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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Mondozai - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Other than the complaint about a bit more technical and more thorough testing of call quality, I do greatly appreciate this review(glod medal!).I thought Ian was an entertaining and detailed writer who went through his daily routines into a lot of depth and adapted the review after it. I also appreciate AT doing these kinds of reviews instead of just the ultra-high end.
I have an imported Lenovo K3 Note and it's stunning to me that people pay 3-4X of what I paid for a phone which is better but only marginally so for real world use.
KUTGW, Ian, I hope this is just the beginning of some more unorthodox reviews from you :)
failquail - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Nice to see there is finally starting to be some options for those of us who like sane battery life in a phone...My past two phones have had 3rd-party XL battery replacements because that was the only way to get a high capacity phone (currently a Galaxy S3 with a 4600MaH battery replacing the stock 2100MaH one) without resorting to fiddly charging banks/cases.
The general industry obsession with phone thinness and the move to fixed-battery designs which makes these XL battery replacements impossible was starting to really concern me. But perhaps things are coming around finally.
fanofanand - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Fantastic review Ian, I thought you explained what it was like living with this phone extremely well. My Nexus 5 is nearing it's death (screen is delaminated etc.) and only gets about 2 1/2 hours of SOT, so I am slowly and sadly perusing what's out there. Nothing has seemed overly compelling, and I'm a bit of a tightwad with phones too so reviews like this are pure gold to me. Keep up the great work!Cold Fussion - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
We must different opinions on what is considered satisfactory quality for publication. The quality of photos out of that camera are absolutely abysmal, this is what I would expect from a 2002 point and shoot camera. In 2015 when quality cameras are so unbelievably inexpensive I find it unacceptable that a publication that prides itself on the quality of its content would have such low quality media.Ian Cutress - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
Wait what? I'm confused as to your comment.For AT's photos in general, you'll notice that our photos are all resized to 575px with med-high jpg compression to reduce bandwidth when viewing with a slow connection, and you click through for the full image. AnandTech has been this way for at least five years.
For the images coming out of the H1 itself, they are what they are and I really don't know what you're getting at. I'm not going to change the images coming out of the device I'm testing - that would skew the results.
Cold Fussion - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
It's in regards to the images coming from the H1 were you said they were acceptable for publication (the photos from the super computing conference). Obviously changing the images coming out of the camera to showcase what the camera of would be unethical/fraudulent.Having looked at the photos you posted from the H1 (in the biggest sized offered from the gallery mode), I wouldn't consider it an acceptable imaging device for publications. The images look akin to hand holding a vaseline covered lens in front of a camera, with poor noise and colour to boot. When a full frame DSLR can be had for less than $300, or any number of mirrorless cameras, it would be disappointing to see future publications be utilising images from the camera in the H1
Ian Cutress - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link
Ah yes, I see what you mean now. For print publication, I'd agree with you. For our 575px images, they're OK for that at least. When you go deeper into detail, it doesn't have the clarity I agree. There were a number of SC15 pictures I couldn't make out the details on some PCB images, purely because of a lack of finer detail. But that's part of the parcel for this phone; for photos for print publication or detail, I carrying around a decent point and shoot or DSLR.blzd - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
I thoroughly enjoyed your review. Also nice to see some lesser known devices get the AT treatment even if it's not quite as in depth as we're used to.As for the H1, it appears the performance is not much of an upgrade to the One Max and the camera appears to be a downgrade compared to your (now ancient) GS2.
I hate the idea of "downgrading" anything when I buy a new device but objectively, most of our devices are complete over kill for the software they're running.
mkozakewich - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
You should mention that it's MicroSDHC. If you remember, SD went to 2 GB, SDHC went to 32 GB, and SDXC should go up to 2 TB. It seems weird that everyone spends so much time wondering about maximum sizes when we've got those three monikers.Coup27 - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
I know it's more than you wanted to pay but you can get a Sony Z3 sim free for £300 with a nice 1080p screen, 3GB of RAM, 801, waterproofing, stereo speakers, micro SD and 3 days of battery life for moderate use and some cool ultra power saving modes for when you're in the sh!t.I've had one since they came out and hands down the best Android phone I've seen or used.