Starmobile is Filipino mobile phone company that specializes in affordable feature phones of their own design. It’s no surprise that sooner or later the company will also release their own Android devices.
The Starmobile Engage is their first Android tablet at 7-inch and has a retail price of just Php5,990. Can’t believe the price right? At that price, what you can usually get are entry-level Android smartphones.
We received a unit of Starmobile Engage recently so allow us to share to you our first impressions.
Inside the box, you’ll get the tablet itself, the charger, generic earphones, manual and the warranty card. Pretty basic stuff.
Lifting the Engage we immediately notice how light it is. The 7-inch
display has a wide bezel surrounding it with the Starmobile logo below
it. If you notice that the display is not that sharp, well it’s because
of the low 800 x 480 resolution which you rarely see even in smartphones
with 4.3-inch display.
It has a curved back with a matte black finish to discourage smudges
and fingerprints. Upper right at the back you’ll find the typical 3.0
megapixel camera (no flash) you find in entry-level Android phones.
Speaker grill is located on the lower right portion at the back. There’s
also a VGA camera in front which works with video calls like Skype.
At the bottom edge of the tablet you’ll be greeted with a whole LOT
of ports. From left to right you’ll get the Home button, Reset pinhole,
mic, 3.5mm earphone jack, DC charging port, mini-USB, a regular USB,
standard HDMI port, microSD slot, and the Power/Sleep button.
The Starmobile Engage is a WiFi-only device but you can use your 3G
or 3.5G USB dongle with it. You can also plug in a USB flash drive and
access its contents with this tablet. You need a file explorer app for
it though which you can easily get from Google Play.
This tablet runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich already and is
powered by a single-core 1.2GHz CPU with 1 GB RAM. Haven’t really used
it that much but I experienced a little bit of lag when waking this
device. There’s a 5GB internal storage here so you’d want to make use of
the microSD slot for expansion.
Bottomline here is the Starmobile Engage won’t “wow” you in terms of
looks but it has a unique design compared to other budget tablets in the
market. The specs are not something you will like to show off either
but they’re serviceable for the price that you are paying for. You will
also get a lot of functionalities out of this device thanks to its
myriad of ports.
The thing is, for just Php5,995, you’ll get a
lightweight 7-inch Android tablet you can use to watch videos, surf,
read books, video chat and play casual games with. Starmobile also
prides itself with the high-quality of customer support they give which
is their edge over other affordable brands in the market.
| Starmobile Engage |
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| Source: pinoytechblog |
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