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The phone has glossy black color in front and flat black (rubbery) in the back. It is slim, light and elegant to look at in its own way. It also has its own launcher that makes it so appealing when you turn the screen on for the first time.
Packed in a small box, the main unit comes with a proprietary headset, a power adapter and a USB cable. I was told by Cherry Mobile salesman that in 2013, the phone comes packed with a free jelly case (I paid for the pink jelly case shown in the picture above). The reason why I have to purchase one is because the freebies, according to the store attendant, haven't arrived yet, though I can still claim it by presenting the official receipt. The question is when will the stocks arrive.
The phone is pretty fast and after a few days of testing, I only encountered a couple of instances of lags. They happened because I already have a lot of applications running in the background with all its communication features turned on like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, etc. I already expected it knowing it only has 1GB of RAM and it's running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with its own user interface.
For a phone in its price range, it's actually pretty good; 4-inch display, quad-core processor clocked at 1.3GHz, and 1GB RAM. But it could have been better if Cherry Mobile added another 4GB in its internal memory. The Flare S only has 4GB ROM and almost 200MB was already used by the system.
Another thing I wished CM could have improved is the battery. The phone only has 1400mAh, which couldn't last longer for a quad-core phone, although I understand that the company has to make a compromise so as to produce a slimmer and lighter device.
The camera is mediocre, too. While the phone comes with an 8-megapixel sensor, the output image is far from being impressive due to too much noise even in environment where this is moderate lighting. If you take selfies using the Flare S, you must be in a place where there is enough light to capture a better picture of your face. The front camera is VGA, it's enough for video conferencing.
Overall, the phone is still impressive especially to people who are just starting to use Android smartphones. It seldom lags, it has its own launcher, runs on Jelly Bean (it's not the latest Android version), powered by MediaTek's quad-core processor, and has sufficient RAM. Is it worth your P4,499? For me, yes, it's worth it!
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