Disney Mobile Smartphone Review

One of the fruits of Globe’s partnership with Disney is a branded smartphone offered exclusively under the telecom’s postpaid plans. With its design and theme, it’s mainly targeted towards the youth and youth-at-heart. Here’s our review of the Disney Mobile smartphone.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

Up front is the display topped with smooth glass although we can’t confirm which of the popular scratch-resistant type is used here. The earpiece, sensors, and 5MP front-facing camera are in its usual place on the top. The bottom bezel has three capacitive navigation keys that have backlighting (thankfully).

On the right are the power/lock button and volume rocker while the left side is bare. The chrome lining on the sides gives the phone a bit of sophisticated touch.

Up top is where both the micro-USB and 3.5mm jack are located. The bottom is devoid of any ports but the pinhole for the main microphone is conveniently sitting there.

Going to the back will show a bit of love in design rather than the usual plain boring plastic shell. The main 13MP camera module and its LED flash are located at the center-top part with a secondary microphone beside them. The speaker grille is near the bottom while a shiny Disney Mobile branding sits just above it.

The panel has a smooth and matte finish to it. Dirt is quite tricky to avoid but it gets off easily. The whole device also feel a bit premium despite the plastic construction.

Display and Multimedia

The handset is equipped with a 5-inch IPS LCD packing a resolution of 1280×720 pixels. The HD resolution gives a fairly decent 294ppi density enough for casual phone users which is most likely the target of Globe with this device. It’s got wide viewing angles, pleasing color reproduction, and good overall quality. It’s not specified on the listing but the device seems to have a scratch-resistant glass on top of the panel.

There’s a loudspeaker positioned at the back of the phone and which can be a disadvantage as it can get easily muffled when placed on a soft surface. Quality-wise, it’s just fine with low bass yet clear highs good for loud ringtones. It can easily fill up a small room with volume cranked up. Also, there’s FM Radio for free listening.

OS, Apps, and UI

The already dated Android 5.1 Lollipop runs on the handset with minimal tweaks to the icons and a number of exclusive wallpapers — both live and static — to Disney-fy the UI. While it’s cute to have Disney-themed images, the use of Mickey Mouse’s iconic symbol is quite redundant.

A few Disney applications are pre-loaded as well including Disney PH app, Disney alarm, and a couple of Disney games. Of course, Globe threw in their own namely GServices and GCash.

To be honest, we expected the implementation of Disney on the device to be better than what it’s actually is. While it’s lively, the overall look of the UI is cluttered due to the colorful icons and contrasting detailed wallpapers.

Camera

The primary rear camera has a 13-megapixel sensor with autofocus lens and a single LED flash. For selfies, there’s a 5-megapixel shooter up front. We like the UI of the camera launcher as it is clean and friendly. There are shortcuts to quick settings to its left while the right side is where the shutter button, mode switch, and preview are placed.

When previewed on the phone, the stills captured look really good although checking them on PC will show a bit of excessive  sharpening done through software enhancements. Also, purple fringing and excessive glare from sunlight is present. Just check out the samples below to see it for yourself. As for the front-facing camera, it’s got a pretty slow shutter causing your selfie to come out with blur especially when you already have shaky hands.

The issue of fringing and glare is also found in videos. While maximum recording resolution is at 1080p with various frame rate option (there’s even a slow and high frame rate), the overall quality of the video is greatly affected by the uncontrollable exposure. Here’s a sample:

Performance and Benchmarks

What’s powering the handset is the trusty Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 with four cores clocked at 1.2GHz and an Adreno 306 GPU. There’s an ample 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The setup pretty much sits the device in the lower mid-range segment.

As always with similar devices, general performance is good with smooth transition and productive multi-tasking. It’s not exactly a powerhouse or a even higher mid-range device, but gaming is fine with medium to high settings. Of course, 2D arcade Disney games runs well without any hiccups.

We did our usual benchmark test to get some objective results:
* AnTuTu Benchmark v6.1.4 — 27388
* PCMark — 3420 (Work)
* Vellamo — 1961 (Browser), 886 (Metal), 1472 (Multicore)
* Quadrant Standard — 14445
* 3DMark — 52 (Sling Shot ES 3.0)
* Nenamark 2 — 53.8fps

Call Quality and Connectivity

Doing voice calls with is generally good thanks to the phone’s loud earpiece and there’s a couple of microphones on-board to help lessen noise during conversations.

Offered with a bundled data plan, there’s 4G LTE coupled with the usual suspects like Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and GPS w/ A-GPS support. The GPS took about a minute to set a lock-on with clear skies above.

Battery Life

The device is powered by a 2,100mAh removable battery. It’s pretty small for today’s standards but a casual user will be able to squeeze in a full day of use. With our traditional battery loop test, it was able to last for 7 hours and 9 minutes. That’s about enough for a number of episodes to binge watch.

As with PCMark’s battery test, it scored 5 hours and 30 minutes. That said, there’s really not much to expect from the battery department so better bring a power bank with this phone.

Conclusion

With its decent specs, fancy Disney-themed content, and lively colorful UI, the Disney Mobile smartphone offered exclusively by Globe through their postpaid plan is mainly for Disney fans and those who wanted something different from the usual offerings. Its camera issues, and short battery life is not exactly something the masses would be excited about especially if it is offered with a 24-month contract.

To check out the complete listing of available Disney Mobile and plans, head over to Globe’s landing page here.

Disney Mobile smartphone specifications:
5-inch IPS LCD @ 1280 x 720 pixels
1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor
Adreno 306
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
Expandable via microSD, up to 32GB
13-megapixel autofocus rear camera w/ LED flash
5-megapixel front-facing camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
FM Radio
GPS w/ A-GPS
2100mAh Li-ion removable battery
Android 5.1 Lollipop

What we liked about it:

• Good build and design
• Quality display
• Exclusive Disney contents

What we didn’t:

• Subpar cameras
• Short battery life
• No prepaid option