O+ 360 Unboxed, First Impressions

In a very huge smartphone market where prices are going by the cheap and competition is getting more cutthroat by the day, brands and manufacturers always find ways to be ahead of the others and serve innovations that can be considered theirs. O+ wants to do that by capitalizing on a back touch technology with their new 360 smartphone.

Well, this new smartphone does have a great packaging box; it reminds me of PC software boxes that we usually encounter back then. For its price range, I rarely see any brand put an effort to put up a box of this kind. It may not be as compact as the others, but it is well-built.

A fabric tab reveals the phone on top of the contents, wrapped in plastic. Lying underneath are three boxes that contain other phone basics. The rather odd color combination on the headset and the microUSB cord makes me think that they’re designed for a smartphone aimed at kids than a serious-looking smartphone such as this.

This phone package is quite generous, by the way. It has its own screen protector and a 4GB microSD card, things that you rarely see in a newly purchased box of a smartphone. The upper left item, two transparent circular stickers of some sort, leave me wondering how to use them.

Its five-inch display is well-lit to be used. The screen doesn’t offer any resistance to scratches, hence the screen protector freebie. The buttons are placed on both sides of the phone just like any other Android smartphone. The volume rockers are on the left side, while the power/lock button is on the right. Both are done in a chrome finish, and stand out from the rest of the whole hardware along with the speaker grill at the front and the rear camera accent. The headphone and microUSB jacks are placed on top of the device.

At the back of the device, we have the speaker at the bottom, and the 8-megapixel camera with a chrome accent that protrudes a bit from the body. You can’t place the smartphone evenly on a flat surface because of that, and I’m worried that the camera glass might suffer some scratches because of it. The polycarbonate back plate in a matte finish, available in dark blue or black, is a fingerprint magnet.

Upon opening the back portion of the device, this is where O+ laid its magic trick upon: a small square trackpad that is utilized by a connecting sensor which transmits the scroll gestures and taps from the back plate.

O+ 360 specs:
5.0-inch IPS Display, 540 x 960 Pixels, 220 ppi
Mediatek MT6582 Chipset
1.3GHz Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU
ARM Mali-400 MP2 GPU
8GB Internal Storage
Expandable up to 32GB via MicroSD
1GB of RAM
8.0 Megapixel Autofocus rear camera with LED Flash
5.0 Megapixel front camera
Dual SIM/Dual Standby
3G
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS with A-GPS
FM Radio
Rear Touch Panel
Android 4.4.2 Kitkat OS
2,000mAh Li-On Battery

This new smartphone from O+ retails for Php6,395USD 109INR 9,238EUR 104CNY 794. Is the rear touch feature actually beneficial or just plain gimmick? We’ll find that out as we check this phone and use it for a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for our full review.