Smart Phones by stefan @ 2013-08-02
The new reincarnation of the Maya M1 called v2 Quad is really snappy, comes with a good quality 8MP camera, is Dual SIM and is powered by a 1700mAh Li-ion battery. The CPU is a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor at 1.21Ghz while the GPU is a PowerVR SGX 544MP.
At first we would like to thank Gigabyte Group for sending a sample of their GSmart Maya M1 v2 Quad Mobile Phone for testing and reviewing.
“GIGA-BYTE Communication (GBC) is where goals are reached and visions come true: ideas come brilliantly to life. At GBC, we're with you all the way, working together to build the world of our dreams.
The Brand "GSmart" is synonymous with "intelligence, international, vitality and diversification”. Through innovative ideas and technology, we make handheld products that empower the users to better interact with the world, as well as to bring joy and inspiration to human minds.”
Benefits of Quad-Core CPU
Lower power consumption
Rapid Web page load times
Faster Multitasking
Higher Quality Gaming
Dual-SIM Standby
Gives you all the convenience of having two mobile phones in one.
No missing calls on either SIM.
Perfect for people traveling around and easily separating business and personal life.
4.5” qHD IPS Screen
View movies and pictures vividly.
Wide viewing angles with great color fidelity.
Does not lighten or show tailing when touched.
8.0MP Charming Camera
Smile Shutter - by automatically snapping a picture while detecting faces in a scene.
Multi-angle View - by sweeping the phone around the subject of the photo. The resulting photo can be viewed from any angle.
2.0MP Front Camera
Face Beauty
Make your photo look more beautiful and give you a natural and perfect portrait effect in a moment.
The second revision of the Maya M1 mobile phone is shipped inside a small cardboard box with the GSmart logo on top:
By turning the box on the side, we will reveal some additional technical specifications:
“Thanks” to the people at Customs, our box has arrived to our lab unsealed:
By removing the top packaging layer, we will reveal the phone sitting in the center, which is also wrapped by a semi-transparent plastic bag:
Underside the phone we will get the rest of the accessories and documentation:
As a bundle, we will receive the USB data/charge cable, a headset, the battery but also the power adapter:
The power adapter is rated on the output 5V, 1000mA:
The battery model is BL-166 and is rated 3.7V 1700mAh:
As usual, the rechargeable battery is provided with 3 golden metallic contacts:
The headset is quite regular and has the microphone on the wire for hands-free conversation:
Besides the Quick Guide, we will also get a Legal & Safety Notice and Warranty leaflets:
The Maya M1 v2 Quad screen is initially covered by a transparent protective slim with the display resolution, dual SIM logos and supported technologies. We would have preferred to have this screen clear in order to keep it on until we would buy a 3rd party screen protector:
The frontal screen bezel is also fully black so we will have to approach the main components in order to describe them better:
On the lower side of the screen we have three capacitive buttons: Menu, Home, Return. The Menu button can be also long-pressed in order to reveal the Task Manager:
On the top side of the screen we have the P Sensor, the Light Sensor, the Receiver but also the Frontal Camera:
The back cover of the phone is interchangeable with the models which will be available later on; it is made of plastic with a soft finish:
Here we will find the 8MP camera lens along with the dual-LED flash:
On the bottom we have the opening for the speaker, with two small bumps:
On the left side we have the Volume +/- rocker:
On top we will locate the audio jack, one middle circular button for Power/Standby and also the USB connector:
On the bottom we have the microphone hole:
By following the manual instructions, we will see that the phone back cover can be removed quite easily in order to reveal the internal components:
We have two separate slots for the SIM cards, the SIM1 slot supporting WCDMA+GSM while the second one GSM. The grid contacts must face down when inserting the cards. Also here we have the microSD slot along with the battery contacts:
Here is also a closer look on the bottom side of the phone which integrates the speaker:
The large sticker placed here reveals more technical information regarding the phone, but also the IMEI numbers for both SIM slots and product serial number:
The microSD card will be inserted by lifting first the top cover:
The battery will be inserted into the designated space by following the contacts:
Thanks to the IPS screen, the phone delivers content with vivid colors and good viewing angles:
After the operating system loads up, we will be greeted with a stock Android experience and some widgets like Google Search are preloaded onto the desktop:
Besides the regular applications, we get also some preinstalled ones like Best Choice, Dropbox, Flashlight and so on:
The Best Choice application simply lists some of the recommended applications that can be installed onto the phone:
The Camera application allows us to select different profiles, but also choose between photos or shooting video:
Google Chrome is preinstalled and runs very well compared to the tablets we have tested so far:
Dropbox will allow us to access free storage space in the cloud if we set up an account:
The initial keyboard is not the stock Android one, but provided from a 3rd party application; we will get back to this one later:
We also have a File Manager application installed which will allow us to access the phone internal storage or the SD Card:
The Flashlight application will allow the dual-flash LED to illuminate continuously:
As we have seen on many other mobile phones, for using the FM Radio application, we will need to plug in the earphones:
The Contacts and Phone applications also offer the stock experience:
We can also use Google Earth in order to find nice places on the map:
The preinstalled Youtube application works just fine:
For OTA updates we have available the System Update application:
The keyboard interface we were describing before is provided by the TouchPal Keyboard application, which is available for free on the Play Store:
Let’s take a look inside the lengthy Settings application. Here we will be able to turn on/off the available interfaces and access many of the other system options:
From the SIM Management section, we will be able to work with the extra details for both SIM cards:
The Wi-Fi menu will display the currently detected wireless networks and allows connecting directly to them:
The Bluetooth menu will aid detecting and pairing to different devices; with the current firmware we had issues connecting a Sony Smartwatch to the Maya M1 v2 Quad meaning that the pair PIN was not appearing on the phone screen in order to complete the pairing procedure:
The Data usage will allow us to see the data traffic on both mobile and Wi-Fi networks:
From the Wireless & networks menu we can choose to configure different modes like Airplane, VPN, Tethering & portable hotspot or custom Mobile network settings. One small addition we would like to make regarding the Tethering & portable hotspot menu, where we only have options to enable tethering but we cannot define the name for the SSID or encryption type/password, which would make the Internet connection restriction impossible (anyone can connect to our small hotspot):
From the Audio menu, we will be able to choose from four predefined profiles, but also activate a separate sound enhancement for the earphones:
From the Display menu, we can set various settings like the Wallpaper, Lock Screen notifications, Auto-Rotate, screen Brightness and so on:
The Storage menu contains an interesting ability and that is to switch between the phone internal memory and the SD Card for the default write disk (sdcard0), but also shows extra details regarding the free and occupied space:
Next we have the Battery menu, from where we can choose to show or not the Battery Percentage in the upper right corner, but also the current statistics:
As on the other Android tablets, we have the Apps section from where we can see the currently installed applications and perform maintenance:
The Location access menu will allow us to enable the GPS module or the Wi-Fi & Mobile Network location function:
The Security menu will allow us set the usual functions like Screen lock type, Owner Info and so on:
From the Language & input menu we will be able to choose the Input method, interface language and so on:
The Backup & reset menu has the usual “Backup up my data” and “Automatic restore” options available, but we can also perform a DRM reset or Factory data reset:
The Date & time menu allows us to modify related options:
The phone also comes with the Schedule power on & off function:
The Accessibility menu comes with the regular options:
The About phone menu will show us the Status, phone name, the installed Android version, baseband, kernel version, but also the build number:
From the About phone menu we will be also able to unlock the Developer options menu in order to access more features:
The Gigabyte GSmart Maya M1 v2 Quad mobile phone is equipped with Quad-core Cortex-A7 processor at 1.21Ghz while the GPU is a PowerVR SGX 544MP as reported by the latest version of CPU-Z:
The System tab will supply us more information regarding the phone model, board, display or CPU, which is a MediaTek MT6589:
The Battery tab will show current status; while gaming for longer periods of time we have seen sometimes reaching 44 degrees Celsius, with an ambient of 28.5 degrees Celsius:
To test out the performances of the GSmart Maya M1 v2 Quad mobile phone, we have installed some freeware benchmark apps from the Internet in the internal memory (did not transfer them to the Sdcard). Afterwards, the applications were ran one-by-one, and we recorded the final results; the obtained scores were also compared with the previously tested systems, to spot the performance differences.
In order to have an idea over the actual viewing angles, we have taken some several photos in the same environment:
The following shots were taken with the default Camera settings.
NOTE: A collection of full-sized photos can be accessed here.
Time to draw up the conclusions regarding the GSmart Maya M1 v2 Quad mobile phone: with the new revision Gigabyte have succeeded to build a very good mainstream product, which also supports a degree of customization thanks to the replaceable back covers. The phone does not have a lot of NAND flash available internally, but we can always get over this by installing a microSDHC card and the “sdcard0” switch inside the Storage menu seems to do wonders. Regarding the device GPS, we have seen that the lock-on is not very fast so we have to wait some time until the connection gets established. We also have a very decent camera in the back with 8MP which can shoot photos in detail without any issues and also supports manual focus.
The phone is really snappy in most applications that we have tried thanks to the optimizations; browsing is fast and games load really quickly.
Thanks to the two bumps on the back side of the phone, the manufacturer has assured that the speaker opening won’t be fully covered; the screen is quite responsive but we have seen that after applying a custom protector on it, the bottom capacitive buttons need sometimes multiple presses.
The battery which is shipped with the phone is rated at 1700mAh which we think that it is a bit on the low side, and with a single charge our sample has lasted over a day with all notifications from Facebook, Tapatalk, Email turned on. During this time we have also played some games like Angry Birds Friends, but also the hardware-soliciting Carmageddon, which made the phone pretty warm in the upper back area. We also had the mobile data connection turned on at times and worked for about half an hour with the tethering feature.
We couldn’t note a lot of negative points regarding the hardware build but regarding the software, with the current revision we weren’t able to pair the phone with the Sony Smartwatch and couldn’t also set a custom, password protected hotspot for other devices to connect (the only option we have available is that to enable tethering with the default details).
The SAR value as measured in the lab is quite low:
The new GSmart Maya M1 v2 Quad mobile phone has a recommended price of about 249 Euros.
UPDATE: Seems Gigabyte really know their stuff! With the latest software update, teh Sony Smartwatch can sync with the phone without any issues at all!
We would like to thank again to Gigabyte Group for making this review possible!