Cherry Mobile G1 Watch Phone first impressions

Barely 4 days before Christmas when Cherry Mobile officially announced that the Cherry Mobile G1 Watch Phone. We wanted to purchase a unit in SM North EDSA but, when we arrived there, we we’re disappointed as all the units were pre-sold already.

Due to the increasing interest in wearable tech, a lot of users became curious about this locally-branded watch phone primarily because of its call functionality and affordable price. Now that we have purchased one, here’s our initial impression of the device.

Official Packaging

Upon opening the box, you will be greeted with its standard packaging which includes the charger and unit. Since the G1 doesn’t have a 3.5mm headset jack, Cherry Mobile was generous enough to bundle it with a Bluetooth headset. Keep in mind the unique charger for the Bluetooth headset that is similar to Nokia Phones.

The watch phone looks like a kid’s watch or a watch with calculator because of its color and design. The build of the strap is fully made of rubber and the smartphone is made of solid plastic. The watch feels light where it’s around 60 grams in weight so it doesn’t feel heavy when worn. The screen is a 1.44” TFT LCD with a resolution of 128×128 pixels; nothing impressive compared to the OLED displays of other smartwatches but sufficient enough for personal viewing of the display.

Upon opening the back cover you will see the 400mAh battery, of course given the size they can only fit that much capacity. We will see how the battery will perform in full review of the device.

Inside are two sim slots and a micro-SD slot which can go up to 8GBin capacity. We learned though that the phone doesn’t have an internal storage so you will really need a micro-SD for your multimedia content or even using the camera to save your photos.

Besides the resistive touchscreen to navigate, you have a slide alpha-numeric keyboard and navigation keys. Using the touchscreen display needs some learning curve as you will most likely use your thumb to navigate. Since the screen is small, your thumb will already cover around 60% of the screen which makes it hard to touch exactly what you want to touch.

If you’re shy using the Bluetooth headset provided you can use the earpiece on top where you can use receive calls just like a regular cellphone. The earpiece also acts as the loud-speaker; however we think it’s a bit weak so you might depend on the vibration for notifications.

On the right side you have the VGA Camera, Volume toggle switch and Call button to answer calls even if the keyboard is hidden. Unfortunately there is no 3.5mm audio jack to listen using your own audio equipment, perhaps its due to the small size of the device. Also, we noticed that the FM Radio needs a headset plugged in but due to the fact that there is no slot, then it’s a waste of feature to include in the first place.

On the left side you have the Micro-USB port and microphone. We tried connecting the watchphone to our laptop but unfortunately due to the thick body of the phone, the micro-USB head can’t reach the slot. Otherwise, you can still use the provided charger to charge the device, which is quite inconvenient as you need to bring the cable to charge the device.

It’s really interesting that the market is starting to appreciate more of the wearable technology. So we’re really interested if the Cherry Mobile G1, being the 1st local watchphone in the market, can really start a trend here.

Cherry Mobile G1 watchphone specs :
Dual Sim/Dual Standby
Dual Band GSM (900 / 1800 MHz)
GPRS / WAP 2.0
Resistive Touchscreen 1.44″ TFT LCD Display (128×128 Pixels)
VGA Camera
FM Radio (Not Working since no headset Jack)
Music / Video Player
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Micro-USB (Up to 8gb) / Mass Storage
SRP: Php1,699

Check out our full review soon for the Cherry Mobile G1 watchphone to check if this one of a kind phone is worth the investment.