Review smartphone Philips S308 (CTS308)
Introduction
The company Philips (for pedants write – China Electronic Corporation, because it is now owned by the mobile unit) issued to the Russian market two low-cost smartphone operating system Android. The first is called S388, to meet him soon, the second – S308. That is what we will survey.
Apparatus Philips S308 is a typical budget phone with a simple screen, low-power processor, the camera without autofocus and quite low battery. Nevertheless, in the price range up to 5000 rubles is not so much “androids” of popular brands, so take a closer look S308 still stands.
Design, size, controls
As a general rule, the cheaper the unit, the simplicity of his design (and sometimes vice versa, hello, “Samsung”). However, it is Philips (let’s call them so as CEC while to get used to hearing) try to show something original, even in the segment of budget phones. At least it’s not faceless pieces of plastic oval.
In general, the appearance of S308 is quite typical for most “androids”, but there are design “highlights”: upper bound of the device has a flat shape, the right and left corners slightly sloping, and the lower end of the round. As a result, again, in my opinion, on the one hand, the smartphone looks (almost literally) strictly, and with another – more relaxed. In his hand gadget is good due to compact size (126×64, 5×9, 7 mm), lightweight (125 grams) and smoothed the right and left ends.
Package Includes:
- Smartphone
- Storage battery
- USB-cable
- Headphones
- Network adapter
- Instruction manual
- Warranty Card
- Screen protector
Top plastic insert – glossy, the same type of “bottom” of the bottom. Border, stopping in at the side of the front panel to the sides and the bottom is made of a “soft touch” plastic, pleasant to the touch. Phone did not slip out of hands, even if they are wet. For sale are three colors: black, white and red.
Philips S308 with garbage all excellent, the unit feels monolithic, nothing creaks nowhere and did not play. Under compression – no crunches and groans. In general, a stiff upper lip keeps.
As for soiled body, everything is typical for any gadget coated “soft touch”: of course, fingerprints are visible, but not as noticeable as on a glossy cover. Screen also gets dirty, white coating remains, however finger glides over the surface without any problems. Scratches on displeychike not even left a couple of weeks of active use. Apparently, it is worth a solid glass.
Incidentally, the polyester is dyed and rear panels inside, i.e. if you accidentally scratch it, nothing terrible will happen: a soft-touch-coated the same black color.
On the front panel top center located earpiece covered with metal mesh. Its volume slightly below the average, the same clarity. In a noisy place interlocutor will be heard. Voice mostly midrange, so you hear a boom on. When switching sound in handsfree mode volume is insufficient to comfortably hear the conversation in the car or on the street. From a budget phone that was worth the wait.
To the left of the speaker – light sensors and proximity over them – an indicator of missed events. Right – front camera. Buttons at the bottom are typical OS devices Android. No lights, so at night, it may be difficult to click on the desired area of the sensor.
At the bottom end – the microphone on the top – microUSB and a standard 3.5 mm audio jack for headphones or a headset.
On the left side is the key-top volume rocker. It is small, convex, press convenient, easy groped. Power button, it also lock button and activate the backlight, – on the right side. It’s small, but convex.
The camera lens, recessed into the casing, flash and handsfree speaker – on the back side of the device.
Display
This smartphone uses a screen diagonal is only 4 inches. Physical size – 52h87 mm, resolution is typically low – 480×800 pixels (density – 233 pixels per inch). Matrix display Philips S308 is made not by IPS technology, so the viewing angles are very small, mediocre rendition.
On tilting the device itself, the display colors are inverted, from himself – has deteriorated sharply contrast. Backlight brightness matrix screen slightly above average: the image seen in the afternoon, but the sun still fade. Between the cover glass and the matrix layer of air is present.
Capacitive touch layer fulfills up to 2 simultaneous touches (“multitouch”). Sensitivity is good, no problems found. Backlight brightness matrix is adjusted either automatically or manually in a fairly wide range.
Battery
The development team of this device seems to have forgotten that they are well in hand to “eat” the energy of Android-based smartphone, so established here with ridiculous battery 1400 mAh. I propose to take away from “developers» iPhone 5S and give them the personal use of Philips S308, maybe then they will realize their mistake. The only thing that saves the day, so this is a weak processor and a simple screen.
The average operating time S308 – about 7 hours. I include here the functioning of the unit in 3G, infrequent calls, a couple of dozen photos on the camera and some other activity. If you use the machine as a video player, you expect about 3 hours at medium brightness and listening to the sound through the headphones.
Communication features
In this section, all typical of any Android-smartphone budget category. The device operates in networks 2G (GSM / GPRS / EDGE, 850/900/1800 MHz) and 3G (900/2100 MHz). Both slots can use the third generation, but the scheme 2G (SIM1) +3 G (SIM2) or 3G +2 G.
Available Bluetooth version 3.0 for file transfer and speech. There is wireless Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11 b / g / n. The apparatus may naturally be employed as an access point (Wi-Fi Hotspot) or modem.
There are GPS. Its sensitivity is quite good: in “cold” mode for 20 seconds is up to 3 satellites indoors near a window for 10 seconds – up to 5 satellites, the open space in the same time – up to 8.
Memory and memory card
Like most such devices, S308 is equipped with 512 MB of RAM. On average, slightly more than 200 free MB. Flash memory 4GB, but is available, as always, is much smaller: 1 “gig” went to install applications, and 1.2 GB – storage.
There is a slot for memory cards microSD. Its maximum volume can be 32 GB.
Camera
The smartphone is equipped with two camera modules: the main 5 megapixel without autofocus, front, too, without focus, 0.3 MP. There is an outbreak, but its effectiveness is reduced to zero, when it comes to photos at a distance of more than 30 centimeters.
The picture quality of a corresponding camera used in cell phones cheap: poor detail, dynamic range, behavior in direct sunlight. The only thing that pleases – the white balance.
Video device writes in the resolution 864h480 pixels at 30 frames per second. The picture is not bad, but it was felt that the lens does not have the focus – sharpness is poor. The sound is clear, but mono.
The front facing camera makes pictures in the resolution of 480×640 pixels, video recording in the same resolution.
Feature video:
- File Format: 3GP
- Video Codec: MPEG-4, 8 Mbit / s
- Resolution: 864 x 480, 30 k / s
- Audio Codec: AAC, 128 kbit / s
- Channels: 1 channel, 48 kHz
Performance and software platform
Of course, it is worth chipset from the Taiwanese manufacturer MediaTek. Chip called MT6572 – are two core ARM Cortex-A7 (28 nm process technology) to 1 GHz. Graphic core – Mali-400 (500 MHz).
Phone no load behaves relatively briskly, but as soon as you try to load it with something, even banal download an application from Play Market, it begins to slow down the smartphone: animation freezes, the problem is almost not switch and so on.
Toys are almost all, but, of course, should not rely on heavy “Gama” with full graphics.
Brief information and performance tests (Quadrant Standart, Antutu Benchmark):
Philips S308 smartphone running Google Android operating system version 4.2.2. The developers decided to change the design of the “bare” system, so almost all the icons have been redrawn. Personally, I like this design, somewhat reminiscent iOS8 and future Android L. More are no changes, all typical of any machine to “Andryukha.”
Multimedia
The device installed standard music and video player, radio.
The speaker volume is slightly above average, the quality is good: even tapped clear treble, low transmitted worse. When closing holes Speaker volume is reduced to virtually zero.
The headphone volume is high, the distortion is not heard, it sounds great player. Perhaps not enough deep bass and more expressive high.
The video player is able to “play» FullHD videos, but often emerge artifacts. Therefore it is best to restrict video to 720p.
Conclusion
At the time of writing smartphone Philips S308 costs about 4000 rubles, without any problems and can be found cheaper. For my money machine was quite decent. Of course, on all sides, “compressed” a little more interesting offers from other B and C-brands, but in this case there is at least familiar to many name Philips. If you do not care what brand to buy, you should look at the following gadgets: Explay Vega, Fly IQ4416 ERA Life 5, Alcatel One Touch X’POP , Huawei ASCEND Y300, Micromax A69 Bolt, ZOPO ZP580.
Pluses Philips S308:
- Reasonable price
- Brand awareness
- Two cameras
- Relatively good performance
- Quality assembly
- Nice design
Cons Philips S308:
- Quiet earpiece
- Low quality matrix screen
- Low battery life