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The Review (Mito Fantasy Sound A390)

The Review

A bit of introduction, I'm a neutral user in term of Apple VS Android device.

I liked Android as mobile PC replacement, since I feel Android acted like a bit of both worlds, mobile and desktop. While I liked Apple device for pure mobile, since it restrain me from doing stupid stuffs to it, and actually runs very smooth, with far less hiccups, with premium quality materials. In short, it just works. Also iTunes app are controlled very tightly, lesser junk apps than Google Play for sure. I'm not saying iTunes don't have junks in it, but simply the app quality for iOS devices are much better.

I use Apple handset from 2008-2015 starting from 3GS, then skipped to iPhone 5. I like it so much. I bought Pebble 1 for it as well, and they both works really great with each other.

My first taste of Android is when I bought Galaxy 10.1 2012 (GT N8000) since 2013.

I stopped using iPhone since I broke my iPhone 5. Time to buy iPhone 6S? Nah, the price are very "premium" as well.

I got left out without any smartphone for awhile, just a dumbphone. Then sometime ago a friend of mine offered me his phone called OnePlus One. At that time I was thinking, Samsung is THE brand to go for Android. Checked the price, he offered far lower than general second hand, so without further thinking I took it.

Turn out this phone is offered far lower than Samsung's similar hardware with similar spec. And it is ultra smooth, no hiccups or whatsoever. I'm very satisfied with it. But I don't want to root this one because this is my main daily hardware. I use it for most daily things including banking and business. So I can't afford to cause some damage this baby. At this point my mind was opened. Chinese phones aren't that bad.

[IMG="OnePlus One"]http://cdn2.gsmarena.com/vv/bigpic/oneplus-one.jpg[/IMG]

http://www.gsmarena.com/oneplus_one-6327.php

So I got my main phone but I needed a second backup phone, I was thinking to get a dumbphone to get longer standby time juice out of it. I look around for Nokias, was thinking would be great if there's any dumbphone that have Whatsapp capabilities.

I bought one, with really bad quality, got Whatsapp in the menus but I can't even open the app. It cost me about $11. It does nothing but voice call and SMS. The brand was Maxtron (local Indonesian brand which seems don't exist anymore). So upon further research I was thinking better to go for very low-end Android phones and just install Whatsapp in it.

I bought a used Galaxy Chat GT-B5330 and one generic chinese handphone. I stumbled upon the generic chinese phone by accident, because I saw a store with old stock clearance discount. It was rebranded by a local company called Mito, and the type is A390 (Mito Fantasy Sound). I got both for $35 each. Mito was priced at about $70 brand new and was released in 2014. Upon checking the IMEI at imei.info, it doesn't display the correct model and brand, just showing "E-MA 2000 LOGIC-CAMP".

[IMG="Mito Fantasy Sound A390"]https://www.tabloidpulsa.co.id/media/reviews/photos/original/8f/a9/4d/mito-fantasy-sound-a390-1-31-1407213657.jpg[/IMG]

https://www.tabloidpulsa.co.id/phones/mito/5628-mito-fantasy-sound-a390

I was really dissapointed with Galaxy Chat performance. It's very slooowww. The physical keyboard are not like what imagine it should be, really uncomfortable and I ended up displaying the virtual keyboard instead.

Mito a390 however, I really love it!!!

It boots really fast, and far smoother than the Galaxy Chat. I never get the dual sim hype, but it's there anyway so I just use it.

GPS performance are terrible, I cannot get a lock-in for hours while on my OPO it was instant. Don't ask about camera, it's simply hideous.

One dissapointment is that I cannot install too many softwares in it, since it went out really fast. I use Link2SD to solve this, but still, the space feels very tight, and I'm out of space even though I just install the basic stuffs, no games or whatsoever.

The speaker, it was VERY LOUD. Even compared to my OPO. Though the sound quality is not extravagant.

I was really having hard time looking for the stock rom for this baby, but finally I found one that works

https://www.4shared.com/rar/KvQHblDxce/MITO-A390_Vikas-ori.html

I've used it for a month plus now, hard bricked it thrice (still detected by my PC on off position) and revive it without any problem at all. With SP Flash Tool and the stock rom.

Apart from those, this is the best purchase I ever did, for the purpose I intend to use it for, second number, whatsapp, and pure communications. Build quality was fine, nothing too shabby, it's like 3GS without the metal bezel.

Rooting

Mito Fantasy Sound A390 is a tough device to root, simply because it's not popular AT ALL. I guess that's also why they give 50% discount on it brand new. Nobody actually using it, be it the local community or anywhere else in the internet. There're no custom roms and CWM patches available for this device.

But the further I investigate, turn out this phone uses MT 6572 chipset, which have lots of resources on the internet. Couple of the important ones are the SP Flash Tool and MTK Droid Tools

http://spflashtool.com

https://androidmtk.com/download-mtk-droid-tool

I've tried every rooting alternatives out there including from PC, but none works. I wanted to use SuperSU so bad, because I have purchased the license and it was the cleanest root application out there. But always failed on the binary update.

So I settle down on KingRoot, which is one click root within the android device. It was easy, headache free experience, although it contains some junks like Purify (sort of like greenify app), charge accelelator and game booster. Some site said it contains some suspicious permission too. But meh, this is the only one that works, other than kingo-root and root master (anyone can review these 3 root apps? KingRoot, Kingo Root and Root Master?).

Super Sume pro didn't work on this device, and strangely enough didn't worked on my Galaxy Chat aswell. I contacted gatesjunior here but no response so far.

KingRoot does have good feature, particularly the uninstall tool, on which you can delete apps and system apps but it went to the recycle bin first before doing any permanent deletion. Those apps stored in recycle bin displayed as frozen in Link2SD.

After I got it rooted I bought 8GB SDCard and use Link2SD app to move the installed apps to the SD.

CWM recovery was a breeze to install. Just use MTKDroidTools above, go to "root, backup, recovery" then click "To Use Boot From Phone". A message will appear "To make CWM recovery automatically", click YES... and... you're done!

Software wise, I don't like the custom icons they used for the default launcher. They're hideous. They should've left the icons alone. The default launcher itself seems to be slightly modified stock Jellybean launcher. It was pretty responsive, but yet I hate the custom icons.

So I use MiniDekstop instead.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atomicadd.tinylauncher

LightLauncher was awesome but I got some missing icons after awhile (didn't hide any icon), and my review on the PlayStore didn't get any response so far

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.suphi.lightlaunch

Both are no-nonsense, blazing fast. I don't need any widgets on my phone, I just need a launcher that launches apps.

I suspect some system apps that sounds critical like SystemService.apk and DMClient.apk (software update) are actually adwares. After using the device for awhile, in stock condition, I got ad notification out of nowhere. Or probably it came from KingRoot? I'm not really sure yet. I'll let you know after awhile, if there's any more notification like these again after I debloated this baby.

Conclusion

$35 smartphone (Mito a390) VS $300 smartphone (OnePlus One)

If you don't play games, used multimedia so much (like camera), these ridiculously cheap smartphones are the way to go.

I mostly use my OPO for gaming and multimedia on the go. But it is my main device so I use it for communication as well. OPO is also a bit picky on the charging cable and adaptor. You have to use its own adaptor and cables (or buy the premium ones) otherwise it'll charge really slooooowwwww.

Thanks to this unpopular brand, my mind was really changed about smartphones.

It does all the basic stuffs pretty well, social media, chat, phone, etc, even I started watching YouTube on it using Dolphin Browser.

I just don't see the point of getting the bleeding edge, overly priced branded smartphones anymore. In case I broke my OPO, I can go to slightly higher spec of this brand.

Apple? I don't consider it anymore. I'm having difficulties carrying too many cables around. (i.e. Lightning and MicroUSB) besides, who doesn't have microUSB cables nowadays? Even my dumbphone uses it for charging and data as well. I cannot use it for storage too, and I have to stick to iTunes for nearly everything, both on PC and mobile.

Cheers