Unboxing the Cubot Z100
Who would have thought, even the Cubot Z100 will be delivered in the typical Cubot box. As usual with Cubot, the delivery includes a matching plastic case and a screen protector. A screen protector is incidentally already applied. Often, however, these are in the production dirty and applied with Staubeinschlüssen, which is why you have at least a replacement with the additional screen protector. Also included was a charger (5V 1A), a micro USB data or charging cable and a multilingual user manual. Although the operating instructions are in German, they are sometimes formulated incomprehensibly.
Externally, the Cubot Z100 makes a good impression. The brushed aluminum frame with the likewise aluminum control buttons is well made and looks high quality. The control buttons (volume rocker and power button) are fixed and even with fast movements I could not detect any unpleasant rattling. At the upper edge of the case there is an 3.5mm jack audio output, at the lower edge of the case a micro USB socket is attached.
The 2.5D curved glass is also nice, as a result of which the edge of the display is not too strict, but slightly rounded. There are also three capacitive buttons below the display. These do not have a backlight, but are visibly embedded in the front.
The back is made of plastic and is removable. Due to the finely grooved design, the Cubot Z100 looks not only damn good on the back, it also fits better in the hand. Depending on how the back is turned in the light, the grooved structure changes its appearance. Incidentally, the same back has also been used on the Cubot P11! In addition, there is an 13 megapixel camera on the back, an LED flash and a loudspeaker.
If you open the back, the 2450mAh battery comes to light. Above there are two SIM slots, on the left the micro SD card slot.
My first impression of the Cubot Z100 is quite good. Good workmanship and a great design are not everything ...
Display
The Cubot Z100 has an IPS HD display (1280x720) with 2.5D curved glass. With "Curved Glass" the edges of the display are slightly rounded, which contributes above all to the design. According to the display tester app, the DPI number is 320. The colors of the display are really very strong, my taste is rather too bright. If you like oversaturated and bright colors à la Samsung or AMOLED display, you will really enjoy the Cubot Z100! Alternatively, "MiraVision" was added in the settings of the Z100, which not only allows you to adjust the color saturation and color temperature, but also the contrast, image brightness and sharpness can be individually adjusted with MiraVision. With MiraVison I was able to conjure up more pleasant colors on the display.
The maximum brightness of the display is good. The viewing angle stability is commensurate with the price. However, with stronger, vertical inclination, I could clearly see that the colors were slightly distorted. The readability of the display was nevertheless good from all angles.
Five fingers Multi-Touch are no problem for the touch screen of the Cubot Z100. Also with regard to the accuracy of the touch screen, I could not find anything negative during the test. Inputs were recognized exactly.
Performance
Every year Cubot also uses a Mediatek MTK6735 quad-core with a clock rate of 1.0GHz for this smartphone. The RAM is 1GB, the internal memory is 16GB. The performance is good and is completely sufficient for everyday browsing of the WWW or WhatsAppen. Inefficient games (Angry Birds and Co.) are also possible with the Cubot Z100. However, the smartphone reaches its limits in hardware-intensive games. Apps open as quickly as possible.
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- CPU-Z
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- AnTuTu Benchmark
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- 3DMark benchmark
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- Geekbench Benchmark
user interface
As used by Cubot, the Cubot Z100 also uses an "almost" clean stock Android 5.1 Lollipop. Only the Clean Master App from Cheetah Mobile is again pre-installed as a third-party app. Incidentally, the app is on every newer Cubot smartphone, as the manufacturer has partnered with "Cheetah Mobile" (Cheetah-Phone can greet!). Uninstall the app via the App Manager.
Also the settings menu of the Cubot Z100 has been extended. In addition to MiraVision, the smartphone also has the functions "Smart Wake" and "Gesture Sensing". Among other things, it can be used to wake up individual apps via the switched-off screen, or by swiping across the display, you can switch through the App Drawer, trigger the camera, etc. The smartphone OTA (Over-The-Air) can be updated.
Camera
The Cubot Z100 has an 13 megapixel rear camera and an 8 megapixel front camera. These are of course interpolated values. The actual resolution of the sensors is 8 and 5 megapixels. The rear camera also has an auto focus and an LED flash. The camera app uses the well-known Mediatek camera app.
The recordings with the rear camera of the Z100 could not convince me in the practical test. Auto focus is slow and rarely focuses accurately. The LED flash is rather sparse. The camera is still in line with the price. If the lighting is good, the pictures are definitely useful. In poor lighting conditions, the camera also becomes sluggish and the images appear noisy without a flash. Despite the active image stabilization, I found it incredibly difficult to take a clean shot.
In comparison, the front camera has promised me earlier. With this I was able to achieve beautiful selfies.
Cubot Z100 rear camera
Telephony, WLAN and Bluetooth
In the LTE network, the Cubot Z100 is doing quite well. All LTE bands required in the German network are supported. There were no performance dips or unexpected connection breaks. The telephony was clear and understandable with this smartphone.
Incidentally, the dual SIM function can be fully utilized with this smartphone. There was no hybrid slot installed, so you do not have to release a SIM slot for the eventual memory expansion.
When Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, I noticed nothing negative regarding the Cubot Z100. The connections were stable and the range average.
GPS
The GPS of the Cubot Z100 could be a bit better. The GPS fix lasted for a comparatively long time, as well as the signal was not stable throughout. For permanent navigation, I would not use this smartphone.
Battery
The capacity of the battery is 2450mAh. In the battery benchmark, this small battery is a real force. With almost 9 hours, 30 minutes, the small battery puts so many other smartphone with a larger battery easily into the bag. This shows that Cubot has adapted the operating system well to the hardware.
Even in the practical test, I was able to get through the day well with normal use. Even in the evening I still had enough remaining battery to just about get by on the second day.
Cubot Z100
High quality manufacturing
Design of the back
Good performance
Clean Android 5.1
Good display
Front camera
main camera
GPS
The Cubot Z100 is a mix of the Cubot P11 and P12. Despite many improvements over the previous models, the Z100 could not convince me solely with the camera. I was also skeptical about the display at first, but with some adjustments within MiraVision, I was able to get the most out of the display for me. If you can do without a good camera or shoot spontaneous shots, you will still be offered a solid entry-level smartphone.
