Dubai: Chinese electronics manufacturer Hisense’s new smartphone – U970 — is a mid-range device and it stands out from the crowd due to its design.
It is simple and neat with flat back and front surfaces and curved at the edges.
Even though the phone is mid-range, the specs are powerful.
The five-inch QHD IPS touch screen with a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels is powered by 1.2GHz quad core Qualcomm processor with 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage. The shortage of RAM and internal storage are big drawbacks as many of the handsets in the market have bigger RAM and internal storage and at a much cheaper price. The storage capacity can be expanded up to 32GB using a microSD card.
The dual-SIM phone has a dedicated SIM slots for 2G and 3G but the device uses the older version of SIM card — the bigger one. The back of the phone is made of polycarbonate and has a solid grip. The curved sides of the phone make it easy to fit into the palm very comfortably.
Android
It runs on the lastest version of Android Jelly bean operating system.
On the top of the phone is the headphone jack. On the right side are the volume rocker and on/off power button. On the left side of the device is the microUSB slot. On the back are the 8MP autofocus camera with LED flash and the speaker grill. The front sports a 0.3MP camera for video calls. Even though the device has a lower resolution the screen offers bright colours due to its QHD IPS resolution.
The photos taken outdoors with the camera are decent and rich in colours. Snaps taken indoors are washed out and lose details even with LED flash.
The camera can take 99 or 40 continuous shots and users can select the best ones for adding to the album. Hisense has included some rich filters and effects apart from HDR and panorama shooting.
HDR cannot be applied while recording. The videos recorded with the 8MP camera are decent but watching HD videos from YouTube was gorgeous. It supports AVI, MP4, FLV, 3GP, MOV, ASF, MPEG, RMVB, H.263, H.264 video formats and MP3, AAC, WAV audio formats.
The device does not support graphic-rich games but light games can be played with breeze.
It has three sensors — proximity sensor, temperature sensor and G-Sensor.
The smartphone has Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth 3.0. Opening websites and browsing through the pages are fast with no lag.
In the HTML 5 browser support test — html5test.com — Hisense U970 scored 434 points compared to HTC One’s 433 points and Samsung Galaxy S4’s 468 points.
It is priced at Dh999.
