If I’m the one who is going to buy and use the smartphone at a low budget, I will buy a used Android phone.
To get a more up to date version of Android, I will root it then flash a custom ROM.
But what if your used market sucks and want to buy new for the peace of mind?
Also how many people actually know what “Root” or “Custom ROM” even is?
What can 35 US dollars buy you?
This is the cheapest you can get that is not from some unknown Chinese brand: The myPhone myA11.
For $35 (USD) unlocked you get an Android phone from a brand you can trust (or at least we
Filipinos trust) that runs the latest Android Oreo Go software--and that’s about it.
I mean they do say “You get what you pay for” and I say “Not everyone can pay more.”
So let’s see what we can get for this rock bottom of a price point.
> The Shopping
The Filipino culture where an electronic device is tested first before leaving the store is
a very good practice.
The first boxed unit I got crashed twice and had to be swapped for another unit.
So make sure to have the phone tested in-store first.
Also note that the included earphones sounds like shit.
> The Aesthetics and Ergonomics
The phone has a very simple aesthetic and a very simple construction expected for the price.
Plastic front, plastic sides, and glossy plastic back with the myPhone distinct touch of having
the Philippine map on the map.
Standard Android capacitive buttons below the screen, 3.5mm headphone jack,
microUSB port that supports USB On-The-Go, volume rocker and power button on the right,
and on the back is the 5 megapixel fixed focus camera and LED flash.
It is a straightforward, get the job done design.
Also did I mention how small this phone is?
Well I almost forgot because all my other phones are also in the 4 inch screen size.
If you use almost any recent smartphone, this thing will be tiny in comparison--almost the
same size as an iPhone 5.
The back cover is removable but you may have to take your nails along the sides to do so.
It has a removable battery, a microSD slot, and 2 SIM slots with SIM 1 being a microSIM
while SIM 2 is a nanoSIM.
Fortunately here in the Philippines you can have the SIM card replaced with a triple cut
SIM and still keep your original number at no extra cost.
> The Unexpected
Now if you are even a bit techy and you laugh at the idea of a phone running Android Oreo
with 512 MB of RAM, I don’t blame you.
But if you expect the phone to just stutter, freeze, or crash all the time, I’m
surprised that it’s not the case.
UI navigation is smooth but it does have hiccups, apps like Phone, SMS, and Contacts just work,
and camera launches and takes a shot decently fast.
Fairly heavy music apps like Spotify works*, Messenger Lite and Viber work well and I guess
other internet-based messaging apps should work perfectly.
For basic communication this phone works perfectly.
It’s not lighting fast, but they are perfectly usable--and that’s what matters.
I would also applaud myPhone for not messing with the UI and keeping it stock Android.
I did have to disable some of your bloatware...but at least there’s just two.
> The Techy Stuff
I can’t really complain about specs for a phone at this price point.
A two year old MT6580M CPU (with its core architecture being even older), half the RAM
of my 6 year old Galaxy S II [512 MB], and storage so small I need to discuss later [4 GB].
For wireless it has the basic 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, GPS, FM radio, and 3G (HSPA+) for mobile data.
No 4G LTE as expected.
Paired with the low end hardware specs is the lightweight Android Oreo Go operating
system and its accompanying lightweight Go apps.
More about Android Go over here [Android Authority video]
> The Odd
So not all apps works as smooth as butter.
The full Twitter app works but a bit laggy, but ironically Twitter Lite is worst.
The full YouTube app is laggy and uses more space but at least it’s fully featured compared
[compared] to the bare bones YouTube Go app.
Chrome doesn’t offer tab previews and runs as light as possible.
Other tabs don’t even run or is even loaded in the background like on a more powerful
phone which is--
> The Expected
The main user interface hardware of a smartphone today is it’s color touch display.
This phone, as expected, uses a cheap TN LCD display [480x800] with a plastic touch surface
instead of glass.
You have to look at it straight on to get a decent enough image and the included
screen protector is mandatory.
But then again, very low cost.
I accept that.
The touchscreen does has a noticeable amount of lag that is tolerable but could end up
being annoying.
Speed: It is not a fast phone and it is borderline underpowered.
It’s not unusable, but tolerable as long as you don’t push it too hard.
Don’t even think about playing heavy games on this thing.
The bottom firing loudspeaker [comparison here]...distorts at max volume.
I do suggest to myPhone for any future model to just have one speaker.
Have the earpiece speaker do double duty and equip it with a bigger and better speaker.
512 MB of RAM.
What does that mean?
No true multitasking.
Everytime you switch between two apps, the app you go to reloads and the app you left
is unloaded from RAM.
Single taking only.
Now for the camera.
Oh boy.
There is a camera and it has a flash.
The phone’s cheap TN display actually make the photos look worse but even on my computer's
screen it takes lomography level shots.
Soft, lacking contrast, and outlined with color fringing.
Low light makes it even softer and noisier.
For video it does 720p...at 20 fps with potato audio.
It still gets distinguishable images in the end.
Almost everything that is negative on this smartphone is just expected at this price point.
All that matters is that it all works.
> The Ugly Compromises
4 GB of internal storage.
It.
Is.
Very.
Small.
Out of the box Android and the preinstalled apps use [more than] half of that.
In the end you’ll have to spend extra on a genuine 8GB microSD slot to fit all of your
pictures, videos, and music.
Don’t bother formatting the card as ‘Internal Storage” because it was more trouble than
it’s worth.
More on my extended technical review.
You can make Android run and run well on 512 MB of RAM...sort off.
When I use Spotify, for example, to play music, the phone is clearly struggling to, let’s
say browse stuff through Twitter or Chrome at the same time.
Apps also start to load so much slower once you try to multitask.
You can only do one thing at a time...and it is what it is.
> The Just Bad
The battery is small at 1400 mAh, but then it doesn’t have to drive a high end processor
or an HD display or a heavy Android skin in the first place.
It’s running Oreo in Go form, remember?
Standby time is abysmal.
With the phone fully charged, when I leave it alone on Wi-Fi 7 hours later it lost around
8% of battery.
Much more battery optimization is severely needed.
Remember that the people who will buy a phone like this will not be the ones who would own
a power bank.
This time, I expect better.
The camera lens cover is plastic and as I use this phone it started to easily get scratched.
A plastic protector is needed to be pre-installed and I had to improvise with scotch tape.
> Conclusion
This smartphone is not a good value smartphone even for a first time Android user.
If you can pay $20 (Php 1000) more, you are better off buying a more powerful Android
Go smartphone that has 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of internal storage, and a bigger and better display.
But not everyone can pay more.
It’s that simple.
For what Google sees as the “Next billion,” for a lot of them this could be all the phone
they can get...if at all.
But even with all the compromises, it does what it is supposed to do good:
A communication device.
It is a full fledged Android device.
Today, for this amount of money, I’m actually more surprised on the things it is able to
do, instead of what it can’t.
This is EJ.
Thanks for watching.
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