This is the second LTE smartphone released by CM after the W900 LTE in December last year. While the W900 did not get so much attention, the Ultra, with its new look, thin body, replaceable battery and a real LTE that works is something that deserves your budget.
The 5-inch with HD IPS display of Ultra is one of the models that fits exactly in your hands. Its not too big or too small to handle.
The physical look reminds me of Blackberry Z10 or the HTC One.
CM Ultra was launch a month ago and it is now available in stores. The LTE really works, and I have used it several times as Wi-Fi hotspot without any trouble. It served me at least 5 hours of work time just depending on the ULTRA LTE as my mobile router.
Build and Quality
It doesn’t look like cheap at all. With the while and black combination, the curved back design and the location of the buttons — power button on the right, volume rocker on the left, 3.55-audio port on top and micro-USB at the bottom looks perfectly fine with me. Although, I want it better if they put the audio port and the microUSB port together in one place. But that did not affect the performance of the phone, nonetheless.
I am a fan of removable battery on smartphones. This is because when the time comes that you will have battery problem, you can just buy from your supplier. Same with the CM Ultra, the 2,00mAH battery is replaceable. But you have to tweak the settings for it to last a day with data turned on.
Performance.
There are only few considerations for me when I use a smartphone — camera, battery, and speed. With a little tweaking, the ULTRA LTE battery stayed with me at least 6 hours of data turned on, or 10 hours with Wi-Fi on only. The secret — turn of your GPS. By default this is turned on, and if you keep it that way, your ULTA will die within 4 hours.
The 13MP camera mounted with the CM Ultra takes really good photos, but requires an image stabilizing arms. It takes about five seconds to focus so make your hands real steady or you will surely get a blurry photo and you don’t like that. But if you learn to take photos slowly but surely, you will get stunning photos. So there, you can’t rely with ULTRA in speed shooting.
Antutu gave a high score of 16,633 which is a good indicator that ULTRA LTE will be a good buy considering the really affordable price tag.
I only encountered one camera error that forced me to restart the phone. I had encountered this error when I was reviewing the M1 from Kata.
Samples, samples!
I took several photos and you decide if its ok with you. As a photographer, I shoot with my own settings but you know that smarpthones has limited settings to customize. Ultra for one has only one setting you can adjust — the exposure setting of the camera. You have to apply at least +1 or you will get a dimmer photo.
Here are the samples.
Blurry pix goes like this if you don’t have a steady hand.
But it gets this really nice photo if you patiently hold your camera for five seconds.
On a well-lighted environment, you will get this kind of picture. Very clear!
But if you are unlucky, on a setting like this with no photography lights on. And with a large LED at the back of your subject, your only wish is you have your DSLR in your bag.
The selfie camera did not disappoint the author though. Selfie is good!
UPDATE: I took the CM Ultra last night to an event and took some photos again. I was surprised to see this super sharp and clear photos. Again, I have to be patient on the 5 second focus delay. But photos were great. I tweaked the settings – adjusted the exposure to -1.
You might be disappointed with the audio recording with the Ultra. Sound is not solid, but the quality the video like the color is nice.
Conclusion.
A product that has been studied well by the brand. Cherry Mobile knows how to position their products. While the LTE smartphones of the top brands has sky high pricing, CM Ultra LTE is only sold at P8,990. It has what you need plus, LTE really works here.
Aside from the minor points I discussed like the slow autofocus, distorted audio recording in the video, over all the ULTRA LTE is a real nice phone. It has been my default phone for the last four weeks and I did not complain.
Oh, the capacitive buttons where kind of slow to react too. You have to touch it few times before it learns that you want to use them.
Photo Gallery of the CM Ultra LTE.
Cherry Mobile Ultra LTE Specs.
- 1.2GHz Qualcomm MSM8926 Snapdragon 400 Processor
- Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS
- 5 Inch HD IPS Display @ 720 x 1280 Pixels or 294 PPI
- Adreno 305 GPU @ 450 MHz
- 13 MP AF Main Camera with LED Flash and BSI Sensor
- 2 MP Front Camera
- 1GB of RAM
- 8GB Internal Storage, expandable up to 32GB via MicroSD
- Single microSIM
- 4G LTE
- Wi-Fi & Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS
- FM Radio, Micro USB, 3.5mm Audio Jack
- 2,000 mAh Li-ion Battery
CM ULTRA is now available for only P8,990. Good job, Cherry Mobile!
