Please note this specific smartphone on offer was put through a number of different verification and performance tests over a two week testing period. The evaluation was performed by a professional telecommunications engineer commissioned to confirm all the features, and performance levels as well as full compliance to the ICASA licensing regulations. A shortened summary of his report is captured below.
This model will be launched into the SA market after the official ICASA type approval currently in progress.
For the full Product Review with comprehensive results and specification see: gmtrieg.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/ms916-product-review/
EVALUATION SUMMARY:
The Introduction:
Some international pundits has coined 2013 “The Year of the China Driod” mainly due to the massive growth of the Chinese consumer market and the coming of age of mature Chinese branded and unbranded (OEM) smartphones at very competitive prices. The following reference is the case in point:
The GOOD Stuff:
The most impressive feature of this phone is the mighty useful Dual SIM capability of the MS916 - i.e. providing continuous dual network connectivity. There is no doubt it provides for very valuable and cost effective savings as well as service backup to a second network. Voice calls can be initiated and received on both SIMs whilst one of the two are configured as the 3G-data SIM even though it is software reconfigurable.
To be noted as well is top notch broadband performance was achieved during tests.
This is a particularly good looking phone, resembling the soft rounded corners of the Galaxy SIII. The 5.3” super large screen size and 960 x 540 pixel QHD resolution gives true meaning to the world of internet browsing, top quality picture images and video on a smartphone device.
The 3000mAh battery has a notably good capacity and with typical usage, gave consistently better than 2 days before a recharge was required.
It sports a very good back facing 12MP camera with quite useful burst mode (4 – 8 frames) and 12MP/8MP/5MP/3MP/2MP/1.3MP/VGA pixel density settings, include HDR and AE metering adjustments amongst many other.
The GPS chip and the build-it Wi-Fi client compares with the best in class and it was very notable that the Wi-Fi range attained by the MS916 outperformed the iphone 4s with at least 5 meters.
The MS916 runs Android 4.1.1 Jelly Beam with SDK version 16 and therefore all Google Play stores applications (closed to 1 million) is there for the picking. The preloaded applications is listed in the specification below.
The MS916 is compliant to all ICASA regulatory standards which includes the Electrical Safety, the Electromagnetic Compatibility as well as the Interference requirements. It also conforms to international European, Canadian and US standards on Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) limits which implies safe levels of Radio Frequency radiation adequately protecting consumers from RF exposure.
The Not so Good:
A slightly slower performance difference is seen between the PowerVR SGX 531 GPU of the MS916 (Antutu 3D score = 1472), and the Mali-400MP GPU of the GT-N7000 (Antutu 3D score = 2075), even though the little lag one experiences from swipe to swipe is not significant and irritating at all.
The BOTTOM Line:
And then ultimately, lets look at the Value for Money. The current cheapest selling price for a new Galaxy Note N7000 is approximately R3900 on BidorBuy whilst others are still going for R6000 on the same site. With the MS916 selling at R2250, it is at least R1550 cheaper, i.e. a 40% discount, whilst the objective difference in overall performance according to the Antutu benchmark score is (7919-6001)/7919 = 24%. (See the Official Product Review for some background on the Antutu Benchmark Score)
Official Specifications:
