Highscreen Omega Q and Spark at a Glance - Savings Must Be Silent

Another female look :)

Frankly: I do not really like extra-budget devices, whether it’s phones, laptops or tablets. As a rule, they are equipped with an illiquid “iron”, assembled with the left foot and are mercilessly buggy. Therefore, the new low-cost smartphones Highscreen - Omega Q and Spark - came up extremely tough. And this is what came of it.


Perhaps the most famous smartphone of this brand is Explosion, the “brother” of the Samsung Galaxy SIII with a noticeably reduced cost. He deftly positioned himself as the most affordable device with a quad-core processor, and at that time it was true. Now his place was taken by Omega Q, for which they want 8,990 rubles. - three thousand less. It is logical to assume that much has changed in it.

At first sight

The first difference is immediately apparent - the box. She is not like everyone else, including the new Spark. The corporate identity (cardboard box of “cardboard” color with a lid) was changed for some reason, not beyond recognition, but strongly: now the main part, and the white one, comes out from under the lid, like a desk drawer. The cover itself did not change color, and the phone with the inscribed insides is still painted, but it is plastic and completely smooth to the touch. Of course, most buyers will contact her only in the first hours after the purchase, but still this transformation looks rather strange.

The second surprise awaits us inside the box. As you know, Highscreen smartphones are equipped with a charger and headphones. So, now they are white! This, of course, is beautiful and fashionable (it’s not in vain that the flagships paint it so), they only get dirty faster and not everyone likes the combination with the black case. But the quality of the headphones has become better, you can no longer replace them with others. And for some reason I also have these accessories associated with apple products ...

Appearance

Omega Q is slightly longer and thinner than Explosion (9 mm versus 9.9), the corners are not so rounded, and the back cover is glossy.

The silver frame on the sides and ends gives the smartphone elegance, and there are buttons (power on top, volume on the right) and connectors (mini-jack 3.5 mm for headphones on top, microUSB on the bottom).




IPS-display - 4.5 inches, resolution 960 x 540 pixels. It feels exactly the same as the Highscreen Blast, which is slightly cheaper and more modest in characteristics. The sun fades a little, but the backlight is bright and uniform, and the colors are juicy, but quite realistic.

Opportunities

Here it is, the cornerstone of positioning: the quad-core Qualcomm MSM8225Q Snapdragon S4 Play with a frequency of 1.2 GHz. It's no secret that recently we pay more attention to the frequency and “nuclearity” of the processor in a smartphone than in a computer (well, who remembers the performance characteristics of your PC or MacBook by heart?). It really works faster than the dual-core Blast, which is especially noticeable when playing HD-videos from YouTube. Do not forget about gigabytes of RAM, and Android 4.1 and promised updates add a lot of points to the internal beauty of Highscreen Omega Q. In terms of performance, it outperforms the same Samsung Galaxy Note, this is clearly seen in the AnTuTu benchmark.


Interestingly, almost nothing was cut out of the smartphone to reduce the cost of production. GPS, two SIM cards, Bluetooth 3.0 - everything is there. Only the battery and the front camera were unlucky. However, I can’t say that 1,600 mAh behaved much worse than 2,100 in my Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone: Highscreen takes care of energy conservation. But the peephole of the front camera produces only 640 x 480 pixels (0.3 megapixels), which is hardly enough for Skype. They will consider a person, but if you want to show a document or something small, they begin to ask again. The main camera with five megapixels feels no worse than eight in other Highscreen smartphones, so I won’t find fault here.
There may not be enough internal memory. 2.7 GB is available, but there is a microSD card slot (16 GB reads without problems). My requests are modest: some music, several hundred photographs, and a new series of "The Big Bang Theories" for viewing on the subway. But if you need to keep a dozen films there, navigation and a bunch of games - put in the budget 500-1000 rubles per card.

Highscreen spark

Before making conclusions, I will tell about the younger brother of Omega Q - Highscreen Spark. They are together in press releases and even for a test issued in pairs, because Spark is now the cheapest smartphone with a dual-core processor (3,990 rubles).
In many ways, it resembles the Strike model, differing in design and details: a camera without autofocus, a thicker body (it seemed to me more convenient), there is no separate search button, which is typical for more expensive Highscreen smartphones.

Facial features ... that is, appearances are common, his design is not outstanding, but he looks quite in the spirit of the times and certainly more expensive than he is estimated. At the bottom, the case becomes thinner, which reminded me of the old-fashioned and incredibly fashionable at the time clamshell Motorola PEBL U6. True, she did not have a 4-inch screen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels.
There are few external controls: power and volume.





The specifications are modest by today's standards (Qualcomm MSM8225 processor with a frequency of 1 GHz, 512 MB of RAM), but for the economy class - just right. At least, you can play Subway Surfers without any problems, and it pulls the streaming video as it should. In the AnTuTu test, the smartphone scored 6003 points.
For fans of optimizing communication costs, there is a second SIM card slot.

A spoon of tar

Well, you can not mention separately the disadvantages of the models. First of all, design. When choosing a smartphone, girls are always greedy for design. Even if the brand is not the most famous, but the phone is outwardly noticeable and attractive - they will buy it. Highscreen Spark outwardly does not cause any emotion at all, Omega Q is quite thin, but overall also devoid of any zest. However, budget smartphones for the most part do not indulge in designer excesses, right?

There is one subjective claim to the assembly: in Omega Q and Spark it is inconvenient to open the back cover, there is almost nothing to cling to. But I’m rearranging SIM cards back and forth, and many will climb inside once.
I would like more memory (or a card in the kit) - it is inexpensive, especially in bulk, and caring for small things is always pleasant. I want all kinds of covers and “second skins” to change the design according to my mood (black is a universal color, but with personalization it’s not very good yet).

PS Here's a short review. A more detailed review of Highscreen Omega Q in the near future will be posted by my friend Alex_Smartgadget. And let this material be a brief tour of the new models of the Highscreen brand :) By the way, he has a shovel. Nobody used it?