iOcean G7 Wit

Hallo allemaal!

*Kleine edit: ik krijg de foto's niet goed erin. Ik heb daarom een kleine website gemaakt voor het gemak. Daar staat alles wel correct. Ben geen kenner, vraag me niet waarom het hier niet werkt
Website hierrr

En een YouTube video review :)

Dit is een review die ik geschreven heb voor een collega en moest in het Engels. Ik zag dat er al een hele uitgebreide review in het Nederlands op Tweakers te vinden is dus vertalen lijkt me niet nodig. Dit is mijn eerste review die ik geschreven heb hier op Tweakers en ik krijg de lay-out niet zoals in de PDF dus het gaat maar even om de informatie. Mochten er nog aanvullende vragen zijn over het toestel dan hoor ik het graag.

Intro & Specifications
Welcome to this iOcean G7 review.

The G7 is not the first phone of the Chinese iOcean company but definitely one with a new design. If you are not familiar with the iOcean company you can look up their website iocean.cc or go to their Facebook page. The phone that had put iOcean in the spotlights was the X7 Youth. It has (still) good specifications with a surprisingly low price, making it a very tempting choice. After the X7 Youth there were more ‘adult’ versions as the Turbo, Plus and Elite, all with different sets of specifications and prices. One thing remained: the design. All the X7 models are the same except for their internal hardware components. With the G7 the designers at iOcean made daring step. They slightly changed the design but more obvious: they changed the size of the phone. Where all X7 versions were enjoying a neat 5 inch FULL-HD display, the G7 has a gigantic screen size of 6.44 inch, technically making it a phablet (phone/tablet).

This devices comes with the latest of the MediaTek processors: the MT6592, an octacore processor with the Mali 450 GPU to support it with graphical applications.
My personal questions were if I would be enjoying carrying this colossal phone around and if the GPS-problems with the MediaTek MT6592 would finally come to an end.

Take a look at the specifications of the iOcean G7:


General
OS Android 4.2.2
Chipset Octacore Mediatek
CPU 1.7Ghz MT6592
GPU Mali-450 700Mhz
RAM 2GB
Battery 3500mAh
Two Camera’s:
Rear camera 13 mega-pixel
Features F2.0 aperture
LED flash Yes
Video 1080p@30fps
Front camera 5-mega-pixel
Memory
Internal 16GB
SD card Yes: support up to 32GB
Network support
Dual-sim Yes
WCDMA 2100MHz/900MHz
GSM 850/900/1800/1900MHz
Body
Dimensions 175 x 90.5 x 8.9mm
Weight (g) 205 grams
Colors Black and White (and perhaps a red one?)


Screen/Display
Let’s start with what is most obvious about the device when you see it: the enormous display. With a 6.44 inch display the G7 is one of the biggest devices I ever worked with. It is quite a bit bigger than the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

For the technicians amongst you: the devices comes with a Retina LTPS display and is an OGS, which stands for One Glass Solution. So the screen will be thin with good viewing angles. Since a large amount of the surface of the phone is consisting out of glass, I am glad they processed the screen with laminated glass, meaning it consists of two or more layers of glass and bonding interlayers before fused together though autoclave or chemically.
The above shows us that the display is big, thin, highly scratch-resistant and with the Retina LTPS it also means the display is bright and vivid. When the screen is on full brightness it is very useable in light areas and outside. I used it for a couple of days now and even on these sunny days I could easily read the screen.

This is supported with a stunning 1920x1080 resolution, granting the screen 342 pixels-per-inch. I used the iOcean X7 with 440 pixels-per-inch and I could see some difference but you would have to look closely and search for it. 342 PPI is still very impressive for a screen size this big and reading text is a real charm on this device. Giving the device a higher resolution screen would not benefit the price and the performance of the G7 and I personally think this was the right decision.

In the box I also found a screen protector which I applied directly but since the layered protection of the screen itself I think this is a personal choice.
Another bonus is the fact that you can operate the device wearing gloves or with wet hands. I found out these few days that the display is highly sensitive and I do no longer need my touch screen gloves in the winter which is a real big plus.

Camera
The camera of the G7 is even being used by iOcean to take photos of the new X8 model, which is coming up halfway in April, for their Facebook page. If the company itself is confident enough about the quality is has to say something, right? The G7 enjoys a 13 mega-pixel rear camera which out-of-the-box shoots at 9.5 mega-pixel. This is probably done to save memory and to quicken up the burst-shoot function. At 9.5 MP all photos will be more than sufficient for most uses: Facebook, Twitter, emailing them to friends/family, etc. Switching to 13 MP decreases the field of view as well a bit of speed in burst-mode but it is still very fast and it is barely noticeable. The front camera is 5 mega-pixel and can be used for conference and video calling or
to make the much loved selfie. A trend is to not only increase the mega-pixels of the phone but also the aperture of the lens, meaning more light can travel inside which tends to produce better pictures.

I shot some pictures with the G7 myself and I can tell you they are of very good quality. I used different kind of settings; all photos taken inside were under medium-light conditions and outside it is clearly a sunny day.

Sound
One of the things I like to do with my phone is to watch videos on YouTube, mostly with other people. The low quality of the sound and especially the low maximum volume most of the other Chinese phone suffer from sometimes takes the fun away in doing that but with the G7 that will not be the case. The sound can be set to a very loud level while maintaining good quality with no distortion.

Now, something pleasant happened when I laid the phone on its back while playing music: sound actually got better! Thanks to a very smart design feature the G7 device does not fully touch the surface and thereby covering up the speaker grill. A small tab, looking a bit like a stub of the speaker grill, is attached so room is left between the surface and the device hence the sound waves can move freely. It gives a powerful and full sound which I have not heard with many devices. One small point could be that it makes the phone wiggle a bit when lain down but I highly doubt that would bother anyone.

Overall use & Connectivity
The biggest question for me was whether the G7 would fit in my pocket but even with the flip case it fits. Though it is completely understandable when someone would go for the somewhat smaller X7 or better the X8 in April. This is definitely not a one-handed device and both hands are needed to type. It is very useable for watch movies, series, YouTube and the like as reading and typing text. I am a forced user of the public transport every day and I use that time to read rapports for work, etc. Still not as comfortable as a good physical keyboard, on the 6.44 inch screen it is now also workable to edit and type text.

The overall build quality is very good with no plastic-squeaks, a strongly fit back cover and pretty narrow bezels. The only real point of criticism is that the three android control buttons on the chin of the phone do not lit up so in the dark. This may provide an issue when not completely familiar with the device.

The device supports all normal connectivity frequencies used in the West: for Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n for both 2.4G and 5G. For mobile internet: HSPA+ 900Mhz/2100Mhz WCDMA.
GPS
The GPS has been a problem with MediaTek devices since a long time and let me happily start by saying that the iOcean G7 gave me a GPS fix in 3 minutes. This was indoors without any connectivity and updated satellite positions. Outside the same set-up gave me a fix in about 40 seconds. Compared to more expensive and well-known mobile phones MediaTek will always lose the battle but for the average Chinese branded mobile phone user this will be a pretty welcome result.

Conclusion
The iOcean G7 is one of the biggest Chinese phones I have ever handled but also one of the better built and designed. The overall quality of the phone is very good, the camera shoots very worthy photos, the sound capabilities are amazing, playing most games is absolutely fun (no stuttering), display quality is very good at least to say, making the G7 a very enjoyable device for everyday use. Considering all this, the price is very reasonable. If you are looking for an affordable mobile phone with a big display, this is probably the one.

A good functioning GPS and a size that still fits my pocket: my questions are answered, how about yours? Please feel free to post comments or send me a message if you have any more questions.

You can also send me an e-mail: jaapreview [at] gmail [dot] com

Or look up more information on the official iOcean Facebookpage! Please give them some support and click the ‘like’ button.

In the pictures below:
- Content of the package, may vary depending on where you buy
- The small tab on the speaker grill
- Whooping 3500mAh battery
- The orange flip case
*Edit: ik kijk een deze dagen waarom de foto's niet willen uploaden