Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie Review

Performance and Benchmarks

Rocking an MT6753 octa-core chipset clocked at 1.3GHz, the Flare Selfie is capable of a smooth performance throughout. Its generous 3GB of RAM is also helpful for multitasking and heavy gaming. There are virtually no hiccups and lags when navigating through the smartphone and even in-app performance is stable.

What we find to slack a bit is the fingerprint scanner on its back. While it’s in a perfect position for quick unlocking with your index finger, a little sweat or grease forbids the scanner to read our print. Nevertheless, if you have properly placed a clean finger, it’s quick to recognize and unlock. It can also read your print even when the display in on sleep mode.

We ran our benchmarks and they show the usual numbers for this price range.

3DMark – 187 (Sling Shot ES 3.1), 284 (Sling Shot ES 3.0)
Antutu Benchmark v6.0 – 37586
PCMark – 3848
Quadrant Standard – 23070
Vellamo – 1624 (Multicore), 1165 (Metal), 2923 (Chrome)

Call Quality and Connectivity

We made some quick calls with the Flare Selfie, and it’s been okay in our end. The earpiece is loud enough and the microphone does its job well. With its LTE radio, you can get some speedy data connection as long as it’s permitted by your network.

The GPS on-board takes some time to get a lock on our location. Bluetooth is also present, of course. It’s a well-connected phone with just NFC missing the bunch.

Battery Life

Beneath the sealed back cover is a 3000mAh Li-ion battery. And as expected, the Flare Selfie was able to score high on our battery tests. Using the PCMark battery benchmark test, it got rated at 9 hours and 35 minutes. As for our traditional video test, with zero volume and 50% brightness in airplane mode, it was able to last for about 10 hours.

The included travel charger in the package is a big 5V=1500mA which should charge the smartphone pretty quick but it’s not exactly fast charging.

Conclusion

Positioned as one of the Cherry Mobile’s best offerings for 2016, the Flare Selfie has the right to be on the top. It’s a packaged smartphone with a fingerprint scanner, 3GB RAM, and capable shooters. Throw in the long battery life it can give for power users, it’s certainly worth suggesting among the local crop of smartphones for just Php7,999USD 136INR 11,555EUR 130CNY 993.

Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie key specs:
5-inch HD IPS display, 294ppi
1.3GHz MediaTek MT6753 64-bit Octa-Core chipset
Mali-T720 GPU
3GB RAM
16GB internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
16MP rear AF BSI camera w/ LED flash
16MP front camera w/ LED flash
Dual-SIM
4G LTE, 3G HSPA+
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
Fingerprint scanner
Android 5.1 Lollipop
3,000mAh Li-ion battery
143.5 x 69.4 x 7.99mm

What we liked about it:

• Good build
• Great rear camera
• Long battery life

What we didn’t:

• Weak front flash
• Slow autofocus
• Non-removable battery