Cubot is known for producing cheap smartphones and the Rainbow 2 is one of their latest models. The phone costs just about $70 but it offers a dual-camera setup and decent design for the price. Learn more in the full review.
VIDEO REVIEW
UNBOXING
The Rainbow 2 ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a soft TPU case.
DESIGN and DISPLAY
When it comes to the design, the phone looks pretty good and it is well-built but it uses mainly plastic in the construction. It is quite comfortable to hold and manage the phone in one hand since it sports only a 5” 720p display.
The display is definitely not the sharpest out there but it is pretty good for a cheap phone. We have a 5MP front-facing camera that even has a flash for night selfies.
The star of the show is the dual-camera setup, which is designed to take pictures with bokeh effect. We have a combo of 13MP/2MP camera sensors to do that trick.
The backplate is glossy and it attracts fingerprints very quickly. You can easily remove it and underneath it, you will find 2 SIM card slots, a microSD card slot and a 2350mAh battery.
The loudspeaker is placed on the bottom, which is great but the sound quality is quite terrible like on most of the cheap phones.
Cubot Rainbow 2 in pictures:
HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE
As for hardware, Cubot Rainbow 2 has low-end specs that include a quad-core MTK6580A chip, just 1GB of RAM and 16GB of expandable storage.
Unsurprisingly, the gaming performance is kind of mediocre but it is still possible to enjoy some 3D games like Asphalt 8 on the medium graphics with just a bit stutter and some skipped frames.
USER INTERFACE
It is pretty cool to get Android 7.0 out of the box in a $70 phone. The Rainbow 2 will provide you with pretty much stock Android experience, with just a few added features. For example, you can use some gesture and motion controls. Some of them work pretty well while others are kind of slow to respond.
In general, the the user interface is fast and responsive and I didn’t have major lag or stutter.
IMAGE QUALITY
As for image quality, that dual-camera setup can take some awesome-looking photos with the shallow depth of field effect. Obviously, you can’t compare the quality with some more expensive handsets but I’m quite impressed with the results from the $70 phone. As for regular photos, you can’t expect much from any super cheap phones but you can still take some pretty good-looking pictures that are usable for social media.
However, the quality decreases quite dramatically in lower-lit situations.
The selfie image quality is not so great and the front-firing flash does not really help in low-light.
The video quality does not impress like on most of the cheap phones.
CONNECTIVITY
As for connectivity, the call quality and signal reception are decent. Unfortunately, the phone does not support 4G and the GPS lock speed are kind of slow at times.
BATTERY LIFE
2350mAh battery performs quite well but don’t expect wonders. I could get up to 4 hours of screen-on time but your mileage may vary, depending on the usage.
CONCLUSIONS
Cubot Rainbow 2 is another cheap device from China that aims to deliver a lot of value for the price. Well, you get some nice features like a dual-camera setup and a pretty good overall performance for the price of $70 but as always, there are some drawbacks that are common to all cheap phones that you need to consider before buying.
