CHERRY Mobile, the leading mobile brand in the Philippines, unveiled six new Flare smartphones last month. Devices, it hopes, will carry the Flare label past the “5 million phones sold” mark in 2016. Much of that burden falls on the Cherry Mobile Flare 5, the cheapest of the bunch. Priced at P5,499 — a tad higher than the Flare 4 (pictured in the background above) that cost P4,999 at launch — it falls into the company’s most profitable demographic whose tastes are often ultimately swayed by price.

Story updated with this Cherry Mobile Flare 5 preview video

It’s no longer as affordable as it once was, and the improvements under the hood aren’t exciting. There’s the switch to an AMOLED panel and the slight uptick in RAM (from 2GB to 3GB), megapixels (16 megapixels on the rear; 8 megapixels on the front), and battery capacity (now 2,500mAh). So does that mean the Cherry Mobile Flare 5 is no longer the budget choice it used to be?

The short answer is no. It’s still a good phone, better than most in its price range. But for a couple of thousand pesos more, you can get a faster and more feature-rich handset.

Beautiful backside, but…

Understandably, the first thing you’ll notice on the Flare 5’s outer appearance is how shiny its rear cover is. Well, that, and the concentric circles that radiate from underneath a sheet of glass or plastic that curves toward the frame, from the middle portion of the back where the Cherry Mobile branding is present. The combination makes for a stylish backside that stands out from other devices Cherry Mobile has produced in recent years.

And when the right light hits it at a certain angle, the resulting visual effect can look stunning and mesmerizing all at once. To see it on our black review unit, though, you’d have to get close enough or hold the phone in your hand.

And getting up close with the Flare 5 exposes an inherent problem in its aesthetic: It’s both a fingerprint and scratch magnet. Terribly so. Our unit already has at least two visible scars on its back without us dropping it or carrying it for long periods of time in our pocket. Our best guess is that those marks were the result of resting the phone on a hard surface.

Of course, you can always purchase a case to keep it protected at all times, but doing so will also cover one of its best assets. Between a naked, dinged-up phone or one that’s covered from end to end but in pristine condition, we’d happily pick the latter. You should, too, especially if you aren’t planning on holding onto the Cherry Mobile Flare 5 for long.

Interesting hardware choices

Turning the phone to its right-hand side offers a rare sight: a small physical slider that moves down but doesn’t lock into place. By default, sliding it down starts the camera app, while holding it down for a second or two turns the flashlight on. You can assign other functions to the slider, such as taking a screenshot or opening your favorite app, by going to the settings menu. It’s useful and simple to configure, and we wish more smartphone makers would pick up on it.

The 5-inch, 720p AMOLED display isn’t smothered by curved-edge Gorilla glass unlike many other Flare variants on offer today. If you can get past the omission, though, you’ll find the panel to be a more suitable choice for playing mobile games and watching movies and TV programs, as it serves up satisfyingly deep blacks and bright, intense colors. It’s calibrated to produce warmer colors, so expect reds and oranges to look particularly rich.

The 5-inch screen serves up satisfyingly deep blacks and bright, intense colors. It’s calibrated to produce warmer colors, so expect reds and oranges to look rich.

Speaking of the display, the Cherry Mobile Flare 5 follows in the trend of modern Google handsets that feature virtual navigation buttons, though it stops short of delivering the software experience Google had intended. To wit, you get a redundant menu button instead of a more functional app switcher. You can long-press the button to cycle through recently opened apps.

Another curious feature is onboard support for the 700MHz LTE spectrum band, which is the frequency that best penetrates buildings and covers rural areas. The operative term here is “curious” because it hasn’t been fully deployed yet, nor is it available to most people in the Philippine capital.

It has onboard support for the 700MHz LTE spectrum band, which is the frequency that best penetrates buildings and covers rural areas.

Granted, you’re more likely to find yourself in an area that doesn’t have a 700MHz signal, it’s still good to know that in the future, you’ll receive faster and more reliable data connections on mobile as local carriers continue to roll out new networks.

Good, but not great

The rest of the Flare 5 is a mixed bag of good and “meh” choices. The loudspeaker isn’t suited to playing music, but it’s fine for making or receiving calls.

The octa-core MediaTek MT6753 system-on-a-chip with 3GB of RAM and Mali-T720 graphics, on the other hand, is fast enough in everyday use — navigating the near-stock Android Marshmallow user interface is a smooth experience and apps launch with urgency, and they typically stay in the background without refreshing.

The frame rates drop substantially when running intensive games such as NBA 2K17, which the phone struggles to keep up with even at the lowest settings. Casual games that don’t require a lot of processing power will run fine.

Don’t get too riled up about the optics department, either. Despite the impressive specs, the 16-megapixel main camera is typical for a budget shooter: slow to focus; serviceable in daylight; bad when pushed to the limit. We found it struggles badly in capturing artificial light, producing distortions in our night shots.

The 8-megapixel front-facing camera, meanwhile, is better than we could have hoped for at the price. And by that, we mean it got us more usable selfies, some even in low light. The front flash isn’t powerful but should prove useful in situations that call for it; just don’t be surprised if it leaves you with an unevenly lit mug.

The 2,500mAh fixed battery tucked in the back of the Cherry Mobile Flare 5 is pretty much standard fare for a 5-inch device. And because it doesn’t have to push a powerful CPU, lots of RAM, and a super-clear display, it’ll easily get you through a full day with moderate to heavy use — sometimes, with a bit to spare if you accidentally forget to plug it in overnight. On average, we got around 5 hours of on-screen time with WiFi or cellular switched on and screen brightness set to half.

The Flare 5 doesn’t support fast charging, unfortunately. Using the bundled charger, we found it takes three hours to go from zero to full, which is rather slow given the battery’s size.

Final thoughts

Even though it doesn’t improve on its predecessor by a great deal, or in ways you expect, the Cherry Mobile Flare 5 is one of the better ways to spend P5,499. Some of the hardware choices, including the slider and AMOLED display, have won us over. And while we’re not big fans of its back cover, the decision here really comes down to personal taste.

The real question is whether you should upgrade to a more expensive Flare phone that has more to offer, or a different phone from a different brand. To which we say: If you’ve got money to spare, there are plenty of other choices out there that can give you more bang for your buck. But if every peso counts, you won’t find yourself with the shorter end of the proverbial stick.

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