Reviews

Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie Hands-on Review

Published

October 31, 2017

Daniel Morial

Cherry Mobile has just launched its latest Flare S6 series. One of its members is the Flare S6 Selfie, which is a selfie-centric Android smartphone that’s priced competitively.

As a budget phone, how does it fare? Is the selfie camera any good? We have the answers for you.

The front is generic with a physical home button and fingerprint reader

The display measures 5.2 inches and is really sharp

The selfie camera is accompanied by a dedicated soft LED flash

No secondary sensor unlike other selfie phones

On top is the audio port while power and volume buttons are on the side

You gotta have the 3.5mm port or else…

It has a USB-C at the bottom

A reversible port on a budget phone. Rejoice!

The metal back feels great, but the rear camera is prone to scratches

The camera hump worries me a bit

Its design is simple and just okay

One of the trade-offs of a lower-end phone is a blunt aesthetic, but the Flare S6 Selfie isn’t that bad. The rear is metal with the top and bottom portions being plastic for the radio reception. Our unit doesn’t provide that unibody vibe due to the minor gaps between the metal plate and plastic block.

The phone won’t win any design awards, that’s for sure, but I appreciate its understated looks. One of the key factors that gives the phone a pass in looks is its Full HD display. It’s sharp and well saturated, but it’s got some weird auto-adjustment issue when viewing photos in the gallery and it’s not exclusive to my review unit. We already forwarded the concern to Cherry Mobile, and we hope it gets fixed soon.

How does it perform?

The handset is powered by the popular chipset of MediaTek, namely the MT6750T, paired with an ample 3GB of memory. Storage-wise, it only has 16GB of space, which might not enough to store all your apps and selfies. This means you’ll have to put in a microSD card.

We already encountered the Flare S6 Selfie’s chipset on other budget phones in the market, and suffice to say, it holds up pretty well. It gives enough power to let users enjoy the latest apps, but it’s so-so when it comes to gaming. We encountered a few app crashes, but no major issues with overall performance.

Android 7.0 Nougat is loaded on the handset with the new Cherry OS skin. The theme doesn’t veer away from stock Android, but it has playful iconography and colorful themes. A few security and social apps are preloaded, too, saving you a trip to the Play Store.

The front camera takes sharp selfies!

Both the front and rear of the Flare S6 Selfie sport 16-megapixel sensors with their own LED flash. We’re told that both sensors are from Samsung and have an aperture of f/2.0. The sensor is not exactly the latest, but having it in the front makes it a good selfie shooter.

Overall, photos turn out good even when viewed on a larger display. In bright environments, the highlights get blown out to prioritize the exposure of the subject. Even the HDR mode doesn’t help in this regard. The photos also lean on the warm side and are artificially sharpened to make them look crisp.

There are a number of modes available in the camera launcher including beauty and bokeh. Beauty mode applies whitening and smoothing filters on faces, while bokeh gives a blur effect to the background. Since the phone only has single cameras on the front and back, the blur effect is a hit or miss.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

For PhP 7,999 (US$ 155), the Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie offers a lot. It has a sharp 1080p display, ample memory (the storage is pretty low, though), and two quality cameras to play with. The use of USB-C is also a nice addition to bring the new standard port to the budget segment.

Of course, it’s not without caveats. For one, we’re not a fan of its physical home button that’s difficult to press, and we encountered a few issues with the display’s color quality. We’re told that Cherry Mobile is ironing out the quirks before the final retail units hit store shelves.

[irp posts=”22862″ name=”24 Hours in Ayutthaya with the Cherry Mobile Flare S6 Selfie”]

Laptops

Apple M2 Max MacBook Pro 16-inch Review: Four months later

Insanely Powerful!

Published

June 5, 2023

GadgetMatch

Apple silently revealed the revamped M2 Pro and M2 Max-powered MacBook Pros just last January 2023.

While the design isn’t any different from its predecessors, it promises significant boosts in performance.

However, this isn’t meant for those who already owned the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pros launched in 2021.

Spoiler alert: This is a huge upgrade from the 16-inch Intel Core i9 MacBook Pro from 2019.

But would you compromise the portability of the 14-inch version over a bigger screen and battery?

Watch our review of the new M2 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro, four months later.

Features

How well do PlayStation games run on the ROG Ally?

Spoiler: Pretty good

Published

May 29, 2023

Rodneil Quiteles

The ROG Ally has caused quite a buzz in the gaming community at large. Personally, I’m thrilled at the prospect of owning a handheld gaming PC/console to play games I otherwise would not have access to. I mainly play on my PlayStation 5 (PS5). Naturally, I was curious how some of my favorite games will run on the ROG Ally.

Things are promising on paper. The ROG Ally is built to be able to run AAA titles. Here’s a quick look at the specs of the unit we had for recap:

Model	RC71L
CPU	AMD Ryzen™ Z1 Extreme Processor 4nm Zen 4/ 8 core & 16 threads 24M cache CPU Clock: up to 5.10 Ghz TDP: 9 – 30 watts
GPU	With AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme Config: AMD Radeon™ Graphics RDNA3 & 4G RAM capacity / 8.6 TFlops 12 CU GPU Clock: 2.7GHz
Panel	Full HD (1920 x 1080), 120 Hz / 7 ms eDP1.4b, 500 nits, IPS-panel, 100% sRGB, FreeSync™ Premium, Gorilla® Glass Victus™ and Gorilla® Glass DXC, 10-point Touchscreen Gyro support
Memory	16GB (LPDDR5 6400Mhz) dual channel LPDDR5 8GBx2 on board memory
Audio	2 x 1W speakers with smart amp technology, Dolby Atmos®, Hi-Res Audio, AI Noise Cancellation
Wi-Fi / Bluetooth	WiFi 6E (802.11ax) / Bluetooth® v5.2
Storage	512GB (for Z1 Extreme config) +SD card slot UHS-2
I/O PORT	ROG XG Mobile interface (8PCI express lanes) and USB Type-C combo port (with USB 3.2 Gen2, DP 1.4 support) — (1x) 3.5mm Audio jack — (1x) Micro SD slot (UHS-II, Micro SD 4.0) — (1x)
Battery	40Wh
Adapter	65W PD adapter, supports pass through charging
Dimensions	280.44 * 111.18 * 21.22 mm 608g

PlayStation Studios on PC

PlayStation, in the past couple of years, has decided to spread the love and let PC players experience some of the best they have to offer. Currently, there are 12 PlayStation exclusive titles playable on PC. And they’re available on either Steam or the Epic Games Store.

In case you’re curious the available games are as follows:

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
God of War (2018)
Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection
Destiny 2: Lightfall
Horizon: Zero Dawn
Returnal
Days Gone
HELLDIVERS
Predator Hunting Grounds
Sackboy: A big Adventure
The Last of Us Part 1

PlayStation Asia was kind enough to give us codes for three of the 12 titles now available on PC. Here’s how they ran on the ROG Ally.

Quick note: I played on Performance mode with brightness hovering at around 50-55% indoors in an air conditioned room.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered

Marvel’s Spider-Man, along with NBA 2K, is my comfort game. Whenever I feel frustrated or just having a bad day, I fire up either game. On Spider-Man, I just swing aimlessly around the digital Manhattan that Insomniac built.

It was such a delight to learn that I can do this on the go now too with Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered playing pretty darn well on the ROG Ally.

I had the framerate limiter turned on, maxing out at 60. Despite that, I only reached a max of 31 fps with dips to as low as 15. It looks bad on paper, but is much more tolerable during actual gameplay. The dips usually happened during cutscenes. Majority of the gameplay hovered around 25-30 fps.

I knew it was never gonna reach the level of detail and smoothness that I get on the PS5 and LG C2 combo that I usually play on. There was plenty of noticeable stuttering especially during the busier sections of the game. But I didn’t think any of it was game breaking.

Audio wasn’t as loud as I hoped it would be despite me playing in a pretty quiet room. I opted to pair it with Bluetooth earbuds (OnePlus Buds Pro 2) to get the most of the audio. There were no audio delays whatsoever which was a very welcome development.

My average play time was about one hour and 20 minutes. That’s with the battery going from 100% to 20% each time.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Coming from the same Studio and pretty much being essentially the same game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales didn’t run too differently from Spider-Man Remastered.

I played in the exact same conditions: Indoor room, AC on, started at 100%, performance mode, and medium brightness settings. Curiously, the frame dips happened more during open-world swinging and not as much during cutscenes. This could be because of the busier version of New York due to the events of the game being set during the Christmas season.

But the numbers weren’t too different. I still maxed at 31 fps, with most of the gameplay hovering around 25-30 fps, and the lowest dip coming in at 16fps.

Again, nothing game breaking and it is much more tolerable during gameplay. Naturally, you have to have your expectations set properly. The ROG Ally is, after all, a handheld gaming PC.

Average play time is around one hour and 25 minutes with about 75% to 80% of the battery life being consumed.

Returnal

Returnal is one of the titles I was most excited to try. I was curious about how the audio and controller rumble would translate to the ROG Ally. On the PS5, Audio and DualSense implementation are two of the game’s many strengths.

Due to audio cues on enemies’ locations, this game is best played with earbuds/headphones on. The experience on the ROG Ally isn’t quite 3D Audio on PS5 levels, but it’s as close as it gets.

The same can be said for the controller rumble. It’s not as precise nor finely implemented as the DualSense – that’s a unique feature after all. However, I was still thoroughly impressed with how the ROG Ally implemented rumble in certain sections of the game. The rumble effect is also a testament to how well-built the Ally is. Despite the internals shaking, the Ally never felt brittle nor that it would suddenly come apart.

Knowing this is a shooter game, I turned the framerate limiter off and reached highs of 115 fps. The framerate did dip to as low as 15 fps which is about the widest variance I got from any game I played using the Ally. This did affect gameplay especially during sections where I had to deal with multiple enemies.

I did experience plenty of crashes which isn’t ideal for a game like Returnal whose progress relies on you surviving as long as you can on a single run through. But this only happened during the first few minutes. After a while, it seemed like the ROG Ally had adjusted to the performance-demands of the game.

It took about an hour and 10 minutes before I had to plug-in the Ally to not lose a playthrough.

Remote Play?

Since the ROG Ally is essentially a handheld gaming PC, you can certainly install the Remote Play app on it. However, you can’t just immediately use the gamepad. To play Horizon: Forbidden West, and generally just run the app, I had to pair the Ally with my DualSense controller.

You can map the gamepad so that it works but mapping isn’t an activity I enjoy nor did I have the time (I had to return the review unit) to do it. Other reviewers pointed to using a third-party app called Chiaki. But again, I didn’t have time to test it. I did see gameplay of it though so it seems to be working just fine.

Knowing that you can do all these on the Ally actually makes you question the upcoming PlayStation Q handheld. Sure, the integration will likely be seamless. But its core function can already be replicated on other handhelds and handheld-like devices. I digress.

It’s worth noting that the relatively smooth experience I had with the ROG Ally was also aided by an internet connection that constantly hovers in the 250+ mbps range along with a Wi-Fi 6 router.

The ROG Ally is PlayStation friendly

If you want to know what it’s like playing PlayStation 5 games on a handheld device, the ROG Ally is easily one of the best devices to play with. The gameplay isn’t quite as smooth but you shouldn’t expect it to be. And yes, you’ll find yourself reaching for the power adapter after a little over an hour of playthrough. But being able to play AAA titles on a handheld device still feels crazy to me.

Having started gaming on a family computer and covering tech for a living, it’s still mind-blowing to me how far technology has come. The stuff I only dreamed of as a little fat gamer is coming true thanks to the ROG Ally and its contemporaries.

The ROG Ally Z1 Extreme retails for US$ 699. The ROG Ally Z1 variant retails for US$ 599. Pre-orders begin on May 11. It will be available for sale worldwide on June 13, 2023.