BEST CHINA PHONE?
Today we have the Jiayu S3 Plus/advanced which I've been playing with it for the last couple of weeks. The Jiayu S3 Plus comes in two variations, one with 2 GB of RAM and another with 3 GB of RAM, and the 3 GB version also comes with NFC support. In this review, I'll be reviewing the 3 GB + NFC $169 version. But is this phone really worth it for it's price?
Design
The S3 Plus has an adequate feel to it and does not feel cheap at all, however one thing I don't like about the design is the power and volume up/down buttons as they are a little to thin and do not give enough click, if you know what I mean. The 5.5 inch display doesn't feel too big because of the slightly curved back. On top of the S3 Plus is a microphone and a 3.5 headphone jack and at the bottom is a micro USB charger next to another microphone. On the front of the S3 Plus is a 5mp camera with an led light that can go green or red. The back features a 13.0M Pixels camera with a dual LED flash. Below the flash is a speaker grill with a speaker which can get extremely loud but sounds rather nice. The speaker also gets muffled when the phone is placed on it's back, however it doesn't get muffled when playing games. The S3 Plus is 152mm high, 75.5mm wide, 8.9mm thin and only weights 189g.
Performance
Moving onto the internals the S3 Plus which contains a 3 GB of Ram, 16 GB of internal storage, dual SIM, lollipop 5.1, and a 64-bit eight-core MT6752 chipset clocked at 1.7 GHz. The cores themselves don't have the best single-core performance as Samsung phone's or higher end
offerings, but their multi-core results blow everyone else out of the water as the benchmark's show. The S3 Plus also can support micro SD card slots up to 64 GB. The battery is a 3000 to 3100MPH which can get me through a day's work easily.
Display
The 5.5" LTPS IPS display has a better than a moderate 1080p resolution, which gives it 401 pixels per inch. At first the contrast was a little bit of a concern, nowhere near as deep as some of the better panels out there, but that is the only really noticeable disadvantage when comparing it to another, better-calibrated panel. Yet that was with the default settings at least. When I was going through the settings something dazed me! In the display settings, I found an option called "MiraVision" which allows the user to have fine control over the phone's display, including the contrast, brightness, saturation, sharpness and colour temperature. After going through and spending about three minutes to calibrate it, the display became significantly better! The blacks on the display where very deep and the display brightness also does a very good job in direct sunlight. The display itself is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 which should make it rather tough.
Camera
The camera on the S3 Plus is a little bit of a hit-or-miss. With the right lighting it captures some amazingly detailed photos, but at night with little lighting it's quite a mess. However the flash tries to do a decent job. With the video it's not bad as you just need to try to have a steady hand as there is no video stabilisation. The biggest beauty is the camera software which has a ton of option's such as live photo mode, PIP mode (which is using both your front and back facing camera in on a photo at the same time), motion tracking mode, time lapse mode, and customisable camera and video preferences.
Final Thoughts
After using the $169 Jiayu S3 Plus, I can honestly say that I am not regretting a cent that I have spent. This phone has everything I expected and more, with specs that are just divine for this price! Yes, a little bit better screen would have been nice, and a more advanced lowlight camera will just be rand. Yet at this point and price, you can get away with those features. Jiayu is not a very well known brand and it can be difficult to buy or even find cases or accessories. But there are plenty of third party ROMs. So I must say that this is unquestionably one of the best cheap phones ever!
Specification & Highlights:
- 5.5 inch IPS Full HD 1920*1080 OGS Screen - Gorilla Glass 3 - CPU: MTK6753 Octa Core, 1.7GHz - GPU: Mali-T760 - Android 5.1 OS - S3SW ROM with Google Play Store - Includes the Play Store & latest original Jiayu S3SW firmware - 3GB RAM + 16GB ROM - Battery 3000mAh - 3100mAh - Dual SIM, Dual Standby, Micro sim slots - Camera 13.0MP Sony IMX214 back, 5.0MP front - 5G WiFi 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Direct - FDD LTE/4G/3G/GPS/Wifi/Bluetooth/Miracast/OT-G/NFC - 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz - 3G: WCDMA 900/1900/2100MHz - 4G: FDD LTE: 800/1800/2600MHz - TDD-LTE B39 B40 B41 / FDD-LTE B3 B7 B20 - Gyroscope Sensor, Light Sensor, Compass, Gravity Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Hall Switch Sensor, Magnetic Sensor, etc.
Written by Matthew Kouznetsov
Edited by Daniel Kouznetsov