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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jjj - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Retail price vs cost is the easiest way to measure and the point is that ratio is much much better with some Chinese phones while Apple is pretty much the worse. You can get a Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 that has a retail price close to cost or a Nexus at about 2x, the iphone is at 4x or worse.The reported margins are slightly misleading but not getting into that here. As for costs after the factory's gate, that's not exactly the buyers problem if a device maker chooses to be less efficient than others.
Daniel Egger - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
3 letters from me: LOL. The requirements and expectations driving this article are a solid start but give it a few more years and even journalists will become sane.Anywhoo: My last pre-smartphone phone (Nokia 6310i) regularly lasted north of 3 weeks. My current Moto E (2015) with its small 2390mAh battery typically lasts 9 or 10 days in my usage pattern which is the first smartphone since I'm using smartphones which I find acceptable in that regard since I stored my trusty Nokia in the drawer. I'm certainly not going to accept any less for any successor.
yannigr2 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
It is amazing what the Chinese companies offer in the smartphone market. It is also amazing how much time it took most western tech sites to start exploring those devices.If you don't need the best of the best in every category, there is no reason today to spend more than 100-150 euros/dollars/pounds for a dual sim smartphone with one of the latest versions of Android and a pretty nice IPS screen.
pSupaNova - Sunday, December 27, 2015 - link
Not only smartphones but tablets too.Chinese manufacturers look like they are going through the same path as the Japanese in electronic goods.
First the cheap copies then the real innovations.
Can Anandtech start reviewing their Windows and Android tablets?
Yaldabaoth - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
"The 16GB storage model is pretty basic, and the microSD compatibility is only at 32GB, rather than something bigger, and I know it will fill over time with the consistent photographing of my cats."More pictures of Summer and Cici, please.
KPOM - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
I take it you rarely travel to the US, Ian? That phone is practically useless even for voice here. It doesn't support any US 3G band (much less LTE). AT&T and T-Mobile are rapidly turning off their 2G networks to make room for LTE. They expect to be finished on January 1, 2017.yannigr2 - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
This is not planet USA.Pissedoffyouth - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
Who cares if it doesn't work in the USA? Don't buy itbeggerking@yahoo.com - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
every gsm phone work in USA.most works with 3/4g as well.
some works with LTE (only because we SUCK and STUPID and use different band than the rest of the world).
KPOM - Wednesday, December 23, 2015 - link
@beggerking, on January 1, 2017, AT&T plans to turn off its 2G GSM network. The phone in question does not support AT&T or T-Mobile's 3GSM bands. As for LTE, apart from the iPhone 6S there aren't many "universal" LTE phones out there (and even that isn't universal), since China, Australia, the US, South America, the EU, etc. all use different bands. It's a matter of available spectrum. Heck, each of the carriers in the US use different LTE bands.