Many of you probably haven’t heard of the name CUBOT. Well, CUBOT is a Shenzhen based smartphone company who recently made a debut in Nepal. At launch, the company unveiled a slew of smartphones at a budget and mid-tier price category. Among the many, the CUBOT J3 is the most affordable offering coming in at just Rs 9,500. The phone looks to offer a good looking design with the benefits of Android GO. But is the phone any good? Is it the best smartphone under Rs 10,000 in Nepal? Well, let’s find the answer to these questions in this review.
CUBOT J3 Review
Design
The CUBOT J3 is a good looking smartphone that comes in a polycarbonate shell. This not only gives the phone a classy look but also a sturdy design. The back of the phone is removable giving access to the battery. It has been quite some time since I last saw this type of architecture!
Elaborating about the design of the phone, everything is where it should be. Well, everything except the micro USB port that is. It is placed a bit awkwardly at the top of the phone. Besides the charging port, the top of the phone is occupied by a headphone port. At the right of the device, we have the volume rockers and the power button. While the left side is left clean! And finally, at the bottom, we have the whole area for a speaker and a microphone.
Display
The J3 packs a 5-inch LCD display with 480×960 resolution. The panel uses the TN technology that covers a 16:9 aspect ratio. Talking about the quality, the display is good enough for day to day usage. The brightness level is also surprisingly good! For day to day usage like watching Youtube, playing some casual games, and scrolling through Facebook, the display will work well. That said, I do wish the panel packed at least HD resolution. It would have been a great selling point for the device. Nonetheless, the display is acceptable for the price point.
Performance
The CUBOT J3 packs a quad-core MediaTek MT6580 processor clocked at 1.3GHz. The phone also packs 1GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. The memory of the phone can be further expanded via a micro-sd card up to 64GB. The performance of the phone is quite good for the price. The phone was easily able to perform basics tasks like scrolling through Facebook and web browsing. Although the performance of the normal app is not that bad, users can get more value from the phone by using the GO Apps. Toned down apps like the Facebook Lite, Youtube GO app are available in the Play store. You can use them to get the best performance!
The J3 is good enough to play those casual games. The phone, however, will give you a hard time with graphics intensive games. You definitely won’t be playing PUBG with this device!
Software
The phone runs Android-GO based on Android 8.0 Oreo. For those unaware, Android GO is a toned down version of Android made especially for budget smartphones. This helps optimize performance for the devices with less powerful specifications. And the OS on the phone does just that! The presence of Android GO on this phone has made the phone a lot smoother.
Although the feature set is pretty much stock, CUBOT has added in some interesting tweaks. For one it has a Face Unlock feature which I think is an awesome inclusion at this price point. This makes the exclusion of the fingerprint scanner a bit bearable. Kudos to CUBOT for this!
Camera
The phone packs a pretty basic camera set up! At the rear, we have an 8MP rear camera accompanied by an LED flash. While the front of the phone packs a 5MP selfie shooter. The picture quality from the cameras is good for the price. It produces images that are ideal for social media sharing. Don’t get your hopes up though! At the price point, the camera is one area that suffers a bit!
Battery
The CUBOT J3 packs a 2000mAh user-removable battery. You can access the battery by pulling off the back panel. It has been quite a while since I last saw this design. It is not that popular these days. That said, having the ability to swap out batteries is always a positive in my book.
The battery life of this removable cell is not bad either. I got around 3-4 hours of battery life with my medium to heavy usage of the phone. Moderate users will easily be able to get a full day worth of battery life.
Verdict: CUBOT J3 Review
The CUBOT J3 is a decent smartphone that packs all the essentials. It has an eye-catching design, acceptable camera optics, and good battery size. The inclusion of the Android GO operating system is its another selling point. Not only does it makes the phone more smooth but also boosts its performance. For the price of Rs 9,500, the CUBOT J3 is a great option. Do give it a thought while buying a smartphone under Rs 10,000 in Nepal.
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