Review of Ninetology Black Pearl 2 i940

With the likes of Samsung Galaxy S3 , Iphone 5 ,Sony Xperia Z dominating the much saturated smartphone markets now , the Ninetology Black Pearl 2 i940 seems to be unlikely underdog . In fact , if you ask people , most probably 9/10 of those people have never heard of this Ninetology brand of smartphone before . However , emphasizing on their affordable price tag and good value of money , this smartphone company from Sabah , Malaysia is slowly making its mark in the market.

Recently , thanks to the RM 200 rebate for smartphones by the government ( Pakej Komunikasi Belia ) and also RM 100 rebate by the manufacturer , I manage to get this beautiful , curvaceous Ninetology Black Pearl 2 i940 for a cool price tag of only RM 299 ( RRP : RM 599 ) . Today , I will be doing a review of this phone . Details of how and where I get this phone is at the end of the review.

Screenshot taken from my phone.

Build
The Black Pearl 2 have a 4in display screen that nearly rivals that S3’s 4.8in display . The size of the phone is in between iPhone 5 and S3 . Measuring a dimension of 127mm x 65.5mm x 9.9mm , one can hold it comfortably in one hand with ease .


Screen
With a resolution of 800 x 480 ( WXGA ) , obviously it cannot compete with the likes of Super AMOLED HD display of S3 , but then again , it is not so bad as unbearable , in fact , in my humble opinion , it processes the graphic quite well . Running on a Dual-core 1Ghz processor , its IPS Capacitive Screen detects motion quite well too . There’s no laggy or jerky delayed feeling when I was scrolling and browsing web .


Features

This is where Black Pearl 2 stands out , frankly , a lot of phones with that range of price tag ( RM500-800 ) are lacking in features , but not this phone . Black Pearl 2 uses the latest version of Android , 4.04 ( Ice Cream Sandwich ) , which makes it capable of a lot of customization and handling a lot of applications . The latest OS doesn’t just offer yet another tempting-sounding treat to get our mouths watering. It’s a whole new interface which is redesigned throughout in contrast to previous iterations which have felt like layer after layer glued on top of the previous code.

Screenshot from my phone's home screen.

As mentioned earlier , BP 2 runs on a 1GHz MT6577 Dual Core Cortex-A9 Processor + 512MB RAM , which makes it perfectly capable of handling multi-tasking and takes on whatever tasks that Android 4.04 can handle . Personally , I have tried playing music on the background while surfing graphic-intensive websites at the same time and it handles them perfectly well . In their official youtube channel , they have tested visually demanding game , Dead Trigger on the BP 2 , and the end result is quite fine , as you can see from the video below .

Although they officially market it as a 5MP camera, in their camera settings , it is shown that they can take up to 8MP quality pictures . Additionally , it also comes with a face detection , auto focus and LED flash features. . It supports video recording , MP4/3GP/AVI/MPEG video format as well as MP3/MIDI/AMR/WAV/AAC audio format.

As far as their connectivity goes , it supports WCDMA 900/2,100MHz radios , Wi-Fi , and Bluetooth .

Now ,despite all the good stuffs that I have mentioned above , BP2 is not without imperfection . For one thing , its resolution pales in comparison of most smartphones with 4in display .If you just put it side by side with let’s say Samsung S plus , the difference is prominent .Next , its battery life is quite short . In my personal experience , with just LINE messenger app and wi-fi running , it lasted me for just 2 hours or less . Even without any application that requires Internet connection , a fully charged battery lasted only 4 hours by just playing around with the applications . Of course , I could be wrong as I haven’t fully explored the applications and ways to save battery life , but as it is , without any tinkering or modification being done , its battery life is satisfactory at best .

Also , its GPS seems to be abit lacking in finding locations efficiently . With all the settings ticked ( including utilizing Google's location service , GPS satellites , using assisted GPS and Location & Google Search ) , it still fail to detect my location even after 30 minutes .
What a shame . I hope the developers will be doing something about this .  

Conclusion

All in all , Ninetology Black Pearl 2 i940 is a great phone considering its value of money . ( Seriously , RM 299 for a 4in display smartphone thats runs on a 1Ghz dual core processor with the latest Android ? Where else can you get such a deal ? )

Pros

-       Affordable price tag

-       Great Value of money ( even without the rebates, RM599 is still a good price for its features )

-       Feature packed

-       Runs the latest Android

-       Handles multi-tasking smoothly

Cons

-       Short Battery Life

-       Mediocre resolution
-       GPS seems to be taking forever to find my location

I got my Black Pearl 2 at Lot A23-24, Ground Floor ( MTECH ) in Prangin Mall , Penang island . The RRP for this phone is RM 599 , however with manufacturer’s RM 100 rebate and also the RM 200 rebate from the government ( Apply at skmm.gov.my , print the receipt and show it to certified dealer to get the rebate ) . Furthermore , if you buy it now , you will be entitled to receive a complementary Digi Smart Plan prepaid sim card worth RM 25 ( bundled together with the phone , the plan have 300 MB free internet , minutes of free voice call and free mms ) . Thanks to that , I am now a proud owner of a Malaysian brand smartphone . I dare say that in the entire campus , only a few have smartphones made by this local company .

sample of pics taken using BP2 's camera. 

Second picture taken under 8MP setting. 

The sad thing is , our local brands have always been stereotypically referred to as the more inferior products , as opposed to the more overpriced , yet offers much or less the same functionalities products sold by the more “branded” foreign companies . It is true that some of the products sold by local companies are slightly defective and inferior , however , just because of these few bad apples , we shouldn’t stereotype the rest and avoid them . I would urge you all , fellow Malaysians especially , to give this brand a try , and even if it doesn’t work out in the end ( touch woo ) , hey it’s just RM 299 . If you can afford to spend thousands of ringgits on a perfectly overpriced foreign brand , I am sure spending an extra RM 299 to get a new smartphone won’t hurt right ?

* Note that this message is intended for those people who are wealthy enough to spend a lot on overpriced foreign brands , and never tried a local product before , yet scorns those people who can only afford these affordable local brand . Personally , I think RM 299 is quite a big sum already , but it is a good value of money and I definitely needed a smartphone so I bought it ! :D *

That's all for now , will update if there's any other relevant information ! Thanks for reading :)

*UPDATE*
I went to the their service center in 4th Floor, Low Yat Plaza and updated my firmware to version 16 . Now, the Talk Time is improved to around 17 hours , which is roughly equivalent to that of an average smartphone . So far,  I am quite satisfied with its battery performance . Note that if you are interested in having a better performance , you can actually root it and personally customize the cpu processing speed and etc ( deleting useless system apps ) . I will post about how to root it in the next post . Stay Tuned ! :

Their service center