other nonsense, but there is a large display, a high-capacity battery, 6 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of storage. Somehow, though, it’s a bit like that old joke about Christmas tree decorations.
Anyway, let’s take a look, take it apart, test it, and draw some conclusions.


I’ve reviewed phones from this brand before: both “rainbows,” the Cheetah 2, and the Magic. But they were all either budget or lower mid-range models. This one is already in the expensive category, at least among Chinese manufacturers. Sure, a Samsung or Apple phone will cost more, but $200 is still $200.

As I mentioned in the introduction, I wasn’t planning to write this review because the phone they sent me never made it to my door. Then one day an unexpected package arrived, and as I unpacked it, I tried to figure out what on earth it was. I only realized when I took a closer look and spotted the large word “Power” at the top.

Specifications:
Color — black, blue
Processor — MT6763T (Helio P23), octa-core, 2.5 GHz
GPU — Mali-G71, 770 MHz
Operating system — Android 8.1
Memory — 6 GB RAM, 128 GB storage
Display — 5.99 inches, 2160 x 1080 resolution
Network types: 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, FDD B8 900 MHz
Wireless interfaces — Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz/5 GHz, Bluetooth 4.0
GPS, AGPS, GLONASS, BDS
Memory card slot — MicroSD
OTG not supported (presumably; no definitive information available)
Audio output/microphone — 3.5 mm jack
SIM card type — 2 nano-SIM cards
Front camera — 8 MP
Main camera — 16 MP
Battery — 6000 mAh
Dimensions — 158 x 74 x 10.8 mm
Weight — 200 g




In short, the phone is packaged very impressively. Chinese manufacturers know how to do this. The box looks great, everything inside is arranged in its own little box, and it all shines.


The package contents are the same as for most phones from this brand and include:
1. Cubot Power 4G smartphone
2. Charger
3. USB-to-USB Type-C cable
4. Case
5. SIM ejector tool (paper clip)
6. User manual, warranty card, and radio compliance sheet


The package contents are pretty standard and nothing sets them apart from other models. The charger is a regular one, not a “fast” charger, which is a little surprising, especially given the battery capacity. The case is also nothing special; Cubot includes one with every smartphone model. The manual is available in Russian, so thanks to the manufacturer for that.


The phone looks relatively large, but I wouldn’t call it huge. I was expecting worse.


Protective shipping films with the phone’s key features printed on them are applied to the front and back.


To make the phone look more expensive, the manufacturer made it glossy everywhere possible. But I know plenty of users like that, so in this case it simply comes down to personal taste.




I'd mark the hybrid slot down if it weren't so common these days. I don't mind the slot itself; what I don't like is that you can't use two SIM cards and a memory card at the same time. Still, with 128 GB of internal storage, that's probably not something to worry about. By the way, SIM cards can be hot-swapped.


The phone is pretty heavy: 220 grams without the case, and even more with it—242 grams.



As always, my reviews wouldn't be complete without a teardown, but first I'll show you a video of someone taking this phone apart.
<video>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh2qR9Cqskk&t=15s</video>

Did you see how easily he split it in half right at the beginning? I tried that too. Yeah, right... There are two strips of double-sided tape between the phone's back cover and the battery. So at this stage, taking it apart is really difficult.





The phone is advertised as having a 5.99-inch screen with a resolution of 2160x1080, i.e. a 2:1 aspect ratio, and it also touts its so-called "bezel-less" design.


As for the "bezel-less" claim, they’ve certainly stretched the truth a bit: the bezels are 3 mm wide, and it’s nowhere near as bezel-less as a Samsung. But personally, I actually prefer it this way. Narrow bezels aren’t always convenient, especially if you have large hands.


No complaints about the viewing angles, which is pretty much what I expected.


At an angle, with a black background, there’s some backlight bleed, but it becomes completely unnoticeable with additional lighting.
Alternatively, you can turn on automatic brightness adjustment.


Of course, this screen can’t match the Lenovo’s AMOLED display for brightness, but it still has plenty of headroom. In everyday use, you’re unlikely to need more than 60–70%, though in direct sunlight you’ll probably have to turn it up further.



That’s it for the hardware. Let’s turn it on and move on to the software.
Startup is standard: a bunch of prompts about language, transferring data, connecting to a network, Google, and so on.


The home screen isn’t particularly different from those on other similar smartphones; the manufacturer hasn’t bothered with any fancy customization. But having only virtual buttons is a downside, although I’ve seen at least one person enable them on a phone with physical buttons.
At first glance, it might seem like there are a lot of apps installed—they don’t even fit on one screen. In fact, there’s nothing unusual: a browser, file manager, dialer, and so on.


During setup, it kept asking me to configure something, but since I wasn’t particularly interested, I just skipped that step. Then the same prompt showed up in the settings, so I had to skip it again. The phone also tried to check for updates before I’d even started using it, but failed. Though I’m not too disappointed—I remember a phone update that disabled its compass :)


This is the first device running Android 8 that I’ve had my hands on, but honestly, I haven’t noticed any significant differences from version 7. They’ve added a few things and rearranged some settings menus, but overall, it looks almost the same.


There’s an app called DuraSpeed that’s supposed to speed up the smartphone, and it’s enabled by default. But I tried it both ways, and if there’s any difference, it’s barely noticeable.


But what I really noticed—and complained about for a long time afterward—was that you can’t remap the navigation buttons. By default, they’re arranged in the opposite order from what I’m used to and from how they’re laid out on most smartphones.
Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough, but I tried: there are no settings for the virtual buttons.


When I first turned on the phone, I was a little surprised by the date it said it had last been charged, but then I realized it was probably just because the date had been set incorrectly to begin with.
Once fully charged, a message appears on the screen saying your phone is charged and you can unplug the charger—just like on some old Nokias.


By the way, about charging: I don’t quite understand what “Fast charge” means if the phone can charge at a maximum of 2 A at 5 V and takes about 3.5 hours to do so. To me, fast charging would mean something like 12 V at 1.5 A.


According to CPU-Z, the processor has a clock speed of up to 1.79 GHz, but that’s not quite right.
This processor model has eight cores: the first four run at up to 1.65 GHz, and the other four at up to 2.3 GHz. One of them can reach 2.5 GHz in turbo mode.
There’s no root access; otherwise, it’s just a phone.


After launch, Device Info HW complained that there was no root access and showed only what you can see below. Basically, it’s the same information as CPU-Z, just a bit more of it and more accurately presented.
The cameras are listed as 20 and 13 MP, but those figures are interpolated. The actual cameras are 16 and 8 MP, while the processor itself can support cameras up to 24 MP (one camera) or two 13 MP cameras. Strangely, for such a relatively powerful processor, video recording is limited to 1920x1080.


Among other things, I saw ads claiming that this device scores almost 100k points in AnTuTu—or 95k, or more precisely, 93k points.


But my results were noticeably more modest. To be fair, I tested it using versions 5 and 6, which readers may be more familiar with.
The touchscreen supports up to 10 simultaneous touches, so there shouldn't be any problems in everyday use.


But then curiosity got the better of me and I installed the new version of AnTuTu. And why not? It's pretty convenient—you can “boost” the device's performance simply by changing the version of the benchmark package :)
The Lenovo scores around 80k points in this test.


Geekbench versions 3 and 4. Performance is roughly on par with the Lenovo P2 with its Snapdragon 625 processor, give or take a little.


The results were similar in 3DMark and PCMark: performance is on par with the Snapdragon 625, again, give or take a little.
1. Ice Storm Extreme (added to the table)
2. Ice Storm Unlimited
3. Ice Storm Performance
4. PCMark


The phone surprised me a little in the Bonsai Benchmark, though. In the tests above, its performance was almost identical to that of the Lenovo P2 with a Snapdragon 625, but here the score is significantly higher.
The Lenovo scored 2688 points and 38.4 fps, while this result is quite different.


I couldn't run Epic Citadel during the Lenovo tests, so I can't compare the results, but this looks pretty good to me.


Internal storage performance is also pretty good. Ignore the microSD test results—they're from cached reads. The internal storage speed result, however, is accurate.


The sensors are much the same as on the Lenovo; everything you need is there.


The phone is listed as supporting GPS and GLONASS. Receiver sensitivity is decent, and it can see a sufficient number of satellites in urban areas.


However, the test track showed a fairly noticeable difference in the position readings when moving in one direction and then the opposite direction. That said, I wouldn't call the discrepancy large, but it's there.


The Wi-Fi is dual-band, though I suppose that's to be expected in this price range.


Its performance is average. I've seen better examples, as well as worse ones.
On the 2 GHz band, I was even able to connect through several load-bearing walls, though the connection was right on the edge. With one fewer obstacle, it became noticeably more reliable. In the room next to the router, the speed was 40 Mbps, and a couple of meters away it was 45 Mbps.


The speed is higher on 5 GHz, but the connection is weaker and more affected by obstacles. In the end, I could get a decent connection only through two rooms (the lower graph). In the next room, the speed was 50 Mbps, and a couple of meters away it was 80–100 Mbps.



In my opinion, battery life is sometimes even more important than performance. This device has a battery rated at 6000 mAh, with an actual capacity about 10% lower. But even 5350 mAh is pretty good. The Lenovo had a 5100 mAh battery, though it's not entirely fair to compare them because it has an AMOLED display.
So, first, three synthetic tests.
1. Geekbench, maximum screen brightness
2. Geekbench, minimum screen brightness. I couldn't load the result after the test, so the screenshot was taken while the test was running.
3. PCMark, brightness at about 70% for the most comfortable viewing, discharged to 20%


In both Geekbench tests, the smartphone discharged very steadily, which is quite convenient and helps avoid surprises—for example, when the phone discharges gradually for several hours, then suddenly drops from 15% to 1%, or, conversely, stays at 1% for half an hour.
As you can see on the right side of the first graph, charging is very slow—about 4 hours, which is a lot. The phone wasn't being used during that time, i.e. all the power from the power supply went into charging the battery.


And a more realistic test: playing a test video, which I run on all smartphones and tablets. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a screenshot right at the end of the discharge, but given the linear discharge, we can estimate the total runtime.
At around 60–70% brightness, the phone discharged the battery from 100% to 13% in 10 hours, so it can easily manage 11 hours of video playback—in this case, Full HD.
The advertised runtime was 15 hours. Well, if you turn the brightness down almost to minimum, I can believe that, but it wouldn't be very comfortable to use.


The phone is advertised as having a 20 MP camera, but in reality it's 16 MP.


There are quite a lot of settings, including a Pro mode, though I never figured out what it's for, since it actually has fewer settings. There are also some basic effects, more for people who like that sort of thing.


Video recording is limited to 1920x1080, which is starting to feel a bit low, especially considering that the Lenovo P2 records in 4K, and does so very well. And the 3GP format is somewhat... outdated, although it does record at a fairly decent bitrate.


For comparison, I ran a test alongside a Samsung S8 (if I'm remembering correctly). Of course, it's not entirely fair—the devices are in different "weight classes"—but then again, I also compared the Lenovo with a Samsung.

I had to shrink the photos to 50%, otherwise they simply wouldn't upload. If you want the full-size versions, I can upload them to Google Drive. But even at this size, you can see that the Cubot can't keep up in terms of image sharpness.




And now for the hardest part of the review: the conclusions.
I'll say right away that I'm not going to praise it. No, of course there's something good about this device, no question. For example, I liked that the manufacturer didn't follow the "progress" trend by putting in four cameras, removing the headphone jack, stretching the screen across the entire front panel, and so on. I even thought it was perfectly reasonable not to include a physical keyboard, although buttons are certainly more convenient. Overall, I also liked the look and ease of use. And of course, let's not forget the 6 GB of RAM and, especially, the 128 GB of fairly fast flash storage.

But it does have its shortcomings. The battery is large, but it's 10% short of the claimed capacity; the processor is relatively powerful, but again, not powerful enough to impress. In the review, I compared its performance with the relatively old Lenovo P2. It lost noticeably only in the Bonsai benchmark; in everything else, it was neck and neck.
As for features, there's no NFC, no second microphone, no 4K, and no metal body, unfortunately.
And of course, the camera was disappointing—or maybe I was expecting too much.

In any case, price makes a big difference. If this device were cheaper, many of its shortcomings could be forgiven, such as the lack of NFC and a second microphone. But the manufacturer has made its own choices.

That's all. I hope you found the review useful. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.