Every manufacturer of mobile gadgets considers it a rule to have at least one smartphone of the budget price range in its lineup. Such a policy allows taking into account the interests of the middle and low-income segments of the population, because not everyone can afford to buy a flagship or even an average model of the same Samsung company.
Under the Fly brand, budget tablets and smartphones are produced by the Russian-British company Meridian Group Ltd. The main sales markets are countries such as Russia, Ukraine and India. Given the demand for cheap mobile phones and smartphones by users of these countries, in August 2017, Meridian Group announced an extra-budget phone model - Fly FS458 Stratus 7. User reviews about this device are ambiguous, but despite the negative, the device is popular with buyers primarily because of low price (2900 Russian rubles at the start of sales). Let's analyze the pros and cons of this smartphone, and see if it is worth the little money that the manufacturer asks for it.
Positioning
The smartphone is intended primarily for a buyer who has a low income, but does not want to be on the sidelines of progress. Some users in their reviews of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 smartphone indicate that they bought it for their children, primary school students. In this case, even if the child breaks such a device, no one will worry much about him.
Many buyers, already owning an expensive smartphone, purchase a similar device as a second, working phone.
Package, design and first impressions
Smartphone package is very modest, which is not surprising. It includes the following items:
- smartphone Fly FS458 Stratus 7;
- power adapter;
- microUSB cable;
- a brief user manual describing the main functions of the machine;
- warranty card.
Nothing extra was put in the box, but at this price it is acceptable.
Well, let's take a closer look at the hero of the review. Despite its budget, the device has an attractive design. The phone is a rectangular brick with neatly rounded corners.
Most of the front panel is occupied by a small display. Above the screen are the front camera, earpiece and proximity sensor. Under the display are control touch buttons, deprived of backlight.
Rear cover plastic, removable,its edges are wrapped on the ends of the smartphone. On the back panel of the device are located: in the upper part - the head camera and LED flash, in the lower part - the main speaker, in the center - the brand logo. The back cover of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to reviews, is extremely reluctant to open, despite the special hook in the lower right corner.
At the top end of the device there is a headphone jack and a microUSB connector, at the bottom there is only a speaking microphone.
On the right side of the smartphone case are the lock and volume buttons, the left is pristine.
Colour options for the case are black, red and gold. According to reviews, the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 smartphone in golden color looks much more interesting than in black or red.
Smartphone dimensions: length - 135 mm, width - 6 mm, thickness - 10.3 mm. The device weighs 124 grams. The device is small, the pocket will not delay, except that it is a bit thick.
Screen
The smartphone is equipped with a TFT matrix display. Screen diagonal - 4.5 inches, resolution - 480x854 pixels. Budget, but such is life, and if you take into account the cost of the device, then everything falls into place. Due to the small diagonal of the display, individual pixels of the picture are not striking.
The color reproduction of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 Black smartphone screen, according to reviews, is acceptable. Viewing angles are adequate, however, at a strong deviation, the image fades and inverts colors.
Screen supports 2 multitouchtouch, protective glass is not closed.
Performance
The manufacturer managed to get somewhere a batch of old dual-core Mediatek MT6570 processors with a frequency of 1300 MHz. This solution allows you to reduce the cost of a smartphone and reduce power consumption, but the performance of the unit suffers greatly. Playing any serious games will not work normally.
Does not contribute to the speed of the device and the amount of RAM in 512 MB.
The size of the built-in storage is 8 GB (half of this volume is available to the user). Use of microSD memory cards is supported.
It is noteworthy that the device uses a fairly modern Android 6 operating system. This can be written as an advantage of the device. True, due to the small amount of RAM, when opening several applications, there are jerks in the operation of the interface.
Camera, sound
The optical component of Fly FS458 Stratus 7 black, according to customer reviews, will not surprise you with anything. The main camera is equipped with a matrix with a resolution of 5 megapixels, there is no autofocus. Under ideal conditions for shooting - outdoors in sunny weather with a certain skill, you can get photos of quite tolerable quality, but nothing more.
The front camera has a resolution of only 2 megapixels. It is hardly suitable for selfie lovers, the pictures are of very mediocre quality, but you can use it for Skype video calls.
The main speaker of the devicequite loud, it's hard to miss a call, but it's better not to use it for listening to music. The headphones sound better, the frequency range lacks fullness, but for a picky user it is enough.
Wireless modules, navigation and communications
Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to reviews, has a standard set of wireless interfaces: Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 n.
The smartphone also received a GPS module with A-GPS support. "Cold" start of the navigation system takes 1-2 minutes. The connection with satellites is stable, the signal is not lost while moving.
The phone can work with two SIM-cards, one of them has a regular size, the second is micro. The connection quality is good. As expected, the smartphone did not receive support for 4G (LTE) networks.
Autonomy
The device received a 1750 mAh battery. In modern realities, this is not a high figure, but given the fact that the smartphone has a small screen with a low resolution and a weak processor, the device was expected to have an average uptime. So, basically, it worked. The average battery life of Fly FS458 Stratus 7, according to reviews, in various modes is as follows:
- waiting state - about 10 days;
- talk time - 4-5 hours;
- video content playback - 3-4 hours;
- listening to music - 25-30 hours.
Autonomy indicators are not impressive, especially since the actual capacity of the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 battery, according to some users, does not correspond to the declared one and amounts to 1200-1400 mAh at the most.
In the bottom line
And what does the user get in the end? Frankly speaking, the device turned out to be very weak, even despite the democratic price. This in no way means that the device is not in demand: it has its own target audience. Reviews about the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 are more positive, although there are also angry responses regarding the slow operation of the device and a weak camera. By the way, among the negative posts about this device on the forums there are clearly biased statements: they say, I bought the device for 2900 rubles, but it does not have LTE and the camera is not 13 megapixels.
You can't call a device anything at all, many people are satisfied with the phone. It has an interesting nice design. There are 3 body color options. By the way, according to reviews, the Fly FS458 Stratus 7 smartphone in black does not look as interesting as its golden brother. In any case, if the buyer is completely satisfied with the functionality, design and price, the phone can be recommended for purchase.
