The Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 is one of the four smartphones in Cosmos line from Cherry Mobile. It somewhat resembles the Cosmos X in terms of specs but with an interesting feature for a local-branded phone, its internal 16GB storage plus a microSD slot. Certainly useful for those who want to install a lot of apps/games on their phones.
Read on with our review to see how this phone fares as a whole.
Design
To the untrained eye, the Cosmos X2 can easily be mistaken for a Galaxy phone with its subtle rounded corners, thin chrome lining, all-glass front broken by the lone physical button at the bottom of the display. That sure looks like a Samsung phone right? Just from the front that is.
The front is protected by Gorilla Glass 2 with a notification LED indicator on top of its 4.8-inch display beside the 5-megapixel camera. On each side of the Home button are two capacitive touch buttons for Menu and Back which lights up when in use.
On its side there are tiny slanted volume control buttons on the left and the angled Power/Sleep button on the right. On top is the 3.5mm audio jack while the microUSB port is at the bottom.
Turn it over on its back is the usual glossy removable back panel with the COSMOS text at the center and the Cherry Mobile logo at the bottom. Center top is the slightly-protruding 18-megapixel lens with the LED flash below it. There’s a tiny speaker grill near the lower right corner at the back. Pry the back panel open and you’ll see the battery, the microSD slot, and the slots for your two regular SIM cards (one HSPA+ capable) on top of each other.
Handling the Cosmos X2 feels good with just the right width to reach buttons on the farther edge with your thumb. The Volume control buttons are a bit tricky to familiarize though maybe because of its size or its shape. What I find really odd here is that the Power button can easily be triggered while the phone is in my pocket. I would end up getting weird messages on my draft, icons messed up, and even date and time settings changed when the phone spent a long time in my pocket. Is it that sensitive? Or maybe it’s just my unit?
Display and UI
Just like the Cosmos X, the Cosmos X2 has a Super AMOLED HD display. With a 4.8-inch screen, it boasts of a respectable 306 ppi pixel density. You’ll get vibrant colors, deep contrast and sharp picture quality. Viewing under sunlight is not that good but it’s serviceable. Wish it could get brighter though.
The phone runs on Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean and is not as heavily skinned as the Cosmos X. You’ll get your usual Android icons, transitions, and app drawer behavior.
A couple of cool features Cherry Mobile added is the Smart Stay which pauses a video when it detects you looking away from the screen, and Smart Call which automatically calls a contact whose message or details are displayed onscreen when you put the phone on your ear. It also comes with a software update app which allows for OTA updates.
Performance
Running the show for the Cosmos X2 is the same 1.2GHz quad-core MTK processor as that of the Cosmos X. You’ll also get 1GB RAM plus the aforementioned 16GB internal storage. Actually, only 11.7GB is available for your media storage while 1.97GB is reserved for internal storage which includes your system files.
Going with synthetic benchmarks, it scored higher than the Cosmos X on both Quadrant and Antutu, but not by much.
Quadrant score is almost 4k at 3997
Antutu gave is a score of 13,544, not bad at all
Real world usage, navigation is relatively smooth. Basic apps like alarm clock, browser, and messaging launch rather quickly. Although it took a bit before the names on my messages are reflected on screen despite not having that much messages.
Casual games like Candy Crush are ok but run Injustice: Gods Among Us on it will give you a lengthy wait on load screens and that occasional stuttering during fights as you progress in your game. Video files played smoothly including HD MKV ones so no concerns there.
Camera
Like the Cosmos X, the Cosmos X2 has an 18-megapixel BSI camera with a LED flash to go with it. What’s lacking is the physical shutter button so you’ll have to make do with the on-screen button. The phone has the typical Jelly Bean camera app supporting touch-to-focus, HDR, panorama, multi-angle shot, beauty shot, and different color filters.
Here are some sample photos taken with the Cosmos X2.
Not bad at all especially if you’ll be shooting mostly under good lighting conditions and taking photos mainly for your Facebook or Instagram. Major smoothing is done to cover up noise but it’s not that visible unless you zoom in or have a lot of black areas in your shot. Bottomline, the camera is decent if you’re not discerning type when it comes to photos.
Battery
There’s a 2200mAh battery powering this device and with our daily use as a primary phone (without data) so there’s a lot of messaging and calls, some Facebook, browsing and YouTube over WiFi when at home, we found ourselves charging the Cosmos X2 every second evening. Not bad at all, but of course results may vary depending on your usage. We didn’t use it for gaming by the way.
Verdict
Overall, the Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 is a phone that starts off as your typical quad-core phone with an HD display. However, its built-in 16GB internal storage should appeal to those who want more space on their phone and are sick of the typical 4GB RAM-configured devices. But with more storage space comes a heavier price tag to the tune of P11,699 which is over a thousand pesos more than the Cosmos X and its limited space.
Cherry Mobile Cosmos X2 Specs: |
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4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD display, 1280 x 720, 306 ppi |
10-pt multi-touch screen, Corning Gorilla Glass 2 |
1.2GHz quad-core processor MediaTek MT6589 |
PowerVR SGX544 @ 286Mhz GPU |
1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, microSD slot up to 32GB |
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean |
18-megapixel rear camera with BSI sensor and LED flash |
1080p video recording @ 30fps |
5-megapixel front camera with BSI sensor |
3G/HSPA+ |
Bluetooth 4.0 |
FM Radio |
2200mAh Li-Ion battery |
SRP: Php11,699 (as of 7/2013) |
4 comments
much better if it has an expandable memory
Basahim mong maige
Paano magamit yun smart stay at smart call at saan makikita? Salamat
I bought a unit but I dont know where to find the smart stay and smart call setting.