China Mobile A4s review: Extreme simplicity and great experience are king

　　[China Mobile Review] With the upgrading of consumption, users have higher and higher requirements for electronic consumer products such as mobile phones. In addition, the explosive launch of full-screen mobile phones in 2017 has made users more and more recognized and fond of full-screen phones. China Mobile A4s was born in this context, positioned as a full-screen product in the 700-1000 yuan range. Let's take a look at how this affordable product performs.

First Look

The gold version is what I got this time. In fact, many people may be curious about why a thousand-yuan phone is designed in gold? In fact, there is data to support this. According to a mobile phone retail index report released by D.Phone in March, gold is the mainstream choice of people in the thousand-yuan phone segment, accounting for 47.4%. The gold color of China Mobile A4s is quite unique. It is not too eye-catching but not ordinary. The back cover of the body adopts a symmetrical design, with the flash, dual cameras, fingerprint, and China Mobile logo arranged vertically in sequence. This is also the design adopted by many current machines, such as Huawei's Mate RS Porsche Design and the OnePlus 6 mobile phone released on May 17, both of which adopt a similar design, and the overall look and feel looks more layered.

The SIM card slot of China Mobile A4s is placed on the left side of the phone, and the volume button and power button are placed on the right side. Through actual experience, the layout of the power and volume buttons conforms to the ergonomic design, and there will be no accidental touches or failures when holding and pressing. The microphone and speaker are placed at the bottom of the body, and the speaker is placed on the right side of the bottom. This design will not cause the speaker to be covered by the hand when playing games in horizontal mode.

The front of the China Mobile A4s is equipped with a 5.7-inch 18:9 HD full screen, with a screen-to-body ratio of up to 82%. The advantage of using a full screen is that it can display more details, making you unable to stop when watching videos or playing games. The upper and lower parts adopt a symmetrical design, which is also a very classic design method in the era of full screens. It is deeply loved by many large manufacturers, which can ensure the symmetry of the front view. The white front panel looks very neat, with the earpiece, sensor, and camera arranged on the forehead in order, while the bottom of the body is transparent white without any flaws.

When you pick up this phone, the 8.4mm thickness makes it look very thin and light. One of the design highlights of China Mobile A4s is the frame treatment. The integrated design of the frame and the back cover will not cause any corners to hurt your hands, making it more comfortable to use. Since it is an integrated design, there will be no embarrassment of inserting an A4 paper into the frame.

See also Configuration

China Mobile A4s uses an octa-core high-performance processor, a rear 13MP + 2MP dual camera, a front 8MP wide-angle lens, and supports automatic beauty. China Mobile A4s has two versions: 32/3GB and 16/2GB. It also supports microSD memory cards, 2.4GHz & 5GHz Wi-Fi, etc. The phone is equipped with a 3300 mAh battery, which can meet daily use for a day. If you are a light user, you can have a longer battery life. In addition, the phone is also equipped with Android 7.0 system, which can smoothly cope with daily use. Even the 2GB version can be used very well. Some people may wonder whether China Mobile A4s, as a mobile brand mobile phone, only supports mobile? Of course not. China Mobile A4s is the same as the mainstream all-network mobile phones in the market. It supports China Mobile 4G+ network, dual SIM dual standby, and supports China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom 4G/3G/2G, but cannot support two telecom cards at the same time.

System UI Evaluation

Multifunctional fingerprint

As the soul of a mobile phone, the system bears the important responsibility of interacting with users every day. A comfortable and simple system UI can subtly influence the user's usage habits and can save a lot of unnecessary time invisibly. China Mobile A4s is deeply customized based on the Android 7.0 system and is handy to use. With the rear fingerprint recognition, a variety of extended functions can be realized. Including long press fingerprint to answer calls, single fingerprint to take photos, long press fingerprint to stop the alarm, and pull down the status bar with fingerprint. One advantage of the rear fingerprint is that it can develop more derivative functions compared to the front fingerprint.

Intimate tips

If a mobile phone can add some small functions, it can increase the playability of the phone. Now I will tell you about some small functions that China Mobile A4s brings to you.

Screen off operation

In life, many people are accustomed to using a double-click gesture to light up the screen, especially for mobile phones with rear fingerprints. It is a bit difficult to light up the screen after placing it on the desktop. However, if the "double-click to light up the screen" function is added, the user can easily light up the screen with two taps, saving time and effort.

Screen off gesture

The cool screen-off gesture can attract a lot of people's attention. Draw a mysterious letter on the dark screen, and then it's time to witness the birth of a miracle. It is worth noting that the screen-off gesture can be customized to open the functions you want, including but not limited to taking pictures, browsing, making calls, sending messages, recording, listening to music and other operations.

Two-finger pull-out display is commonly used

For people who have a lot of mobile apps, it may take a lot of time to find a certain app they want to open in a hurry. However, China Mobile A4s has a function that allows you to pull out the screen with two fingers to display the most commonly used apps. This way, you can perfectly realize the quick opening of historical apps in the near future, saving you a lot of time!

Performance Evaluation

One of the biggest pain points for people using Android phones is the lag problem. In this test, the editor will first test the APP startup speed and page sliding and chirality of China Mobile A4s.

As for the APP startup speed, the editor has selected several mainstream APPs for test for your reference. According to the editor's own experience, China Mobile A4s has a very fast startup speed for mainstream shopping APPs such as Taobao and JD.com, game APP Happy Candy Crush, short video APP TikTok, video playback APP iQiyi and Tencent. There is basically no lag on the APP response interface after clicking the APP.

For the test of page sliding and hand tracking, the editor selected system-level sliding and sliding within the APP for testing. During the test, the China Mobile A4s had good hand tracking and no lag occurred.

For stand-alone games, the editor selected the currently very popular Happy Candy Crush for testing. The download and installation speeds were very fast. After opening Candy Crush, after a few rounds of playing, the game elimination screen did not freeze, the game level loading did not freeze, and the body did not heat up after playing Candy Crush for a long time. Stand-alone game link - the evaluation passed.

As for online games, the editor selected the classic mobile gunfight game CF CrossFire for testing. Because the game itself is relatively large (more than 700 MB), it is not as fast as ordinary APPs when installed, but it was successfully installed. After successfully entering the game, China Mobile A4s performed very smoothly in shooting, aiming, perspective switching and other aspects, and the overall gaming experience was satisfactory. So the online game part - the evaluation passed.

Battery life review

Since China Mobile A4s is equipped with a 3300 mAh battery, it has excellent performance in terms of battery life. After trial use, after a full charge in the morning, a day of moderate use consumes about 80% of the power. You can charge it at night when you go to bed, so you can charge it once a day. If you are a light user, you can use it for two days without any pressure. Pure standby is very power-saving. The editor tried it and found that the power consumption was about 5% in 20 hours of pure standby, which is still very good.

In terms of charging, because there is no fast charging, it may be a bit slower, and it can be fully charged in about 2.5 hours. Because of the large battery, the usage time is longer, so users usually charge it at night. Although there is no fast charging, it can still be fully charged after waking up from a sleep. To a certain extent, the slow charging can be ignored.

Photo review

China Mobile A4s has a 13MP + 2MP dual camera on the back, which has an inherent advantage over a single camera in terms of photography. The 2MP secondary camera can achieve hardware-level blur effects, and can produce artistic blur effects when taking portraits. It is also good at taking pictures of scenery, let's take a look at the sample photos below.

When shooting scenery, the colors of buildings, green trees and sky are restored relatively realistically. When the buildings in the distance are zoomed in, the words on the buildings can still be seen clearly. The overall picture is clear without loss of details. The scenery photography evaluation passes.

When using the rear-camera portrait mode to shoot a single object, you can experience the benefits of the dual camera. The hardware-level blur effect can accurately cut out the image. In the close-up of the water cup and the mobile phone holder, the main body of the picture is prominent, and the corners are not blurred. The overall blur effect of the sample is natural and not stiff, which can meet the needs of daily shooting. The rear-camera portrait mode passed the test.

As for selfies, since China Mobile A4s has an 8-megapixel front camera and the ArcSoft beauty algorithm, it can take good selfies. The front camera has a 0-100% beauty effect, which can be adjusted according to different user needs. The front beauty effect is not just as simple as skin smoothing and brightening, it also has essential beauty functions such as face slimming and eye enlargement. It can be said to be very good.

In terms of night shooting, China Mobile A4s has a special night shooting mode. Different from the normal mode, the night shooting mode will process the photo for a few seconds after taking it, and then produce a photo similar to the super night scene mode. The night shooting image has a higher brightness, and the lighting control is relatively in place, so the overall picture will not appear dim.

Simple Life

One-click switch

Every time you change your phone, migrating your data is a headache for every user. However, you don’t have to worry about it with China Mobile A4s, because this phone has an APP specially prepared for changing phones - one-click change.

Text messages/contacts/call logs/system settings/schedules/notes/WiFi passwords/application data/blacklist/alarms/home screen icon placement, etc. All your original data can be transferred to the new phone through this APP, including the desktop layout of your previous phone. Switching to a new phone will also allow you to have an efficient life!

Remote Help

Maybe we young people are quite good at playing with mobile phones and can learn some functions we don’t know without any guidance. But if parents use the mobile phones, it will be more troublesome. A previous survey showed that when parents encounter such problems, more than 90% will ask their children for help. If the children are not around, it may be a little difficult. With the remote help function, children can directly control all the button functions on their parents’ mobile phones and personally demonstrate to their parents how to solve the problems, so that their parents no longer have to worry.

Summarize

Technology changes life, and simplicity saves time. With its simple design and easy-to-use operating system, China Mobile A4s can save a lot of time when giving users feedback on their operations. As a small full-screen mobile phone, it feels so good in your hand that you can't put it down. It will not be a burden in your pocket at home or when traveling. In terms of photography, due to the addition of dual cameras, it has made great progress compared to the previous generation. For some obsessive-compulsive disorder patients, this full-screen dual-camera mobile phone is the best choice.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.