The CUBOT H1 Smartphone Test: A Month with 3-4 Days of Battery per Charge
by Ian Cutress on December 23, 2015 9:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Battery
- CUBOT
Benchmarks
It seems somewhat silly to run performance benchmarks when most media outlets talk about high performance smartphones most of the time, but my point to consider is my old phone, and whether moving from quad core Krait 300 at 1.7GHz to a MediaTek quad core A53 chipset at 1.0 GHz but running a newer Android is better or worse. For some of the regular smartphone tests I don’t actually own the prerequisite hardware of our smartphone team, but here are some tests I was able to run, and the devices I had to hand at the time:
| Devices on Hand for Testing | |
| Cubot H1 | MediaTek 6735P |
| HTC Desire 610 | Snapdragon 400 |
| HTC One Max | Snapdragon 600 |
| Huawei Mate S | Kirin 935 |
| Huawei Nexus 6P | Snapdragon 810 |
| Google Nexus 7 2013 | Snapdragon S4Pro |
| Amazon Fire HD 6 (Limited) | MediaTek MT8135 |
| OnePlus X | Snapdragon 801 |
When we talk about Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 400 family or Intel's partnership with Rockchip partnership for Sofia and Atom, it makes me somewhat sad we don't have many new data points to compare to the MediaTek MT6735P inside the Cubot H1. However the one benchmark were all interested in is the battery life:
So let's put it this way - the H1 on a full charge breaks the Geekbench3 test to the point that it thinks you are cheating. Oops.
With the PCMark test it gets over 15hrs compared to the 6hrs of the Galaxy S6. When you have a large battery and not many pixels to push, with the right efficiency the device will last a night out with only 25% left in the tank in the way that high end smartphones do not. Anecdotally, as I'm writing this, I just spent a few hours in meetings across the other side of London - I spent 30 minutes each way on the tube with Evernote open and being used (albeit with no wireless or updates), and the battery went down from 38% to 33%. That's an hour of solid writing with black text on white for at most 5% of battery.
Initial use, first battery run down and more aggressive use
When I first started using the H1, the graph on the left was my battery usage estimation. Saying ‘approximiately 4 days left’ is almost unheard of, but with a regular 10% screen on time, the result was the graph in the middle, successfully predicting four days of battery. On the right is another example of my use, although a little bit more aggressive with some charging. Yes, I can confirm that there seems to be something wrong with those percentage calculations. But a quick charge in airplane mode for a few minutes gives a few percentage points of battery – while a lot of smartphones offer quick charging for the capacity to fill quickly, it still depends on the capacity drain of the SoC. It helps to have the best of both worlds. Of course, the downside of this is that it can take 3hrs and up to fully charge the H1. The H1 does come with a cable so you can charge other devices though, as 5200 mAh matches some battery packs.
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Ethos Evoss - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link
And nobody from here commentary ppl will buy thisjabber - Monday, December 28, 2015 - link
I have the LG G4 and run it totally stock. If you don't use it like a Gameboy and interact with people like a normal human being you can get 2-3 days+ out of it easy.I don't get folks who can spend 5+ hours a day looking at their phone. Get a job, some friends or a real hobby!
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, December 29, 2015 - link
If I put my LG G2 into airplane mode and stuff it into a drawer, I can get several weeks out of a single battery charge.Why spend money on something you won't use? What's the point of having a 1440p screen if you never use it? If all you need is something to make voice calls on ... then why spend the money on a G4? You'd get better service out of a flip phone ... and better battery life to boot.
I don't get folks who spend $500+ CDN on a flagship smartphone ... and then never use it for anything but voice calls.
adriangb - Tuesday, December 29, 2015 - link
Very nice review. I suffer every day from my phone's (OnePlus 2) battery life, and while I think the industry has realized this is a major problem now (hopefully Qualcomm's 820 will aid in this respect), for now larger batteries are a nice solution.I would GLADLY drop $400 on a phone with a large battery/efficient SOC combo that gets me 5h+ SOT, granted the camera, screen and software stack up to the likes of $300 phones like OnePlus and Moto's. If anyone knows of this mythical device, please chime in.
phoenix_rizzen - Tuesday, December 29, 2015 - link
LG G2. You can still pick them up new, and they're only around $200 US. So long as you aren't a heavy gamer, gettting 5+ hours of SoT is easy. I've cross the 7 hour mark using mine for mostly Facebook and Kindle/Kobo reading.Although, now that the battery is 2 years old, I tend to only get 3 hours of SoT (I also do a lot more gaming and less reading on my phone these days).
JimmiG - Friday, January 8, 2016 - link
I didn't manage to get more than ~4h of SoT with my LG G2. Still better than most smartphones I've used. My current OnePlus One tops out at around 3h 30m. The best one was probably my Galaxy S3 with the original Samsung extended battery.Battery life will definitely be a top priority when I buy a new phone the next time.
Badelhas - Tuesday, December 29, 2015 - link
Great budget option indeed. But what is the OS version on this smarphone?p51d007 - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link
I've been using a Huawei Ascend Mate2 for the past 1 1/2 years. SD400, 6.1" screen, 4,050mAH battery. 2-3 days per charge. I'm not a gamer, but I do a lot of phone, web, text, mp3's, video etc.It's screen is sharp & clear, snappy, no lag. Best $300 I spent in a long time, and now it has an even better price.
ktkps - Thursday, December 31, 2015 - link
What about comparison with lenovo Vibe P1?Mugur - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link
For the same amount of money I would probably went with a Lumia 640 XL... Anyway, nice review from Ian. I like those "down to Earth" reviews, although, in this case I feel than the phone is a downgrade from a One Max (with the exception of the battery life - but Max also has an above average battery life). BTW, One Max has 2 GB/16 GB or 2 GB/32 GB, so it must be a mistake from Ian's part when he said something about 1 GB...I'm also a big fan of battery life and dual SIM (although I went last August from a Sony Xperia T2 Ultra Dual to a Samsung S6 Dual :-) ). Sony's 6" 720p screen was great and battery life was 3-3.5 days for me always - what killed the experience for me was its 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage...
I spent a couple of months last year looking for the same thing Ian was searching for and I took into consideration a lot of factors and reviews. I only went with an S6 dual SIM because I wasn't able to find something like the T2 Ultra I had but with 2-3 GB of RAM, 16/32 GB of flash and (upgradeable to) Android 5.1.1. Note 5 or Edge+ dual SIM weren't available at that time (and when they were, the price in my country were 30% or more over that of the S6 dual SIM - not to mention that I payed for the S6 more that I was planning initially to spend on a phone).
All in all, I believe that there are a lot of other (better) options in my opinion, that what Ian choose. Probably a bit more expensive, but not by much.