Starmobile Play Max Hands-on, First Impressions

Here’s our first look at the recently-introduced Starmobile Play Max, an affordable device packing in a 4000mAh battery and modest internals at a sub-Php4k price.

The Play Max mixes its affair with polycarbonate and brushed metal finishes all over. Its corners are not too boxy, but not too curvy either. At the front is the 5-inch display presented with a decent amount of bezels at 67 percent screen-to-body ratio, along with the front call speaker, the proximity sensor, and the 5-megapixel rear camera accompanied by an LED flash. The buttons at the bottom are capacitive and do not emit light when in operation.

The side frames are chamfered in with accentuating edges that serve as the gap between the body and the removable back plate. At the right side, we have the volume rockers and the power/lock button located at the upper part. There’s also the gap for prying open the back plate located at the bottom. Its size is a bit chunky at around 9mm, but nevertheless is not a problem when holding.

At the top, we have the microUSB port  which sits right at the middle part, and the audio jack located beside it.

On the other hand, the microphone and the phone speakers are both located at the opposite side. The loudspeakers offer a unique symmetrical grill which is unusual, given that other phones offer a standard design when they are located at this part.

Flipping the device over, we have the polycarbonate back plate, donning a brushed metal finish which is great-looking. The 8MP rear camera is located at the upper-left corner, and below it is its dedicated dual LED flash. The Starmobile logo is subtly placed at the middle of the device.

Prying open the device are dedicated slots for two SIM cards and a microSD card. Standard packaging for the device comes with a free Smart Prepaid LTE SIM card, which we found inserted into the phone and already activated when we opened it.

Starmobile Play Max specs:
5-inch HD IPS display, 294ppi
1.3GHz Spreadtrum 7731G quad-core CPU
Mali-400MP2 GPU
1GB RAM
8GB internal storage
microSD card support
8MP AF rear camera w/ LED flash
5MP FF front camera w/ LED flash
Dual-SIM
3G HSPA+
WiFi
Bluetooth
GPS, A-GPS
FM Radio
4,000mAh battery
Android 6.0 Marshmallow
143.9 x 71.5 x 9.9mm
159g

The new battery beast device from Starmobile costs Php3,290 and is bundled with Smart SUPER PACK 600 (Smart Prepaid SIM with 100MB of FREE data every month for a year). Is it the power pack you need? We’re taking this for a spin and a review in the coming days.