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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
116 Comments
View All Comments
nathanddrews - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
This review wins the "glod metal".protomech - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Pedantry:"with the first SIM for 3G/4G requiring a full-sized SIM card and the second microSIM for 2G (basic data/SMS)"
It looks like the first SIM slot is a mini-SIM slot. There's actually a non-mini SIM card, which is about as large as as credit card. It was introduced first, but it was replaced by the mini-SIM before most people (including me) started to use cell phones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscriber_identity_...
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
You are correct sir!leexgx - Monday, March 14, 2016 - link
little update been using the phone for 3 months now nearly and works brilliantly get 2 days normal use or 1 day if using TomTom Go for 8-9 hours screen on timeanother Note You can Use 3G and 4G in Both sim slots, just not at the same time
the sim with active data enabled has 3G and 4G access the sim with data off only gets 2G, ( when you enable data on the other sim the phone disconnects both sims and flips the radios around to the opposite sim and enables 3G and 4G on the sim with data enabled)
voice on loud speaker seems to not be reliable, but i use Bluetooth so does not bother me
leexgx - Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - link
well i got the phone and its impressive for just £110first day full charge i got 2 days of use out of it (8 hours of Screen On Time, not 15 hours but i had over 3 hours of google navigating so 8 hours is outstanding, as navigation uses mobile data, GPS and screen, GPS is norm especially a power hog, the phone did not even get hot)
second charge seems to be longer, 1 day 25% battey drop (phone is saying 4 days approx remaining, i expect it to be 2 due to my useage) charge time is very slow thought (something like 4 hours but not sure when i started charging it, but that's fine due to how long phone lasts)
battery drop is something like 1% every 10 or more ish minutes when watching 720p video
speed wise everything seems responsive spec wise it should be slower then my M7 but seems more snappy, and it seems that they also made sure that the OS knows its a 5.5in phone(needs a new ROM installing on it as i just reset the phone and there is no google apps installed on the phone) not fully used to having a 5.5in phone thought but battery life is very nice
protomech - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
(woops, meant to be a top-level reply)Ikepuska - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Seriously though, the original SIM card was just a particular Smart Card. Which is still using the Credit Card form factor.leexgx - Thursday, December 24, 2015 - link
as well as gold award, it comes in gold as wellRobalov - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Bought a similar knock off phone from Amazon before, battery Amazing, and typical use of the phone was fine.Camera was laughable, but the killer was the call quality. Unusable to make phone calls.
I bought a bluetooth headset to temporarily get round the issue, but eventually the phone starting falling to pieces, with Bluetooth failing 50% of the time.
With no mention of call quality here, I can't see this being any different. I hope to see an update in 6 months, with this phone in the bin.
No free lunch, as they say.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
> With no mention of call quality hereThird page: "Phone call connection quality is also good, despite the fact that I live in an area that seems to have lead paint in the walls."