MyPhone My35 Review: The Phone That Deserves The Hype!
MyPhone's My35 is arguably the hottest local phone today in the internet. A little more than a week ago, the review part 1 of this "comeback phone" by MyPhone received the most reception we got this year with more than half a million Facebook impressions. Here's our MyPhone My35 review!
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| MyPhone My35 review: The device that deserves all the hype! |
Today after more than a week of testing, we finally assessed if this handset really deserves all the attention it's getting.
Display Quality
Sporting a 5 inch screen with 1280 x 720 resolution at 294 ppi, the screen quality of the My35 is expected to be sharp and fairly detailed. And it was able to meet that expectation. Even if doesn't have a Full HD panel, My35 definitely packs one of the more accurate screens we've seen today.The color reproduction is on point, the brightness is more than enough to make it readable even under direct sun light and it isn't saturated, yellowish and washed out. Pixels are hardly visible too unless you take a super close look on the display of the phone. It also has deeper blacks, richer tone and better balanced compared with the Flare 4. However, the bezels of this device is thicker and the viewing angles is slightly inferior against the said said device. But that is just nitpicking on my part, this handset has an exquisite display considering the value you get overall.
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| MyPhone My35 side by side with Cherry Mobile Flare 4 |
Update: I noticed that the adaptive display has a bug when you turn the brightness all the way down to zero that turns everything black. For more info: Click Here!
Audio Quality
This phone is controversial on my part as MyPhone boasted that this is a "HiFi" ready phone that makes this handset the first in the local smartphone scene to have that feature. The question is, is it really HiFi? My answers are a "near yes" and a "close to no". |
| A closer look to its speaker |
Why near yes? This handset boast one of the meatiest speaker setup I ever heard and tested on a smartphone. The level of crispiness, instrumental separation and soundstage is unreal considering the price making other "music marketed smartphones" such as the Lenovo A7000 Plus and CloudFone Thrill 500x+ sounds pale in comparison.
The closest phone that's in our collection that can compete with the speakers of My35 is the ZenFone 2 / Selfie. It has a warmer tone, slightly louder output and punchier bass, but if you're a detail freak, My35 will please you more as this handset has better audio layering, vocals, highs and airiness.
Realistically, it's almost near impossible to come up with a true "HiFi" speaker on such as small package, but the My35 placed a lot of effort to make the speaker sound as good as it can. In general, what MyPhone did with the speaker quality of this handset is completely laudable especially for a spec loaded smartphone on low budget.
Why close to no? Even if the audio out using headphones of this handset performed decently, it's not yet on a HiFi level yet as I heard better from MyPhone. That is the Rio 2 in particular which has a more capable DAC in my opinion.
Anyway, going to its quality, it has a near to balanced sound sig that is equalizer friendly. The level of bass extension acceptable and highs is great enough to give you chills on most tracks. However, even if it's acceptable I find the mids a little mudded / recessed and soundstage slightly narrower than what I like. Audio compatibility-wise, I never had a problem here. It was able to play my favorite MP3's, lossless tracks and even 192 KHz / 24 bit heavy audio files. The driving power is also weaker than expected as I have to turn the volume all the way up to 90% to get satisfying loudness out of my VSonic VSD5.
Note 1: Just like the Flare 4, this handset comes with audio enhancements that's you should never use if you truly care about music.
Note 2: The stock earphones are usable, but hallow, congested and muddy sounding.
Note 3: My35 only uses a single microphone setup that's decent for calls
Note 4: For most audio enthusiast, the "HiFi" branding can be a little misleading as it usually refers to the DAC chip (digital to analog converter) of the music player. What MyPhone should specify is what they're marketing as "HiFi" are the speakers to avoid confusion.
Battery
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| Battery life under my daily heavy usage |
Donning a 3,140 mAh battery on a smaller 5 inch screen with HD resolution and a power efficient processor. MyPhone's My35 delivered one of the longest battery life we tested this 2015.
This device was able to last for almost 6 hours under super heavy usage with my WiFi, Data, GPS and Max Brightness on while watching YouTube videos and gaming. Under my casual daily heavy multi media usage of taking photos, listening to music and social media thru data or WiFi, I was able to squeeze a little more than 10 hours of battery life. If you're just a casual user expect battery life that can last up to two days in a single charge. That makes the battery life of this handset slightly longer than the battery efficient ZenFone 2 Laser.
My35 also supports 2A charger that can reduce the usual charging time of a little more than 3 hours to just under 2.5 hours.
Camera
My35 is the first local smartphone to use the S5K3M2 sensor with phase detection autofocus that's also found with Samsung Galaxy S5 and the famous Alcatel Flash 2. It also utilizes a decent 5 MP camera in front for selfies and video calls.The rear camera of this phone is one of the most capable sensor we saw coming from a local brand. The shutter speed is incredibly fast and it can focus with good speed and accuracy too. It also boast a loaded camera software on a default 3:4 ratio as it has modes like Super Fine, HDR, Panorama, Tracking Focus, Face Beauty, Live Photo, Multi Angle and PIP. It's also capable of recording 1080p videos at 30 fps.
On the other hand the selfie camera is decent too. What I like there is aside from the standard beautify mode it also has a rare HDR mode in front. It can also take 720p videos nicely and has nice focus and decent shutter speed.
Camera Samples
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| Here's a nice HDR shot showing sharpness of details all over this photo |
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| A sample macro shot showing nice blur and depth at the back with great focus at the subject |
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| A close-up shot showing nice white balance and high details in the latte art |
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| It's a little grainy and not that detailed under low lighting condition, but still acceptable and better than most |
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| Sometimes, this camera tends to overexpose subjects randomly |
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| Here's a comparison when the HDR is used against the light |
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| This shot is one of the reasons why I prefer Super resolution mode against HDR most of the time. Amazing details even when under 100% crop |
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| My35 (left) vs Honor 6 Plus (right) My35 is brighter, but Honor 6 Plus has better white balance and sharpness |
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| Sample low light evening shot |
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| Photo taken with the quite bright single LED flash (Makes the subject a little yellowish in color) |
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| Pardon my "I woke up like this" selfie, but this shows that the selfie camera can be very good even without beautify as long as you have great lighting |
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| The background was too bright in this selfie |
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| This shot is taken in a Sunday afternoon with good natural light, but didn't perform well (A random inconsistency of its front camera) |
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| A decent selfie shot at night showing little grains |
Performance
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| My35 can play most graphic intensive games on standard setting with ease |
MyPhone My35 features a hardware setup that's probably one of the most efficient capable in the under 7K category today. The combination of 64 MT6753 octa core, Mali T720 graphics and 3 GB RAM made this phone extra smooth to use. Lag is hardly noticeable even when you open multiple apps and it can play most of the modern graphics intensive games with minor frame drops when it heats up a little.
Going to the connectivity part, this phone was also able to deliver what's they stated in the spec sheet. LTE when you have signal works just fine, my SMS and calls signal is full most of the time and it has OTG capability in case you wanted to attach a USB device with My35.
This smartphone also has an almost complete double tap to wake and sleep setup and most of the smart gestures works just fine. To sum it up, I'm very pleased with the near stock Android feel and overall performance of this device even if there are some "bloatwares" that cannot be uninstalled.
The My35 proves to be a solid daily driver when you combine all of those features together with its great battery life.
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| Over 35K via Antutu benchmark, that's high for an under 7K phone! |
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| Here's the geek bench and quadrant results |
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| The expected GPU score of My35 |
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| The sensors that's available for this phone are the accelerometer, light, orientation, proximity, sound and magnetic |
Pro's - Top notch build quality, long battery life, best in class rear camera, great overall performance and highly detailed speakers at the back
Con's - Thick bezels, mild heating, selfie camera inconsistencies, some uninstallable bloatwares, prone to scratches back cover, average headphone out quality
Verdict
This handset truly deserves all the hype and to be in the conversation for the bang per buckest phone in the land award today. This is currently the most affordable smartphone with 3 GB RAM setup as of now, the first local phone with phase detection auto focus and features best in class small speakers at the back. It may be smaller in screen size and resolution against its local flagship counterparts, but this phone can definitely cope up or even beat most of them in terms of value for money factor.
GIZ Rating: 4.75 / 5 Stars
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