Home » O+ 360 Alpha Plus Quick Review

O+ 360 Alpha Plus Quick Review

Written By Ronnie Bulaong
Published • August 15th, 2015
Gadget ReviewsMobile
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In this day and age when 5-inch smartphones have become the norm, it’s refreshing to actually use a smaller handset like the O+ 360 Alpha Plus as our daily driver for the past couple of weeks while we were writing this quick review.

The Alpha Plus, like all of the devices that O+ has released locally, came in a neat and well-thought-out packaging. It’s one of those things that consumers, and admittedly even us, easily take for granted because we were so focused on the actual device that we rarely take a second to commend these little things.

oplus alpha plus

The handset itself is neatly placed inside the box, along with the pre-bundle accessories that came with it which include the white red-tipped USB cable, wall charger, and an 8GB MicroSD card. Instead of a fancy Sennheiser headset found on its pricier siblings, the Alpha Plus only comes with a generic earphone that follows the same color scheme of the USB cable.

Design and Construction

At a distance, the O+ 360 Alpha Plus can pass up as an iPod Touch sans the physical button. This is largely credited to the handset’s thin profile with a flat back and rounder corners. At close quarters though, the handset looks and feels nothing like Apple’s flagship media player which is mostly due to the non-premium make of the device.

This is not to say though that the Alpha Plus is ugly. As a matter of fact, it’s one of the better looking smartphones in the sub-Php6k price range.

Selfie Camera

Found above the Alpha Plus’ 4.5-inch display is a 5-megapixel camera neighbored by an LED flash unit, the earpiece, and a sensor. Right below the screen are three capacitive buttons for back, home and menu.

On the right side you’ll find three physical keys for volume adjustments and power. Meanwhile, audio jack and microUSB port are located at the top of the device.

The first thing you’ll notice around the back is the handset’s 5MP rear camera with its accompanying LED flash. Just below it is a sensor that enables the company’s trademark 360 Touch Technology. Lastly, the speaker grill is found at the bottom-right just below the “Designed for O+ in USA” phrase.

Rear

Changing/placing two MicroSIM cards on this device requires that you peel its removable back cover and remove the handset’s 1500mAh battery pack first. Once that’s done, you’ll be faced with a rather unusual setup that can be rather confusing even for someone like us who do this for a living.

The SIM 1 slot accepts full-size SIM card and is placed at the bottom of the SIM 2 slot (which accepts microSIM card by the way) and the MicroSD slot. Not only is the placement of these slots baffling, taking the SIM cards out can quite a chore especially for those with sausage fingers like myself.

IMG_20150105_000835

IMG_20150105_000712

Performance and Benchmarks

Considering that the Alpha Plus shares the same engine as the Acer Z520, we were expecting to get the same benchmark scores on this affordable smartphone.

Alpha Plus Benchmarks

True enough, the scores were somewhere in the range of what we got from the similarly-spec’d handset from Acer. The Alpha Plus is certainly not a chart-topper, but should have enough muscle to effortlessly handle basic tasks and some average 3D games with a little bit of effort.

AnTuTu Benchmark: 20,108
Quadrant Standard: 6,830
NenaMark 2: 61.2fps
Vellamo: 868 (Metal) | 1,204 (Multicore) | 1,362 (Browser)

Battery Life

And since we’re comparing these two similarly-priced smartphones, it’s also good to note that the Alpha Plus comes with a smaller battery pack, 25% to be exact, than the Z520. Despite only having to power up a smaller screen, the Alpha Plus’s power source just isn’t enough to keep it on long enough to better the Z520 in the PCMark battery test.

Battery

Conclusion

The O+ 360 Alpha Plus is a feature-packed smartphone at an affordable price. The company’s 360 Touch technology and the decent front-mounted camera with LED flash offer more value to consumers who are looking for a dual-SIM smartphone with limited budget.

Of course, it’s a different scenario if you can throw in a couple of grand because at that point you’re better off getting one of the better spec’d smartphones from our list.

O+ 360 Alpha Plus specs:
4.5-inch qHD IPS display, 960 x 540 @245ppi
1.3GHz MediaTek MT6582 quad-core processor
1GB RAM
Expandable 8GB internal storage
Supports up to 32GB microSD
5MP AF rear camera w/ flash
5MP AF front camera w/ flash
Dual-SIM
3G, 2G
WiFi
Bluetooth
GPS
Android 4.4.2 Kitkat
360 Touch Technology
1,500mAh batery
136 x 66 x 8.0mm

What we liked:

Great design

Acceptable display quality

Competitive price tag

Decent image quality on both the front and back cameras

LED Flash at the front

360 Touch Technology

Good performance for price

Decent sound quality from loudspeaker

What we didn’t like:

Disappointing battery life

Confusing SIM card implementation

Rampant signal drops, especially when using two SIM cards

The O+ 360 Alpha Plus has a SRP of Php4,995USD 85INR 7,216EUR 81CNY 620. You can also get a Php1,000USD 17INR 1,445EUR 16CNY 124 discount when you buy from July 15, 2015 to August 31, 2015.