Released late last year, the Cherry Mobile Flare S4 Plus is one of its biggest Flares to date as it sports a 5.5-inch Full HD screen with 3GB RAM and a 16-megapixel rear camera. Is the most expensive Flare ready to take on the challenge of the price range it entered? We’ll take a look at that in this review.
Design and Construction
Cherry Mobile’s Flares are known to have polycarbonate builds, but the S4 Plus begs to differ with a more premium-looking design that can surely turn heads. The front of the smartphone has the display, the usual array of sensors, front camera, and call speaker grill on top, three fixed capacitive keys that do not illuminate, and a small hole intended for the microphone just right at the bottom edge.
On top of the device lays its 3.5mm audio port, while the bottom has the speaker grills and the microUSB port. Both sides have a pair of white strips that contribute to a better signal reception, given the aluminum chassis it has.
On the left side, you’ll be seeing two SIM slots that can be pried open using an ejector included in the package. The upper one has a nano-SIM and a microSD card hybrid tray, while the other tray is solely for a micro-SIM card. This leaves you at a choice to expand your storage at the expense of an additional SIM card connection. The right side houses the volume rockers and the power/lock key.
Flipping it onto its back comes the essential parts: the 16MP rear camera enclosed in a chrome frame, and its accompanying LED Flash. The back plastic plate is on the glossy (and smudge-heavy) side with hints of mineral glitter on it, which gives the phone a good shine. As always, there are the chrome-looking Flare and Cherry Mobile words stuck on the back cover, which looks like it may get removed over time.
The overall design on the biggest Flare yet tends to move away from its usual all-polycarbonate plating seen from previous iterations as it incorporated a metal frame that’s quite a scratch and smudge magnet. Because of this, the phone brings more heft compared to other 5.5-inch contemporaries. The small capacitive keys, too, could be an issue, especially to those with fat fingers. Take note that there’s no LED notification light, too, so you may miss a lot of notifications when you leave this phone on idle.
Nevertheless, The side button layout and the overall design of the device made it easy to be used by a single hand when being operated.
