Coolpad Max A8, a decent smartphone with a 5.5-inch screen

I’ve already reviewed quite a few smartphones, but I’d like to start this one by saying: this phone isn’t built around yet another tired MTK SoC from Mediatek. I don’t mean to say anything bad about them; it’s just that the seemingly bottomless supply of this manufacturer’s processors, used in almost every budget phone (and plenty of others), has been mentioned many times already.
This time, the “heart” of the phone under review is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 617—not exactly new, but still a pretty decent chip.


The smartphone’s specifications, from a screenshot of the store page.


This phone model actually came out about a year ago and cost around $300–340 at launch. The price gradually dropped to a relatively reasonable $180–200. As it turned out, though, the internet mostly has announcements and brief reviews, even though the phone was sold in local brick-and-mortar and online stores and came with warranty service (at least in Ukraine).
Another interesting thing is that I saw another announcement for this phone, but this one was from May of this year.

I’ll say a little more about that later. For now, let’s get to the review. I’ll start with the unboxing, since I don’t think it would be right to skip that step in this case.

Even before opening the package, the first thing I noticed was its weight. It felt like there were at least two phones in the box. For a moment, I actually wondered if they’d sent two phones just to be on the safe side, especially since the package was quite large too.
The seller took packaging very seriously: first a plastic bag, then a layer of bubble wrap, and finally another bag over the top. I think even if the package had been submerged, nothing would have happened to it.

Inside was a large black box made of very thick cardboard. There’s a sticker on the back listing the model, frequency bands, CE0700 compliance, and color. I didn’t pay much attention to the last item at first, but came back to it later, because it really was unexpected.


The first thing that comes to mind when you pick up this box is “fancy.” No, maybe better put it this way: Fancy!
A sturdy box with a drawer-style design, a suede-like feel, and gold embossing. The last time I had a similar reaction was when I reviewed the TS-100 soldering iron.


The manufacturer even included a special ribbon for lifting the phone out of the box. I’ve never seen that before.


Pulling on the same ribbon, we take out the tray the phone was sitting in. Underneath are several black boxes, and the largest one also has a “tab” for pulling it out of the main box.


So, we end up with the smartphone itself and three boxes of accessories.


The largest box contains:
1. Case (bumper)
2. Screen protector
3. User manual and warranty booklet
4. SIM ejector tool (paper clip)


1. The manual is in Russian—and not just a couple of sentences in “Chinese Russian,” but a complete, properly translated manual.
2. The screen protector is handy too, since the phone doesn’t come with one pre-installed.
3. The bumper is made of matte plastic. I’ll show it in more detail later.
4. It’s a paper clip. Nothing unusual.

I mentioned above that the manual was properly translated. That was unusual. Even more unusual was that when I visited the manufacturer’s website, I found manuals in a whole bunch of languages—German, Polish, Spanish, even Ukrainian (which was really unexpected)—but not Russian or English. I can sort of understand the lack of Russian, but the lack of English seemed strange.


The second box contained a USB-to-microUSB cable; the third had headphones and a power adapter.


1, 2. The cable has a rubber strap that lets you keep it neatly coiled. When I saw the unusual shape of the connectors, I wasn’t particularly surprised anymore, especially after all the fancy packaging.
3, 4. The power adapter (charger) has two operating modes: 5 and 9 V, with current up to 2.2 A in both modes. It’s fairly bulky.
5, 6. The headphones—or rather, headset—are pretty good, although I don’t like listening to music this way.


If you looked closely at the previous photos, you may have noticed a button on the microUSB connector. Press it and the LED light turns on. It isn’t very bright, but it’s more than enough to plug the connector into the port in complete darkness without fumbling around. Overall, I think it's a pretty good idea, even if it does make the plug larger.


At last, I've reached the star of the review. The introduction turned out to be much longer than usual.
The phone comes in a sturdy case with a few promotional inscriptions. As I mentioned above, there's no screen protector, which I don't think is a good thing.


There's a mini instruction on the back, in English, explaining that by default the first slot is intended for 4G/LTE. But I noticed a note about where it was made, which is what prompted me to take a closer look and search online for the manual. The bottom says “Made in China.” So it turns out the phone was originally intended specifically for the Ukrainian market. Some might ask what's unusual about that, but it seemed quite unexpected to me.


When I took off the protective case, my first thought was: wow, it looks so much like the Cubot Rainbow. Yes, they look quite similar, but only at first glance, and that's because of the gold-colored body, even though the specs call it champagne.
I should clarify right away that the color isn't quite so striking in person; the “gold” is much less vivid than on the Cubot, for example.


1. The microUSB port is on the bottom, and OTG works. There are openings on either side, but the speaker is only on the left. No complaints about the sound: it's loud and clear, with no distortion. Even if you cover the openings on the left, the sound remains fairly loud, though without the high frequencies.
2. At the top are the earpiece, covered by a grille, the camera, proximity sensor, and notification indicator.
3. The right side has only the power button and the tray for the SIM cards and memory card.
4. The top edge has only a 3.5 mm jack for connecting a headset.
5. The volume buttons are on the left side.
6. The power button and volume rocker have a knurled finish, so your finger doesn't slip and they're comfortable to use.

It's a slightly unusual choice by the manufacturer to swap the SIM tray and volume rocker, but I got used to it in about half an hour. It even turned out to be convenient.
The phone has no hardware buttons; it relies entirely on “software” buttons, which you can customize to your liking. I'll show that later.


Of course, having a tray like this greatly limits its versatility, since you can use either two SIM cards or one SIM card plus a memory card. I've always wondered why they can't come up with a different kind of tray, perhaps a longer one that would let you fit everything at once.
The fact that the phone has 64 GB of flash storage makes this a little less of an issue, so you might not need a memory card. For example, I get by with 8 GB in my phone plus an 8 GB memory card, though it's a tight fit.
On the other hand, iPhone owners seem to manage just fine, and their situation is no better.


The glass is rounded at the edges. It looks nice, but there's no oleophobic coating.


The back is plain and simple: a fingerprint sensor, camera, and “flash.”


The scanner is slightly recessed into the body, while the camera protrudes a little, but it's protected by a metal ring. The flash has two LEDs, one warm and one cool.


I'm not really a fan of bumpers, cases, and the like, so I'm skeptical of them, especially after the clunky cases from Cubot. This bumper doesn't make me cringe; it looks harmonious, though very simple.


Naturally, there are openings for the camera and sensor, and the sensor opening is generously sized, so the bumper won't get in the way.


The phone weighs 176 grams without the case and 188 grams with the included bumper. In my opinion, it’s quite well balanced. The aluminum body and 5.5-inch screen add quite a bit of weight, but thanks to the shape of the case—or, more precisely, its sloping sides—it sits comfortably in the hand, unlike my Doogee X5.


As an extra, I took a few photos in natural light so the phone’s color would look more realistic.


Photos in natural light





The glass sticks out noticeably beyond the case, so I wouldn’t use it without a screen protector.


Even in natural light, the screen looks pretty good.


Speaking of the screen.
Like most modern phones, this one also uses an IPS panel. Resolution is 1920x1080, with a 5.5-inch diagonal.
No complaints about the viewing angles: the image doesn’t distort at any reasonable angle.


As usual, there’s a little backlight bleed on a completely black screen, most noticeable when viewed at an angle.
Under normal conditions, there’s no visible bleed at all. The brightness was set to maximum in both cases.

Compared here with my Doogee X5 Max.


What can I say? My X5, with its cheap panel, loses on every count to the phone under review:
1. Higher resolution
2. Better color reproduction
3. Higher maximum brightness
4. Less backlight bleed, so black looks black rather than gray.

I’d give the panel 5 out of 5. The quality really is good.


As I mentioned at the beginning, the charger supports Quick Charge and can output 9 V at up to 2 A.
During testing, I found that the smartphone charges pretty quickly, so I decided to take a closer look at how it actually charges.
1. When powered from 5 V, the charging current is 2 A.
2. When connected to the included charger, the charging current is 1.7 A, even through an extension cable.
3. Many people know that charging batteries at a high current isn’t very good for them. The manufacturer seems to know this too, so the phone has two charging modes, with the option to switch between them on the fly: fast and standard. In standard mode, the charging current is about 1 A at 9 V. But if you power the phone from 5 V, switching modes makes no difference.
4. When the phone is unlocked, or even just has the screen on, the charging current drops significantly. I don’t understand why.


1. When connected directly to the original charger, without any extension cables, the charging current stays at the same level—1.7 A—but the voltage rises, or rather, drops less because there’s no extension cable.
2. After 30 minutes, the charge level reaches 61%.
3. After an hour, it’s already at 99%.
4. Another 10 minutes and the phone is effectively charged. I’m judging by the drop in current here, not the charge indicator, which showed it was full much earlier.


Even at full power, I didn’t notice significant heating in either the phone or the charger. The smartphone’s low temperature rise suggests the charger is efficient and the battery is decent quality.


Next, as usual, I’d take the phone apart and measure the battery capacity. But this time I hit a real snag: I couldn’t disassemble it. Unfortunately, I don’t repair phones, so I don’t have the kind of teardown experience that repair technicians do. I’ve had a similar case before, but eventually I managed to take that phone apart. Here, the most I could do was create a microscopic gap between the case and the front panel.
There are a couple of small screws on the bottom edge. I modified one of my screwdrivers (they’re star-shaped, about T-3) and removed them, but that made absolutely no difference. The fit is so precise that I got the impression the phone was assembled first, then all the parts were sanded down “in place.”
If anyone knows how to take it apart properly, let me know and I’ll give it a try. I just can’t bring myself to break a perfectly good phone.

In the end, I had to run the tests in a way I really don’t like: using indirect methods. So let me warn you right away: none of the figures I show below should be taken as definitive; they’re only approximate. My thoughts on the battery capacity are mostly theoretical, with only some practical basis in the results of previous tests.

So, Because the phone uses a DC-DC charging converter, the higher the input voltage, the more the measured capacity will differ from the actual capacity. This is hardly an issue with smartphones that can only charge at 5 V; they usually use a linear charger. Capacity was measured while charging, which isn't entirely accurate. The only thing I could do was connect the phone through an extension cable to reduce the voltage, and keep the phone switched off while charging to minimize the error.

1. I discharge the phone completely, connect it to the charger through the USB tester familiar to my readers, and reset the tester.
2. After 3 hours and 40 minutes, the phone showed 99% charge, and the tester had counted 2870 mAh.
3. A minute later, it reported that the phone was fully charged. But since I know charging actually continues after that, I left it connected.
4. After another 20 minutes, the charging current had dropped so low that the tester stopped counting (below 200–250 mA), having registered almost 3000 mAh.

We know that this tester's capacity measurement error is about 20%, so let's subtract that "extra" 20% from 3000. That gives us 2500 mAh. But the tester underreports at 600 mA, displaying 550 mA instead (in the photo below, it showed 560 mA), so we can safely add 10% back. That gives us not 2500, but 2750 mAh.

Of course, most people will say the battery has less capacity than claimed. Maybe, but I'm not done with the calculations.

We know the phone uses a switching charger, not a linear one, so even with a difference between 4.2 and 4.9 V, it usually keeps working, and the current after the converter is slightly higher than before it (a characteristic of step-down converters). I think the difference is at least 5–10%. Let's say it's just 5%; that means the result isn't 2750, but a perfectly plausible 2800–2850 mAh. Also, let's not forget that mobile devices always keep a small reserve for themselves, roughly 2–20%. Even if we assume just 2%, that brings us to 2850–2900 mAh, not 2800–2850. But since the battery has its own efficiency losses and power consumption, even if small, the actual figure is closer to 2800.
The claimed capacity was 2800 mAh, so I believe it, and I've done my best to prove it mathematically.


Now I'll move on to the software and tests. I should warn you that this section will be quite long, mostly because of the quirks of the software itself.
First, it asked me to grant access through Facebook. Later, I found out that the phone has downright paranoid settings for controlling everything. You'll be asked whether an app can access your location the first time you launch it; apps are checked for viruses during installation, and you'll be asked to confirm that you're sure. I'll show you all this later. But for the average user, I'd say this is actually more of a plus.
Next, you'll land on the home screen. It looks quite different from most Chinese smartphones, though it did remind me somewhat of the Leagoo M5; the interface really does have a lot in common with it.

The selection of apps is a little different from what we're used to. For example, it comes with Instagram, a weather app, and so on.


The phone runs CoolUI, with Android 5.1.1 underneath. As far as I know, there won't be another version. But I'll get ahead of myself a little: there really isn't any need for one.
It has 64 GB of flash storage, with about 54 GB available to the user. I think 4 GB of RAM should be enough for quite a while, since phones with less memory are still doing just fine.


There are no software updates, and by the looks of it, there won't be any. There is a user support app, though. Honestly, I haven't tried it; it's there, and that's that :)


The wallpaper-changing feature is implemented in a very original way. There's an animated button on the left with a funny little face. Tap it, and the face winks, the wallpaper changes, and you're prompted to simply shake the phone to change it again. If you shake it too vigorously, it responds with a message: "Don't keep shaking it" :)


Some apps are tucked away in a separate submenu, and there's a second submenu with system utilities.
Swipe down on the screen to open the standard quick-access menu.


To enter home screen customization mode, just press and hold anywhere on an empty part of the screen. This opens the settings at the bottom.
You can change page transition effects, set the wallpaper, sort app icons, and more.


Personally, I prefer this more neutral look.


It also comes with a very handy weather widget. It can display the weather in the top menu, too, and tapping it opens the weather app, where you can check both the current conditions and the forecast. The app really is beautiful. It even changes the images depending on the time of day and includes a little animation.


The “two spaces” feature deserves a mention of its own. In effect, you get two phones in one. There’s a little key icon in the bottom right; tap it to switch to the second account, if you can call it that. It has the same home screen and the same basic apps.


But in reality, the two spaces work completely independently. For example, you can install an app and it will appear only in this “space,” not in the main one. You can lock access to it, essentially giving you two phones: one shared and one private, each with its own set of apps.
The second screenshot shows the second account, and the third shows the first. You can see that Speedtest is installed in one but not the other, so apps are installed independently.


There’s also a very handy file manager. One pane shows all the files, while the other switches to the standard file access view—whichever you prefer.
I mentioned security earlier. It’s implemented reasonably well, though some of the options have rather confusing names, which completely stumped me at first. When you install an app, the phone asks, “Remove this app?” with Cancel and OK buttons. To install it, you have to tap OK. That takes you to the app installation screen, which is a little illogical.


There’s also an anti-theft app, though in my opinion it’s pretty much pointless.


A little more about the preinstalled apps.
There’s a compass, Instagram, and the app mentioned above for managing the two home spaces.



Next, I’ll move on to the settings. There are plenty of them too, including some I haven’t come across before.
1. The main settings menu has the familiar look of Android 5.
2. Select the SIM slot to use for 4G/LTE.
3. Settings for managing incoming and outgoing calls.


There are also settings for limiting data usage. This isn’t critical for Wi-Fi, but it can matter for mobile data. A friend who uses a Samsung asked me about this just recently, complaining that he couldn’t figure out how to set it up.


1, 2. Settings for the private space—or, more precisely, the second account. I demonstrated this feature above.
3. Standard display settings.


1. Here’s the menu I mentioned when discussing the charging speed tests. You can access it from the battery settings or from the main screen when a charger is connected. By the way, here’s a quote from another review where the author also tested these modes:
“The Coolpad Max (A8) supports fast charging in two modes: ‘fast charging’ and ‘smart charging.’ The first charges the battery from 0 to 100% in 55 minutes, while the second takes just 1:15. Of course, fast charging heats the device up more (there’s a warning when you select this mode), but it’s the one the manufacturer recommends for charging the smartphone.”

Though in my case, I didn’t notice any extra heat.
2. Notification LED settings.
3. The power-saving settings and information about the battery and its usage. By the way, all the battery life tests were done with power-saving mode turned off.


GPS and location settings, as well as app permission controls—the latter can come in handy.


1. Another handy feature: control over which apps launch automatically.
2. Manage notifications from each installed app.
3. And this is something I’ve definitely never seen before. It’s basically a simple scheduler for operating modes, but what a name: Zen Mode.
By the way, I want to point out that almost all the software is translated, not just the main parts, as is often the case with completely no-name devices. For example, menu items and settings that appear in English on other phones are translated here. Honestly, you can tell the manufacturer put work into this phone. It’s a pleasure to use.


1. As I said near the very beginning, even though it uses a virtual keyboard, there are enough settings to make it comfortable to use. It reminded me of one phone that also had a virtual keyboard, but not only did it have just one mode, it was mirrored too. That would have killed me :)
2. The C button. A handy feature: you can open the notifications menu with a simple tap instead of swiping down from the top. In some situations, it can make the phone noticeably easier to use.
3. /Additional display settings. I’d like to highlight the enhanced touch sensitivity mode. It’s useful if you use your phone while wearing gloves. There are also some more standard extra features.


Just an addition to everything I showed above.


Developer menu, with lots of settings. Actually, no—an awful lot.



Now we can move on to the tests. I think this will end up being shorter than the phone software overview :)
CPU-Z.
Of all the information shown, the only thing I can really point out is the absolutely crazy number of sensors detected. Though it’s probably recognizing one complex sensor as several, it still looks monstrous.


I don’t see any point in including all the AIDA64 screenshots, since they’d essentially duplicate the information from CPU-Z. So I’ll just show what I find more interesting.
The phone has two cameras, 13 and 5 megapixels, but I can’t say for sure what their actual resolution is.
I was surprised by the number of sensors in CPU-Z, and it’s much the same here—but with temperature sensors. Where are all these coming from?


Since we’re talking about the various sensors, it makes sense to show them.
There’s quite a large set of sensors. In addition to the standard ones, there’s a magnetic field sensor and a gyroscope. This is the second phone I’ve come across with this kind of sensor lineup; the first was a UMIdigi.
I’d also like to note the high sensitivity of the proximity sensor: it triggers at a distance of about 3 cm.
In my opinion, the light sensor readings are about half those of the other phones I’ve tested.


1. A gyroscope is quite unusual in phones in this price range. I haven’t tried it, but in theory it should work with virtual reality goggles, which is a plus.
2. The touchscreen was a bit disappointing, though: it supports only four touch points. That’s more than enough for most uses, but even budget phones like the Gretel now come with 10-point touchscreens.
3. RAM and especially flash memory performance were very impressive: up to 196 MB/s read and up to 130 MB/s write is quite good. Even using the worst results, 103/67, it’s still solid.


Now for some performance tests.
As always, AnTuTu comes first, and the results are somewhat unusual. I can understand the relatively low performance in versions 5.2 and 6.1, which is on par with the MTK6753, but the significant jump in version 6.2 is puzzling. The MTK6753 scored 37750, while this phone scored 43358, even though results in versions 6.1 and 6.2 are usually almost identical.


Since I’ve started comparing the MTK processor with the one in the phone under review, I’ll continue with the Geekbench test.
.
MTK6753 - Snapdragon 617
Version 3.
635/3002 - 750/2672

Version 4.
615/2633/1473 - 701/1721/1595.

According to the tests, the phone under review performs better in the single-core test, but falls noticeably behind in the multi-core test. Though I didn’t notice this at all in everyday use.


Two 3DMark tests, ES 3.1 and ES 3.0, plus the PCMark test.
The results are as follows:
MTK6753 - Snapdragon 617
3DMark ES 3.1
210 - 373

PCMark.
4379 - 4235.

So despite its lower overall performance, the phone under review delivers one and a half times the 3D graphics performance.


I couldn’t get Epic Citadel to run, so here’s the Bonsai Benchmark instead.
Although it scored higher than the MTK6753 in 3DMark, the opposite is true here: 2368 and 33.8 fps versus 3264 and 46.6 fps for the MTK6753. Strange.


I already tried to determine the capacity of the built-in battery; now I’ll show the battery life test results.
Geekbench tests at both maximum and minimum screen brightness, plus an additional PCMark test at minimum brightness. Although the battery has a small capacity, the results are pretty good.


The discharge graph is almost linear, with a slight taper at the very end, so you can estimate the remaining runtime fairly accurately.


Next was supposed to be a test of how long it could play a movie, but it turned out that its built-in support for various codecs isn't very good, and my test movie wouldn't play.


I had to use another movie that the hardware could decode. The only downside was that its resolution was 1280x720 rather than 1920x1080. Brightness was set to 50%, and in this mode the device ran for just over 10 hours.


As you'd expect from a smartphone in this price range, it supports the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band. It connects at 150 Mbps even at the greatest distance my apartment allows.


But data transfer speeds drop almost to zero at a long distance.
Here are the test results under my usual conditions:
1. Almost 12 m away
2. Two concrete walls in between, no line of sight, about 6–7 m away
3. In the room next to the router, with only partial line of sight.
4. Two meters from the router, with line of sight.

The speed varied with distance from the access point, on the 2.4 GHz band.


The 5 GHz band. Speeds are noticeably higher here, but drop almost to zero at a long distance, although the connection doesn't drop.


The phone supports GPS and GLONASS navigation, but I was surprised when it also picked up Chinese satellites. I hadn't really thought before about there being other navigation systems.


For the test, I went out into an open field (literally) and walked toward the houses.
In the field, the smartphone detected between 14 and 29 satellites, the best result I've ever seen.


The track, however, is a little "unusual".
1. Overall view.
2. The section where the road runs under dense foliage.
3. The section near the houses.

My only complaint is about the wooded area, but honestly, I expected more consistent results, since the Vernee Thor E, for example, did a much better job in the same spot.


A brief aside: while copying screenshots and photos, I connected the smartphone to my computer and found something else I hadn't seen before. The phone shows up as both a flash drive and a disk.


The disk contains an autorun file and a driver installer. I didn't need the drivers, but it's a pretty convenient setup.
No, there's nothing unusual about this in itself; I've seen it many times on other devices, but this is the first time I've seen it on a phone.


And, as usual, I'll finish with a camera test. I didn't test the front camera, focusing instead on the rear one, since that's the one used most often. But first, a brief overview of the camera features.
Besides the standard mode, there are several additional ones.
1. The "beauty" mode is, in my opinion, completely pointless.
2, 3. The "Pro" mode, on the other hand, can be quite useful, as it gives you access to a wide range of settings.


1. In "Video" mode, the phone records at 1920x1080. At first, I assumed, as usual, that autofocus wouldn't work in this mode, and even tried recording a test video. But later I found that autofocus does work; it's just completely silent, and you don't really notice it unless you pay close attention. So that's a plus: Full HD with autofocus. Video is recorded in H264, and the output file has an mp4 extension.
2. There's a low-light shooting mode. It works, but much like it does on many other budget devices.
3. And here's a rather unusual mode. To be honest, I didn't notice any difference, but it's supposed to produce a photo comparable to one from a cheap DSLR. After you take the picture, processing takes a few more seconds, then the finished file is ready. The resolution is the same, but for some reason the file is about 20–25% smaller.


A little more about the camera's additional modes and settings.


First, a classic comparison with the Vernee Thor, which my regular readers already know and which, in my opinion, has a pretty good camera. At least few of the smartphones I've reviewed have taken better photos than this one.

I had to resize the photos because the site doesn't accept full-size images. The full-size photos are available at this link.









The camera takes pretty decent photos during the day, but things get noticeably worse in the evening, with no sharpness to speak of.


But I did discover something interesting. First, the camera's field of view is wider than that of the Vernee Thor, for example. Second, when taking a panorama, you can capture more than 360 degrees—something I hadn't managed to do before.


I also took a photo of a printed sheet and tried some macro shots.


The macro shots are reasonably good, but the minimum focusing distance is around 8-9 cm, which is a bit much.
By the way, I also found that the camera is pretty quick. I could easily take more than one shot per second. The filename gets _1 appended to the usual photo name, indicating the second shot taken that second.


A crop from the full-size image.


To round things out and give you a better idea, here's a video review. I don't know who made it, but it's pretty good.



Here's a brief summary.
Pros.
Convenient, sturdy design
High-quality display panel
Fast battery charging
Excellent package contents
5 GHz Wi-Fi
Well-polished software and a convenient manufacturer skin.
A pretty decent camera.
Autofocus while recording video.
Good sound
A large number of sensors
Option to increase touchscreen sensitivity.
Notification LED
Two workspaces.

Cons
Low battery capacity.
Hybrid SIM card slot
Poor photo quality in low light
Low Wi-Fi sensitivity
GPS accuracy isn't very good
No oleophobic coating.
Weak hardware video decoding support.

My take: weighing the pros and cons, I liked the phone. The convenient interface is a pleasure to use, it's snappy, and you won't feel like throwing it as far away from you as possible—it's genuinely enjoyable to use. The body may seem large and awkward at first, but it isn't; it sits in your hand like a glove.
As you can see from the list above, there are more pros than cons, and that's genuinely the case. But there is a fly in the ointment. The first and most significant issue is the battery capacity. In everyday use (calls, video, internet), it lasts all day, but gaming is out of the question—the phone drains very quickly in that mode. The second drawback is the hybrid slot, though with 64 GB of built-in storage, that's not such a big deal.
You could also point out that performance is on par with the same old, tiresome MTK6753, but based on my real-world experience, I can say that the phone I'm reviewing here performs noticeably better.

In my opinion, if the manufacturer had fitted a battery about one and a half times larger and optimized the video decoder, I'd say this phone needed nothing else, since the remaining drawbacks aren't all that significant.

That's all. I hope you found the review useful, and I apologize in advance for its length—I got carried away.