Each manufacturer of mobile gadgets considers it a rule to have at least one smartphone in the budget price range in its lineup. This policy allows you to take into account the interests of middle and low income groups, because not everyone can afford to buy the flagship or even the average model of the same Samsung company.
Under the Fly brand, budget tablets and smartphones are being produced by the Russian-British company Meridian Group Ltd. The main markets are countries such as Russia, Ukraine and India. Given the demand for cheap mobile phones and smartphones by users of these countries, in August 2017, the Meridian Group company announced a super-budget phone model - Fly FS458 Stratus 7. User reviews about this device are ambiguous, but despite the negative, the device is popular with customers primarily because of low price (2900 Russian rubles at the start of sales). We will analyze the pros and cons of this smartphone, and see if it costs the little money that the manufacturer asks for it.
Positioning
The smartphone is intended primarily for a buyer who has a low income, but does not want to be away from progress. Some users in their reviews of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 smartphone indicate that they bought it for their children, elementary school students. In this case, even if the child breaks such an apparatus, no one will worry much about him.
Many buyers, already owning an expensive smartphone, acquire a similar device as a second, working, telephone.
Options, design and first impressions
Smartphone delivery kit is very modest, which is not surprising. It included the following positions:
- Smartphone Fly FS458 Stratus 7;
- power adapter;
- microUSB cord;
- brief user manual that describes the main functions of the device;
- warranty card.
They didn’t put anything superfluous in the box, but at such a price this is acceptable.
Well, let’s take a closer look at the hero of the review. Despite its budget, the device has an attractive design. The phone is a rectangular brick with neatly rounded corners.
Most of the front panel is occupied by a small display. Above the screen are the front camera, earpiece and proximity sensor. Under the display are control touch buttons, deprived of backlight.
The back cover is plastic, removable, its edges are wrapped on the ends of the smartphone. On the back panel of the device are located: in the upper part - the head camera and LED flash, in the lower - the main speaker, in the center - the brand logo. The back cover of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 phone, according to reviews, is extremely reluctant to open, despite a special hook in the lower right corner.
At the top end of the device there is a headphone jack and microUSB connector, at the bottom there is only a talking microphone.
On the right side of the smartphone’s body are the lock and volume buttons, the left is pristine.
Color options for the case - black, red and golden. According to reviews, the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 smartphone in golden color looks much more interesting than in black or red.
The dimensions of the smartphone: length - 135 mm, width - 6 mm, thickness - 10.3 mm. The device weighs 124 grams. The device is small, the pocket will not pull away, maybe a little thick.
Screen
The smartphone is equipped with a TFT display. The screen size is 4.5 inches, resolution is 480x854 pixels. Budgetally, but such is life, and if you take into account the cost of the device, then everything falls into place. Due to the small diagonal of the display, individual pixels of the picture are not striking.
The color rendering of the screen of the smartphone Fly FS458 Stratus 7 Black, according to reviews, is acceptable. Viewing angles are sufficient, but with a strong deviation, fading of the image and color inversion are observed.
The screen supports 2-touch multi-touch, the protective glass is not closed.
Performance
The manufacturing company managed somewhere to get a batch of old dual-core processors Mediatek MT6570 with a frequency of 1300 MHz. This solution allows you to reduce the cost of the smartphone and reduce power consumption, but at the same time, the performance of the unit is greatly affected. Play any serious games normally will not work.
Does not contribute to the speed of the device and the amount of RAM in 512 MB.
The size of the internal drive is 8 GB (half of this volume is available to the user). The use of microSD memory cards is supported.
It is noteworthy that the device uses a fairly modern operating system Android 6. This can be written into the advantages of the device. However, due to the small amount of RAM when opening several applications, there are jerks in the interface.
Camera sound
The optical component of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 black, according to customer reviews, will not be able to surprise you. The main camera is equipped with a 5 megapixel sensor, no autofocus. Under ideal conditions for shooting - on the street in sunny weather with a certain dexterity, you can get photos of quite acceptable quality, but nothing more.
The front camera has a resolution of only 2 megapixels. It’s hardly suitable for selfie lovers, the pictures are of very mediocre quality, but you can use it for Skype video calls.
The main speaker of the device is quite loud, it’s hard to miss a call, but it’s better not to use it to listen to music. The headphones sound better, the frequency range is not enough completeness, but for the picky user it is enough.
Wireless Modules, Navigation and Communications
Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to reviews, has a standard set of wireless interfaces: Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 n.
The smartphone also received a GPS module with support for A-GPS. The cold start of the navigation system takes 1-2 minutes. The connection with satellites is stable, the signal is not lost in motion.
The phone can work with two SIM-cards, one of them has the usual size, the second - micro. The call quality is good. Support for 4G networks (LTE) smartphone, as expected, did not receive.
Autonomy
The device received a battery capacity of 1750 mAh. In modern realities, this is a low indicator, but taking into account the fact that the smartphone has a small screen with a low resolution and a weak processor, the device expected an average uptime. So, in principle, it turned out. The average battery life of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to reviews, in various modes, is as follows:
- waiting state - about 10 days;
- talk time - 4-5 hours;
- video content playback - 3-4 hours;
- listening to music - 25-30 hours.
The autonomy indicators are not impressive, especially since the actual battery capacity of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to some users, does not correspond to the declared one and is 1200-1400 mAh by force.
In the dry residue
And what does the user get in the end? Frankly, the device came out very weak, even despite the affordable price. This in no way means that the device is not in demand: it has its own target audience. There are more positive reviews about the Fly FS458 Stratus 7, although there are also angry responses regarding the slow operation of the device and the weak camera. By the way, among the negative posts about this device on the forums there are clearly biased statements: they say, I bought the device for 2900 rubles, and it is without LTE and the camera is not 13 megapixels.
Absolutely no device can be called, many people are satisfied with the phone. It has an interesting nice design. There are 3 options for coloring the case. By the way, according to reviews, the smartphone Fly FS458 Stratus 7 in black does not look as interesting as its golden brother. In any case, if the buyer is fully satisfied with the functionality, design and price, the phone can be recommended for purchase.