DTC GT5 Astroid Plus first impressions

If you frequent malls, chances are you’ve seen DTC booths offering a wide range of affordable mobile phones for sale. One of their offerings is the dual-SIM Android-bearing Astroid Plus. Lets go hands-on and find out what this phone can offer.

astroid_1

The Astroid Plus’s design was obviously inspired by the iPhone 3G because of its curved corners and glossy backside. Its front houses the 3.5-inch HVGA LCD display, the earpiece, and three capacitive buttons. On the right is the power/lock button while on the left is the volume rocker.

astroid_ps

Located right on top is the microUSB port and headset jack. Found at the bottom is the microphone. Flip it on its back and you’ll find the speaker grill and the 2 megapixel camera with a ring design similar to the HTC One X. Even though its entire body is made of plastic it feels solid, and is comfortable to hold due to its small size.

astroid_rear

The Astroid Plus’s display has a resolution of 320 x 480 with a quality similar to the Lenovo A60+ and the Starmoble Bright. It will suffice for basic use such as browsing the web and social media sites but expect limited viewing angles, poor sunlight legibility, and some pixelation.

Astroid

The Astroid Plus runs Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread out of the box. DTC did not heavily customize the UI but they did pre-install some themes and widgets. A lot of apps come pre-installed as well such as basic Google Apps, Angry Birds, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, Google Play Books, themes and wallpapers. Sounds like a treat but these pre-installed apps are considered as system apps and can’t be uninstalled or moved to a microSD card storage.

astroidplus_lowmem1

When Google Play Store downloaded updates for these apps, the Astroid Plus kept on bugging me that the phone’s memory is too low, that I should remove some apps, and force close some running applications. When I gave the phone a reboot it suddenly got stuck in a boot loop and won’t even start. Good thing I was able to do a hard reset and got the phone to boot again but I’m still getting the low phone storage issue after updating the second time. We informed DTC about this issue we’re experiencing and they were kind enough to send us a new unit. Unfortunately, the replacement unit also suffers from the same low memory problem.

astroidplus_lowmem2

At this point the GT5 Astroid Plus is a bit disappointing. DTC should have kept it free from pre-installed apps since it only has 127MB of usable internal memory. If it weren’t for the memory issues, the DTC GT5 Astroid Plus could have been a very capable Android phone for its price.

astroid_dtc

DTC GT5 Astroid Plus specs:
Dual SIM / Dual Standby
3.5-inch HVGA (320×480) capacitive display
1GHz MediaTek MT6515 processor
PowerVR SGX531 GPU
256MB RAM
512MB of internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
2MP fixed-focus camera
Bluetooth v2.0 / WiFi 802.11b/g / WiFi Hotspot
GPS with A-GPS support
1,500mAh battery
114 x 61 x 13mm
110g
Php2,999 (SRP)

Diangson Louie

This article was written by Louie Diangson, Managing Editor of YugaTech. You can follow him at @John_Louie.

https://www.yugatech.com

8 Comments

ligra says:

11 years ago

please upload good backup or pac file for dtc gt5s
- Reply
louie says:

11 years ago

bakit yung dtc gt5s ko kapag naka wifi ako seconds lng ayaw na magconnect sometimes tumatagal nmn ang connection pero nalalaglag din pls help to yhis issue wifi problem….y
tnx….
- Reply
deo says:

11 years ago

Hi, ok nasana etong androidphone ko, is that the problem pag tumatawag ako the screen is keep on flashing even na ako ang tintawagan di’ ko tuloy makita kung cno ang tumatawag. paano ko maiaayos yon, call display nya.
- Reply
Evrijay says:

12 years ago

hi. could you help me. bakit po ayaw mag download ng mga apps. using google play. laging nag e-error. ano po dapat gawin? Please help.
- Reply
BernarDroid says:

12 years ago

Parang ganun ang problema as aking Galaxy Y q kaya d na aq bibili ng mga mababang ROM. Talo ng Galaxy Y dpat aq bibili ng Galaxy pocket pero tamang-tama lng pagka ang ROM ay 1GB lng
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frenchy says:

12 years ago

Rooting ang katapat niyan para malipat ang ibang apps sa SD card storage. Yung lang RAM talaga bagsak. But for those who really have low budget, ok na yan for having android experience. Magkakaron pa ng reason para magsikap para makabili ng mas magandang phone.
- Reply
Luis says:

12 years ago

AKA. This device is unusable if a person wishes to install additional apps.

What a let down from DTC. They shouldn’t have requested for a review after all.

Just so companies know, just because you’re offering cheap Android phones, doesn’t mean you can compromise on quality.
- Reply
cheftonio says:

12 years ago

What’s the quadrant benchmark score? :)
- Reply

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