[Device Reviews and Information] Alberto96:
Introduction

Just like most Chinese brands, also CUBOT entered the market of the so-called “Battery Smartphones” starting from the CUBOT H1. The CUBOT H2 is entirely based on its previous model, but with an upgraded CPU, increased RAM and a Better Chassis and some other minor differences. Somehow they have removed the IR Trasmitter but this is something that, in my opinion, almost no one uses nowadays with the diffusion of Smart TVs & Home Appliances.

This is the CUBOT H2 Smartphone

Hardware

The CUBOT H2 Smartphone features a mid-range SOC, MT6735A, that is able to handle every daily task without major issues. It is supported by a plenty amount of RAM, 3 GBs, improving multitasking and device’s reactivity while running heavy apps. Also, just like the latest Xiaomi MI5, it features a screen supported by an ultra-bright 16-LED backlighting, but its resolution is just HD (1280x720), the maximum officially supported by this SOC. Battery Capacity is just a bit lower than the CUBOT H1, 5000mAh instead of 5200mAh, but it doesn’t mean that battery life has been impacted. Follow my next paragraphs to know more.

Unboxing

Packaging comes with many accessories: 1x Screen Protector (Tempered Glass) with Wipes, 1x SIM/MicroSD tray Eject Tool, 1x OTG Cable, 1x Micro-USB Cable (really nice quality), 1x 5V/2A USB Charger, 1x Quick Start Guide and the Smartphone (of course). No Headset included.

CUBOT has focused its attention on the design, the device feels extremely solid (much better than my Galaxy S4) thanks to the Zinc Titanium chassis, there is no Keys Rattling at all and it is Slim enough considering that there is a 5000mAh Battery inside. Sincerely, this is the best-built Smartphone I have ever tried. Well Done CUBOT!

It is just 15.0x76.5x0.9cm, compact enough and it weights 232 g, not so lightweight but with a Metal Chassis and an Huge Battery inside you can’t expect something lighter.

On the front side there is the 2.5D Curved Display, that makes the usage of the device much more ergonomic. The Glass is enclosed in a Metal Frame, which increases the device’s toughness.

The upper front side of the device features a Front-Facing Camera, an Earpiece, a Notification LED and the Sensors hole that includes Light, Proximity and Gesture Sensors.

Just like many other devices, also this LED is an RGB variant, so it supports multiple colors and you can customize them via the Settings app. It is used as for Notifications and Charging status.

The lower front side of the device there are the Soft-Keys Navigation Buttons (not retroilluminated), and an almost hidden Microphone Hole. A nice idea to keep the whole design the most clean possible.

On the back side there is a Curved Plastic Cover, with a nice texture that makes the whole device feel Premium. This cover isn’t hard to remove, making any future battery replacement much more easier that devices with Glass/Metal back cover.

The upper rear side of the device features a protunding Camera supported by a Dual-Flash (Single Tone) configuration.

The lower rear side of the device features a noticeable Brand Logo, some little words about the Device and a big Speaker hole.

As you can see, CUBOT take care of many details, especially regards the Metal Chassis. It is absolutely perfect, without any little defect. Thanks to the CNC treatment, the whole chassis is made to be the most comfortable possible. I’m really impressed, I hope that CUBOT won’t abandon this extreme attention to the details.

Unlike some other Chinese Smartphones, the SIM Card/Micro-SD tray has been well designed to allow the usage of a Micro-SIM and a Micro-SD without having to replace your SIM with a Nano variant. So you can use a Micro-SIM and a Micro-SD in the same time.

Device

Screen

CUBOT choose to include an innovative IPS screen on this device, I still need to find the brand and the model, but they declare that it has an ultra-bright 16-LED backlighting, just like the Xiaomi MI5 then, and I must admit that under direct sunlight I was still able to see the screen without any issue at all.

Under normal usage, the screen is almost everytime bright, even if brightness is set to low-medium. It’s a pity that its resolution is just HD, but Quality is just awesome, you won’t be able to see any pixel at all, it is really sharp and white reproduction is perfect. Comparing the screen with my Galaxy S4, you can see that CUBOT H2 screen looks much better as regards white reliability.

I have used my Galaxy S4 Light Sensor to measure CUBOT H2 maximum brightness. I don’t have a professional Lumen Meter, so this (Lux) is the only value that I can provide you.

About Viewing Angles, the screen doesn’t suffer any kind of issue, it behaves perfect in every single condition.

As you can see, Image Contrast is accurate while Saturation is a bit too high, so Colors look pretty vibrant, similar to Super AMOLED Screens. This is something pretty personal, so I won’t express my opinion about.

Camera

Back Camera performs pretty well, even if I’m not sure that the resolution is interpolated to 13mpx or not, but, just like almost all Chinese Smartphones, the noise level is a bit high. If CUBOT works a bit more on the Camera software, I’m pretty sure that Photos Quality will be improved.

There are no major issues with low-light photos, HDR makes Photos just a bit brighter.

Under medium sunlight Photos looks pretty good, detailed and with Vibrant colors.

Thanks to the Dual Flash configuration, low-light photos gets improved pretty well. As you can see, my cat looks much detailed here. Even without Flash, quality isn’t too bad.

Auto-Focus speed is decent, nothing extremely fast (no PDAF here), but neither extremely slow. It is as fast as on my Galaxy S4. Under low-light conditions it tends to be a bit slow, but I think this is software-related so it can be improved a lot in the future.

About Videos, there is no Optical Stabilization here, but Software Stabilization (if enabled) does its job (but producing that famous fisheye effect), and there are no major issues here too. Maximum Supported Resolution is 1080p (named as Video Quality – Fine). I can say that this is enough for standard medium quality videos, do not expect ultra-high quality.

Front-Facing Camera is much better than what I thought, Brand and Model are unknown yet though. Again, I don’t know if resolution is interpolated to 8mpx or not, but Photos are pretty good. Here you can find a comparision between front (left) & back (right) camera.

Maximum Supported Video Resolution is 720p, and Quality is just fine as you would expect from a Front-Facing camera.

Audio

Speaker’s Sound lacks a bit of Bass, but it is loud and with a nice clarity.

I have measured its loudness using my Galaxy S4 Microphone, here you’ll see its maximum power.

Unfortunately, it is positioned on the back, so if you place the device on a table you could experience volume issues, but this doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing. What matters here is the quality.

Also in-call, it is pretty loud, sound tends to get distorted a bit at maximum volume, but this device doesn’t support VoLTE (Voice Over LTE) so Call Quality is just the standard AMR-WB (16000 Hz) on 3G Network.

Earpiece is absolutely perfect, its sound is much better than my Galaxy S4, it isn’t extremely loud it produces a clean and high-clarity sound. Probably the device i have ever tested as regards in-call quality.

Device’s microphone is perfect too, I have tested it with many calls, and every single person I have called said me that he/she was able to hear me perfectly, better than how my Voice was recorded using my Galaxy S4.

Summarizing these results, I can say that the Audio Sector has been accurately developed by CUBOT.

Telephony and Mobile Network

Thanks to the 4G Band 20 support (some other Chinese Smartphones don’t have it), I’m almost always and everywhere connected to the 4G Network of my Mobile Network Provider (TIM Italy).

Also 3G Signal Reception is accurate, actually I never managed to get connected to the 2G Network of my Mobile Operator because there was always some 3G Signal available. A good quality Antenna has been used.

4G Network Speed is decent, it highly depends on your Mobile Operator and mine isn’t pretty good. While 3G Network Speed, is just fine. (MT6735 supports maximum 21.1mbps)

Battery Life

When you’ll first charge your device, you’ll find more or less 50% of Charge, I recommend you to charge the device completely before you start to use it. That’s to improve battery calibration accuracy.

Battery Life is just awesome, I managed to reach more than 9 hours of Screen-On Time, with Wi-Fi, 4G, Location & Sync ON. I have also turned on screen-off gestures (double-tap to wake), and during the night I have lost more or less 15% of battery so I don’t recommend to enable them if you are interested in improving battery life.

My second full-charge wasn’t pretty accurate, I have charged the device measuring current with a USB Tester and it recorded just ~4750mAh instead of the 5000mAh declared. I’ll measure this value again after more charging cycles and update this review. I know, declared value is always higher than real value, but nearly 300mAh of Battery Capacity is missing here.

For Daily Usage, even if stressed a lot, this device won’t have any issue regarding battery life, it will be able to reach the end of the day even with some residual charge left.

Also, this device support 5V/2A Quick Charge, so you won’t have to worry about charging time. I can confirm that this is working because the USB Tester measured more or less 2A of charging current.

Software

Even if this is a new device, CUBOT choose to use Android 5.1 release instead of latest Android 6.0 for some unknown reason. Anyway, all seems to work fine. They customized some parts of the software such as Lockscreen, Notification Bar, Launcher and Phone/Contacts app.

Lockscreen reminds the old Android Kitkat, with a Ring to unlock the screen or open Phone/Messaging app.

Launcher is similar to MIUI variant, without App Drawer and with some nice possible customizations.

Notification Bar seems to be similar to TouchWiz variant, with many useful toggles. It is pretty smooth too.

The Phone/Contacts app is something that probably you have already seen somewhere. This is extremely similar to the MIUI v5 variant, just with different colors.

The last customized part of the OS is the Recent Apps screen. It included a Task Killer button and a Used/Free RAM Indicator. It works extremely well.

Just like other last-gen Mediatek Devices, there are some typical features such as Gestures (Somatosensory), Scheduled Power On/Off, etc…

The pure and clean Android Experience hasn’t been impacted so much, only some parts of the OS are not like Stock Android, but nothing that can make its usage harder than usual.

Something that I have really appreciated is that CUBOT doesn’t install any third-party app (except Clean Master, removable), and there are no Chinese words anywhere, so the software has been properly developed for foreign markets. Really nice Company Policy.

Also, the UI is always responsive and smooth, with no lags at all. It’s nice to see that a Chinese company focuses its attention on the software, and I can confirm this because they are also providing frequent OTA Updates for their models.

Benchmarks

I have used 3DMark, Antutu Benchmark, Epic Citadel, GeekBench 3, GFXBench, AndroBench, PCMark (Work) and Vellamo (Browser & CPU Tests) to stress the device to the limit. I won’t test Games or Video Playback because there are already some related tests included in these Benchmark suites.

3DMark – GPU Performance isn’t extremely good, OpenGL 3.1 & 3.0 tests require lots of power, and this is where the GPU falls.

AndroBench – eMMC Performance seems to be pretty high, especially as regards Reading Speed. Pretty good considering that this isn’t the last-gen of eMMC (4.5 instead of 5.0)

Antutu Benchmark – I won’t say a lot about this benchmarks, this isn’t as reliable as others. I’m providing this just for benchmarks lovers.

Epic Citadel – As you can see, Gaming performance isn’t extremely low, there is enough power to handle games without major issues, you just won’t get ultra-high framerates.

GeekBench – CPU Performance is as good as other CPUs with the same configuration (4x Cortex-A53), decent for daily tasks.

GFXBench – Well...GFXBench score is low, really low. This benchmark suite is even more heavy than 3DMark, so you can’t expect a better score here.

PCMark – As you can see, only Video Playback score is a bit low. Pretty good.

Vellamo

Browser score tends to be a bit lower than expected, but Chrome score is just behind another device with an Octa-Core CPU, so this isn’t something that should be ignored.

The same for the CPU score, the device is just behind others with Octa-Core CPUs.

Summaring all results, I can say that this device provides enough power to handle daily tasks and light gaming. You can’t expect more from a Mediatek MT6735 CPU.

Conclusions

Unlike most of all Chinese companies, CUBOT publishes CE, FCC & ROHS certificates about each device, so if you’re interested about CUBOT devices safety, you can just go here: http://www.cubot.net/support/ and read them. This is something rare to find in China, and it makes you think how much a company is interested in foreign markets where Safety comes first. This doesn’t mean that China isn’t interested in Safety, but there are many users that want to know SAR Values, Certificates and so on about a Smartphone before buying it, so this is something pretty useful.

Summarizing all results, I can say that this is one of the best mid-range device available on the market. Great Quality Chassis, Bright and Sharp Display, Superb Battery Life and Excellent Call Quality are the major positive features about this device and I can really recommend it if you are searching for something that satisfies these qualities.

Price is pretty low, the device is sold by almost every shop that sells Chinese Smartphones and it has been certified to work on other markets than China.

Rating: 8.7

Packaging and Accessories: 8.5

Design and Materials: 9.5

Performance and Heat Dissipation: 7.5

Screen: 9

Camera: 7

Sound: 9

Battery Life: 9.5

Software: 9

OEM Support: 8

Price: 10

You can find full-res images (I know, Quality isn't excellent) here: http://imgur.com/a/84ZmJ

Official Website: http://www.cubot.net/smartphones/h2

You can buy it on many online shops.​