Cherry Mobile Flare S5 Power Hands-on, First Impressions

Among the new Cherry Mobile handsets that were just announced, one of them is made to last longer on a full charge than your usual smartphone. With a 6050mAh battery built in, it poses itself to be a road warrior’s companion. Here’s our initial impression of the Flare S5 Power.

The Flare S5 Power shares the common trait of the rest of the series with its 5.5-inch display but with an LTPS panel. It has a Full HD resolution which is higher than competing large-battery phones with lower 720p panels. A 5MP front-facing camera is positioned above the display.

The frame of the handset is made out of aluminum and its cold feel on the hands gives the Flare S5 Power a premium touch. The volume rocker and power/lock button are on the right side with an additional shortcut button for the camera. This leaves the hybrid card tray on the left side of the phone.

The 3.5mm headphone jack and an IR blaster (a rather unusual feat from Cherry) are both on top of the phone.

The bottom end is the home of the microUSB port for charging and wired connectivity plus the microphone. A couple of antenna bands are also found here.

The back panel is non-removable thus sealing the large battery. The main camera is a 13MP unit with a dual-LED flash to help in low-light scenarios. The speaker grille is at the lower end of the rear panel.

The handset is powered by a 1.3GHz MediaTek 6753 octa-core processor with a Mali-T720 GPU. Memory is at 3GB while storage is 16GB, but expandable via a microSD card up to 64GB. It’s got LTE Band 28 or more popular known as the 700MHz onboard to take advantage of the new frequency used by telcos.

Performance has been generally good but the main feature should be the battery life. We can’t tell how long exactly this phone will last on a single charge yet, but we estimate that it can last for more than a day. In addition, it also supports fast-charging with a fast charger included in the package.

Cherry Mobile Flare S5 Power specs:
5.5-inch LTPS LCD @ 1920 x 1080 pixels
1.3GHz MediaTek 6753 octa-core processor
Mali T720 GPU
3GB RAM
16GB internal storage
Expandable via microSD, up to 64GB
16-megapixel BSI PDAF rear camera w/ LED flash
5-megapixel front camera
Dual SIM
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11ab/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
Light Sensor, Proximity Sensor, G-Sensor
Fingerprint Sensor
GPS w/ A-GPS
6050mAh removable battery
Android 6.0 Marshmallow

That’s about it for the Flare S5 Power for now. If you’re planning on getting one, you can avail this for Php7,999USD 136INR 11,555EUR 130CNY 993 which is about the same price as the new Zenfone 3 Max, but with a smaller battery.