At first we would like to thank GearBest for supplying us with a sample of the Mlais M7 smartphone for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

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Main Product Features:

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

Here we have in our test labs another smartphone which positions itself in the mainstream-to-high-end category and to be more precise, the Mlais M7; thanks to GearBest we have also received its original accessories, which are the book-type protective case along with an extra Glass Screen Protector:

 

 

 

The smartphone is shipped inside a medium-sized cardboard enclosure, with the manufacturer logo and website address on the top cover:

 

 

 

 

On the side of the packaging, Mlais has placed two stickers, one with the product serial number and another one with the supported system languages and included charger;

 

 

 

The bottom side of the enclosure comes with a sticker which describes us the technical specifications without the so-called “mistakes”:

 

 

 

After removing the top cover, we will find out that the smartphone is additionally wrapped inside a plastic bubble-bag for protection during transit:

 

 

 

Let’s check out the bottom layer and see what the manufacturer has included;

 

 

 

Besides the manual which we have seen in the previous photo, we will also get a power adapter and an USB charging / Data cable:

 

 

 

Inside the manual, we will see in-depth explanations of the smartphone main functions; it will be read mostly by people which haven’t used an Android smartphone before:

 

 

 

The USB cable connectors are pretty standard:

 

 

 

The USB charger is compact and out the output we can see a 5V at 1A rating:

 

 

 

On its top we have the USB port:

 

 

 

The Mlais M7 is available in both black and white versions; on the front we can see the large 5.5-inch HD display which does not consume as much power as the usual Full-HD offerings do and for additional durability the manufacturer has used Gorilla Glass 3:

 

 

 

On the top area of the screen, we will find the 5MP front-facing camera along with the proximity, light and speaker:

 

 

 

Further down we have a central Home button, while the two other buttons are visible only when they light up:

 

 

 

While the glass extends very near to the lateral metallic frame, there is a black frame visible around the screen:

 

 

 

The Mlais M7 is surrounded by a well-machined aluminum frame, which enhances the overall quality of the product; on the bottom area we have the microphone port present:

 

 

 

 

On the right side of the smartphone there are no additional interfaces available:

 

 

 

On the top we can check out the USB port along with the headphone jack:

 

 

 

On the left side we will get to see the Volume rocker along with the Power/Standby button:

 

 

 

 

The back of the M7 is covered with a matte-white soft-touch plastic cover:

 

 

 

On the top area we’ve got the 13MP IMX135 Sony camera sensor lens, the flash LED but also the circular fingerprint reader:

 

 

 

On the lower region we can check out the chromed Mlais logo along with the speaker grill:

 

 

 

Thanks to the small crevice on the side we can remove the back cover with ease in order to check out the internals:

 

 

 

The removal of the battery reveals the central sticker on which the manufacturer has written the supported bands along with both IMEI numbers:

 

 

 

On the top area we’ve got the SIM card slots along with the microSDHC one:

 

 

 

The lower area comes with the antennas, loudspeaker but also the vibration motor:

 

 

 

On the M7 battery we can read its charging voltage limit, but also the total capacity:

 

 

 

After powering up the smartphone and accessing the bottom capacitive buttons, we can also see the Menu and Back buttons, which have an interesting LED light bleed around them:

 

 

 

Let’s check a bit the supplied accessories too; first we could remind of the book-like cover, which follows the design lines of the M7 and also permits taking calls with the screen cover closed:

 

 

 

 

The bottom area is made of semi-transparent hard plastic:

 

 

 

On the back side of the top cover we have soft material, which will not scratch the screen:

 

 

 

Mlais M7 can be attached to the case in a snap:

 

 

 

In stand-by mode, with the top cover on we can see the clock for a brief moment; we can configure this one as analogic or digital on our liking:

 

 

 

 

The Volume rocker and Power/Stand-by buttons are not accessible with the closed cover;

 

 

 

 

Let’s check the other sides of the terminal with the attached cover:

 

 

 

 

 

 

We can observe the almost-perfect cut-outs for the back interfaces:

 

 

 

 

GearBest has also offered the original Mlais M7 Glass Screen Protector, which is supplied inside a transparent plastic case:

 

 

 

This one can be installed only after removing the supplied plastic screen cover and we are also offered some dust absorbers along with clean wipes:

 

 

 

With the Mlais M7 we are getting a stock Android 5.0 experience (which prompted us for an OTA update right after powering up the device) and we can see some icons brought up to the desktop section, along with a custom wallpaper:

 

 

By accessing the drawer, we will see that Mlais has not bloated the ROM with lots of unnecessary applications and has left the decisions to the user; this way we will see more available space for us to use right from the start:

 

 

Let’s begin by describing the apps; the first one is the stock Android Lollipop browser, which is easy to use and we have seen with it good compatibility amongst many websites:

 

 

The Calculator application sports the regular Lollipop skin:

 

 

We can say the same thing about Calendar:

 

 

The Camera application was not further customized and presents itself with the stock appearance; when taking photos we have seen that the “Live view” on this model offers us a lower quality preview than the actual photo which is being shot (which is of good quality as we will see later on in the review):

 

 

Several options can be customized by checking out the small gear icon:

 

 

Next we could remind of the stock Clock application:

 

 

The Contacts application will show both SIM registrations but also the ones stored in Google Contacts service:

 

 

The Downloads icon is just a shortcut to the Downloads folder which is found in the internal storage:

 

 

We can use the Email application for setting up other accounts besides Gmail:

 

 

File Manager is one of the usual applications which come with MTK smartphones:

 

 

The FM Radio app will work properly only after we connect a pair of headphones/earphones which wire will be used as an antenna:

 

 

Next we have the Gallery application which will index respective files and create thumbnails for easy browsing:

 

 

The Gmail application is easy to use and preinstalled with the Mlais M7 ROM:

 

 

We can say the same thing about the Google Maps application, which shows us locations all around the world and is also equipped with navigation functions:

 

 

From the Messaging application we can send SMS messages to different contacts:

 

 

The Music app is also quite usual and after a small indexing procedure, it will display the suitable files organized in different tabs:

 

 

From the Phone application we can dial different numbers, access contact list or view the registered contacts:

 

 

Play Store is quite self-explanatory:

 

 

Next we have Sound Recorder which uses the MIC for recording certain sounds:

 

 

The Settings app is the place we need to go in order to configure system-wide options:

 

 

From the Wi-Fi area we can connect to the nearby networks, given that we have the correct credentials:

 

 

The Bluetooth menu permits pairing with devices which support the same technology:

 

 

The SIM cards menu enables itself when we have SIMs installed and more options are available while the dual-SIM function is enabled:

 

 

The Data Usage section will show us the current data traffic:

 

 

From the More menu, we can enable Airplane mode, choose the default SMS-sending application, enable Tethering & portable hotspot, work with VPNs and more:

 

 

The Display menu allows adjusting the Brightness level, enable the Adaptive brightness function depending on ambient light, set the screen Sleep function, enable Daydream and more:

 

 

From the Sound & notification menu, we can observe the preset profiles, which can be modified individually; here we also have some separate sub-menus like Notification, Interruptions and Sound enhancement:

 

 

Here is what we can adjust per each profile:

 

 

Notification

 

 

Interruptions

 

 

Sound enhancement

 

 

The Storage menu allows choosing the default disk between Phone storage and SD card, but also shows the remaining free space on each partition:

 

 

The Battery menu comes with the Standby intelligent power saving option and here we will be also able to see which functions/applications consume battery resources the most:

 

 

From the Apps sub-menu, we can see each installed application and how much storage space they take; the same menu can be used as a Task Manager:

 

 

Fingerprint scanner is the alternative recognition feature which makes use of the back sensor; we found this feature as working perfectly fine and if the function is not triggered correctly, the smartphone also gives us the secondary option to unlock the smartphone:

 

 

Off-Screen Gestures are also available and through them we could remind the usual Double tap, Swipe up for unlocking the screen automatically and more:

 

 

The Location area allows us to make use of the hardware GPS:

 

 

The Security menu is pretty standard and does not add extra options; the function we will use the most frequently here is “Unknown sources” for allowing installation of applications outside of Play Store:

 

 

The Accounts sub-section will list the currently registered (logged-in) accounts inside the smartphone:

 

 

The Language & input menu allows us to select the system language, adjust the Spell checker, Personal dictionary or choose the default keyboard; here we also have other options available like Voice input, Text-to-speech output and more:

 

 

From the Backup & reset menu we can always bring the device to factory defaults:

 

 

The Date & time menu is pretty self-explanatory:

 

 

Schedule power on & off menu is present on each and every MTK ROM:

 

 

The Accessibility menu comes with the usual options:

 

 

From the Printing section we can see related services:

 

 

Developer options menu is enabled for accessing custom settings:

 

 

Finally, we have the About phone menu which allows us to perform OTA updates, but here we can also see the currently installed Android version, the Baseband version, Kernel version, Build number and more:

 

 

The MT6752 is one of the latest 64-bit SoCs from MediaTek which is designed to run on screens up to 1080p and comes with eight A53 cores running between 1.7 and 2.0Ghz (in our case 1.7GHz). For the 3D interface we have the Mali – T760 GPU running at 700MHz and the SoC is paired with no less than 3GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which is available in a single partition.

 

 

The System tab will supply us more information regarding the board type, Android version, kernel, resolution, free memory and so on:

 

 

The Battery tab will show the current status; the battery sensor is operating properly, unlike some other terminals we have checked out previously:

 

 

The new Thermal tab will update us with the live temperatures in different areas:

 

 

The application also shows live data from the available sensors:

 

 

To test out the performances of the Mlais M7 smartphone in more detail, we have installed some freeware benchmark apps from the Google Play Store in the internal memory (did not transfer them to a 3rd party microSDHC card, in order not to influence the test results). Afterwards, the applications were ran one-by-one, and we recorded the final scores; the obtained results were also compared with the previously tested systems, in order to spot the performance differences.

 

AnTuTu

 

 

Basemark GUI

 

 

 

GFXBench

 

 

Quadrant

 

 

Vellamo

 

 

3DMark

 

 

Real Pi

 

PCMark

 

 

The M7 model is equipped with a Sony IMX135 sensor for the back shooter and is able to produce awesome photos when the light conditions are optimal (including macros); however, when we do not have enough lighting and insist on taking photos without the included flash, we may experience loss of detail and focus.

 

Of course, you can always check out the full-resolution, unaltered versions at this LINK.

As it can be seen from the following shots, the HD 5.5’’ IPS display of the Mlais M7 can be viewed from different angles without issues and the colors of the screen do not get altered.

 

 

Now it is time to wrap up, get to the final details and draw a conclusion; the Mlais M7 smartphone has given us an overall pleasant experience thanks to its high-quality build and system performance. Speaking about the performance, the MT6752 SoC is able to deliver quite a bit especially when it is paired with HD displays so we were able to score over 47K in AnTuTu. The total of 3GB of RAM helps running multiple applications while the included 16GB of internal storage should be enough for most people to install their favorite applications without the need to install an extra microSDHC card, at least in the first stage. The fingerprint sensor works decent and we were not able to fool it by trying other fingerprints in order to unlock the device, which is impressive.

 

Regarding the battery life, the 2600mAh rechargeable battery should be able to supply enough juice for the device to last a full day of regular usage; however, we have seen that the device heats up pretty quickly on the upper area (where the motherboard resides) and also a bit when the device is charging. We think that this is mostly a software issue which should be fixed with the next OTA Android 5.0 or Android 5.1 updates.

 

 

 

The GPS locks in quite fast and we haven’t seen any issues like speed spikes while tracking with it; however, using the M7 along with Runkeeper/Runtastic seems to consume quite a bit of battery life.

 

 

 

As additional accessories we have available the book-type protective cover which is quite elegant and is meant to protect our investment for a long time; also, if we do not really enjoy the preinstalled plastic screen protector, we also have the option to acquire the original Mlais Glass Screen Protector, which will offer even more eye candy to the device, besides the protection element.

 

Now to the negative points: we are not having, at least at the current moment a notification LED available, which is really handy in many situations. Also, we feel that the fingerprint reader could have been smaller and located in the Home button area on the front since we would be unable to unlock the device with it while M7 sits on the table (we always need to lift it up and perform the procedure). The third point would be that while the glass extends very close to the metallic frame, the screen is smaller and we can see the black margins all around the screen.

 

 

 

The Mlais M7 is available at GearBest at a very interesting price point and to be more exact $189.99, which would make it a very interesting choice when deciding to purchase a new smartphone.

 

Mlais M7 Smartphone is Recommended For:

 

We would like to thank again to GearBest for making this review possible!