Doogee Y100 Pro

For a while, I have been looking for a replacement for my Nexus 4. I have been mostly pleased with it, but not completely. The two things that bothered me most were the lack of dual-SIM and (usable) LTE.

So I ordered a Doogee Valencia2 Y100 Pro at Gearbest when it was announced in June, which seemed to be almost the perfect device for my needs and at 119 USD quite inexpensive too.

Pre-ordering a phone from a Chinese manufacturer without any existing user reports is quite a risk. Occasionally, these phones turn out to be not working well and getting after-sales support or even updates can be difficult. I decided to take the plunge anyway.

Two very good reviews have been published on YouTube in the meantime. You may want to check them out:

My phone arrived two days ago, so here are my initial impressions:

The package contents

The phone came with a plastic hardcover and screen protector attached. In the box there was a charger and USB cable, headphones, a second screen protector and an instruction manual.

Gearbest also included a travel adaptor for the charger. Some assembly required.

 

Phone specs: Advertisement and reality

The advertised specs of the phone (5" 720p screen, MT6735 64-bit quad-core, 13 MP camera, 2200 mAh battery, etc.) sounded almost too good to be true for that price. Unfortunately, they turned out too good to be true.

The following table shows the advertised specs and the contrast to reality:

advertised	actual	remarks
5" 1280x720 IPS capacitive 5-point touch screen	5" 1280x720 IPS capacitive 5-point touch screen
Mediatek MT6735 64-bit, 1.0 GHz	Mediatek MT6735P, 1.0 GHz. Phone comes with 32 bit Android installed	Clock frequency was originally advertised as 1.3 GHz, but later changed without notice to 1.0 GHz. The MT6735P has a slower GPU than the MT6735.
2 GB RAM, 16 GB flash memory	2 GB RAM, 16 GB flash memory
13 MP rear, 8 MP front camera	13 MP and 8 MP are most likely only interpolated
2200 mAh battery	1800 mAh battery	There is a sticker on the battery which says 2200 mAh, but when you peel it off it reveals the manufacturer label which says 1800 mAh.
Weight: 151 g including battery	Weight: 159 g including battery	picture of phone on a kitchen scale

This kind of exaggeration appears to be common for phones in the Chinese domestic market. But some folks still need to learn that when doing business internationally, such trickery just hurts your reputation.

With that out of the way, let's take a closer look at the device:

CPU and Linux kernel

$ uname -a
Linux localhost 3.10.65+ #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 10 20:28:28 CST 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

shell@Y100pro:/ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo                                        
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 4 (v7l)
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS        : 32.39
Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt 
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

Hardware        : MT6735P
Revision        : 0000
Serial          : 0000000000000000

Camera

Although the rear camera appears to not have a 13 MP sensor (the YouTube reviewers above think it is more like 8 MP), it still manages to reach a quite acceptable picture quality.


Comparing day and night shots

HDR off / HDR on

Performance

As you can expect, the MT6735P does not particularly shine in benchmarks. The UI however feels snappy and smooth, and web browsing is fine even on complex websites.

Interim conclusion

Despite the exaggerated (you could also say, dishonest) advertisement, I am satisfied with the Doogee Y100 Pro. You can't really expect more for the price.

What next?

Next I will try to get a Gentoo Prefix up on the device. I will post an update then.