The last few weeks have been interesting, I’ve been using the GOCLEVER FONE 570Q phablet as one of my main devices and it’s about time for the main review. My initial impressions are here if you’re interested.
The GOCLEVER is one of those devices that look identical to the big name devices from Samsung, in this case it’s like a bigger version of the Galaxy Note II. So how did I get on with it? Let’s start with my amended good and bad points.
Good Points
- Large screen
- Dual SIM
- Micro SD slot
Bad Points
- Screen viewing angles
- Internal memory partitions
- Odd camera specs
- Full size SIM cards
- Hit and miss responsiveness to capacitive buttons
Design
The design of the GOCLEVER FONE 570Q is basically to recreate the Note II but a bit bigger. It is a sea of plastic, a large bezel containing the home and menu keys, a silver edge strip, silver buttons, silver camera surround it’s all as you’d expect.
It is a large device and I soon got used to handling it, luckily being a longtime “large oversized phone” user I was prepared.
Hardware
The spec on the GOCLEVER 570Q is pretty mid range. Take a look below.
- Display – 5.7” 1280×720 IPS LCD multi-touch
- CPU – MTK6589 1.2GHz (Cortex A7) Quad Core
- GPU – SGX544 (4core)
- Android 4.2
- RAM – 1GB DDR2
- ROM – 4GB eMMC
- Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n)
- GSM 850MHZ/900MHZ/1800MHZ/1900MHZ // UMTS 900MHZ/2100MHZ HSPA+ (AERO2)
- MicroSD up to 32GB
- Dual SIM
- microUSB
- 3.5mm audio and mic jack
- Front Camera – 0.3 MP (4 MP?)
- Rear Camera – 5.0 MP (13MP?)
- Battery – 3200 mAh
- Dimensions – 156x83x11 mm 212 g
- Extras – 3.5” earphone, 5.0V adapter, USB cable, capacitive stylus, rubber sleeve, screen protector
There are a few things to point out about the spec, good points are the dual SIM, memory card slot, quad core CPU. Bad points are the screen which has to viewed straight on to avoid seeing distortion of text, the camera is reported as 5 MP in the spec list but the camera app reports it as a 13 MP camera. The MediaTek chipset has issues with manufacturers wiring up the GPS chip correctly and GOCLEVER seem to have worked it out and the GPS does work, it just takes ages to get a fix.
Lastly there is a crippling problem and that’s with the internal memory.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, in this day and age people want smartphones to install apps on, some games, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Angry Birds, putting makeup on a princess apps, celebrity surgery apps and countless others. Manufacturers know this and they should surely be not taking steps to limit how many apps their users can install. So why on earth in this day and age would a company partition the already small 4 GB internal memory and only allow a small portion of what’s left to be used for app installation.
Take a look at how the internal memory is split.
INSERT SCREENSHOT
Out of the box
After a few weeks of basic app installs
To make matters worse there is the confusing matter of allowing SOME apps if coded correctly to install themselves to the SD card instead. It’s just a confusing mess really, one that has possibly hampered this devices success.
Software
The GOCLEVER FONE 570Q runs what is basically stock Android 4.2, with a few extra apps added in to the mix.
You do get things like Google Now (accessed by a long pressing the menu button) and lockscreen widgets, so you can setup a camera shortcut on the lockscreen.
Where the Galaxy Note range succeeded was in software additions, S-Pen compatible note taking apps, S-Pen handwriting recognition input methods and with the latest Note range a whole host of new stylus based apps. With the GOCLEVER FONE 570Q there aren’t any tweaks to take advantage of the stylus, nor is their any software optimised, the Notepad app is just a basic thing. Installing a stylus handwriting recognition app helped, allowing me to write on the screen. Various drawing and painting apps support stylus input so you could find some apps to suit your needs.
Other notable stuff
Camera
The camera is specified on the GOCLEVER website as a 5 MP camera, the camera app is set by default to 8 MP and within the settings you can actually set the camera to 13 MP. It is odd, benchmark apps identify the camera module at 12.6 MP and the sheer number of pixels multiplied give a total number of pixels at about 12.6 million so it is a 12.6 MP camera. Not sure why GOCLEVER don’t want to advertise this fact. Probably because whatever resolution you set it at the pictures are distinctly average, with noise. In low light it’s very noisy.
Benchmark
Antutu X scores the GOCLEVER FONE 570Q on a par with the Galaxy S2, which is disappointing for a Quad Core device.
Battery life
With my usual battering of a device I was killing the battery after about 8 or 9 hours, with battery drain accelerating towards the last 15% of the battery. I imagine a normal user could easily get through the day.
Dual SIM
The Jelly Bean Dual SIM functionality is pretty cool, you can select which SIM can be used for voice, video, SMS and data. Both SIMs are active for incoming calls and messages, you can also get the device to ask which SIM to use when it’s about to do something. As I said it’s pretty cool.
Conclusion
In conclusion the GOCLEVER FONE 570Q is a great idea, copy a popular device and sell it at a portion of the price. But they have trimmed the specs TOO FAR, the screen, the crippled internal memory, the oddly specified noisy camera, the non functioning GPS all make for a device that is really rather unpleasant to use. Only really the Dual SIM functionality works nicely, if you just want a large Dual SIM phone then this might be for you, but Acer offer Dual SIM devices that are more reliable and are cheaper.
As to how GOCLEVER could improve the FONE 570Q I don’t know, a firmware update to fix the internal memory would be nice.
Maybe when they move onto making something like the Note 3 they’ll not trim the spec too much.