Starmobile UP Ultra Review

Display and Multimedia

The UP Ultra carries a 5.5-inch On-Cell HD display with In-Plane Switching for wider viewing angle. The implementation of on-cell technology allows for an overall thinner display resulting in better image quality, among other things. Its screen is then packed with a resolution of 1280 x 720 that equates to 267 pixels per inch.

Using this device for watching videos and playing games is quite enjoyable, though it doesn’t have a Full HD resolution. Images appear sharp in general, although a close inspection will show some pixels. IPS worked nicely from the sides, but the viewing angle suffered when the screen is tilted up.

As for the speakers, the 7-hole grille is situated down under and they perform well with good volume levels. It’s not game-changing, but would suffice for watching together with a small crowd. If it’s for personal viewing, however, wearing a pair of headphones would still be your best bet.

Camera

The handset is equipped with a 13-megapixel rear shooter with BSI and was made using Samsung’s optics. The Camera app’s UI also offers different settings that you could tweak like White Balance, Image Properties, and Exposure.

With the time spent on the device taking photos, we noticed that it takes a while for its camera to focus on a subject which sometimes results in a slightly out of focused shot. It also needs a bit of space when shooting subjects up close so macro shots are hard to do here.

When shooting in daylight, images are sharp, but loses detail when zoomed up close. Tonal contrast is also satisfactory and is within the expectation of a smartphone camera.  Below are some sample shots:

As for the front camera. There is a 5-megapixel shooter with fixed focus. It’s also been blessed with another BSI sensor to aid while shooting in low-lit areas. Overall, it takes decent selfies but nothing out of the ordinary. Additionally, you may check the sample video below:

OS, UI, and Apps

The UP Ultra runs on the recent Android 5.1 update which has Google’s significant improvements. We enjoyed browsing through its UI and we’re glad to report that we didn’t experience any form of lags — whether jumping from app to app or running resource-intensive tasks.

From the get-go, you have 11.18GB of available space out of its 16GB internal storage. There are some bloatware apps from the company like Starmobile Sync 2.0, Starmobile Care, and their App store which you cannot uninstall.

Continued in next page: Performance and Benchmarks, Battery Life, Conclusion