Smartphones are no longer luxuries but everyday necessities for the common people in South Africa, nay Africa and one factor that plays a may role in determining which brand to go for is the price.  Since price plays a big role, there has been a steady in-flow of substandard devices which lets users accept sub-standard devices. This situation is now set to change as Chinese phone maker Cubot collaborates with one of the largest retailer in South Africa, Arbalest. they were expecting for trendy smart phones with reasonable price.

The partnership makes Arbalest the exclusive importer of Cubot phones in the country and perhaps the region. Although Cubot phones are well known in ither regions like the EU, South America, Soudi Arabia, Russia and even Kenya, this is the first time the company is making an officil entry into the Africa market and South Africa. With this agreement, Arbalest has the right to bring the most favourable and trendy phones with different sizes ranging from 5 inches to 5.5 inches and with 13MP rear camera and selfie shooters ranging from 5MP to 8MP. The first batch of smartphones that would be landing South Africa will include Cubot Rainbow 2, Cubot Echo and Cubot Cheetah 2.

Related: Cubot Rainbow 2 Review – Dual Cameras for $70!

The Cubot Rainbow 2 is the company’s most popular smartphone is 2016 and its biggest feature was the ability of the camera to take clear photos with high resolution. The storages on all the models are also pretty good, with the smallest being 16GB and the biggest 32GB. All models will come with expandable storage to 128 or 256GB through SD cards.

Apart from the decent hardware, the Cubot models will also come with premium design and the prices would be their srongest selling point. The recommended prices would range from R1,599 ($119) to R3,499 ($261). In essence, Cubot’s entry into South Africa will be with budget phones but together with Arbalest, the Chinese company will further introduce mid-range models in the market and thus, gain acceptance from more customers.

(source)

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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

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZVK8MNA3HU[/embedyt]

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.

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