Cubot are back again and this time it’s with a teardrop display on a sub-£100 phone!
Featuring a HD teardrop display coupled with the on-trend high-gloss gradient battery cover, the Cubot R15 does a fantastic job of hiding its very budget insides. I’m not complaining though, as the R15 is priced firmly in the budget category with early pre-order prices hitting the sub-£100 sweet spot.
… Teardrop display + Wallet-friendly price-tag …
It’s one of five phones that Cubot has released in their 2019 lineup. All five support Android 9 Pie and are all aimed at the budget market. The R15 sits below the Cubot Max 2 in terms of performance but does still feature a larger 6.26″ display and a true dual-SIM setup.
As always, if you have any questions? Leave a comment at the end.
Pre-orders for the Cubot R15 are open now:
The Good
- Teardrop HD Display
- True Dual-SIM
- Removable Battery
- USB Type-C + Headphone Jack
The Could Be Better
- Large Display Chin
- No 4G
- Budget Performance
Cubot R15 – Display, Design & Performance
The R15 doesn’t have a lot to offer except for the fact it’s got a teardrop display. A feature that’s been coveted in the likes of the OnePlus 6 and other big mobile brands.
So it’s surprising to see it in a sub-£100 smartphone from the long-time budget manufacturer Cubot. The display itself uses an IPS panel with a resolution of 1520×720 giving it a healthy PPI of 269. While not jaw-dropping, text and images are still crisp and the lower resolution helps with battery life.
The design of the R15 is good. The removable plastic battery cover curves around the back of the phone making it comfortable to hold. If you opt for the gradient version, this curve also helps to reflect the light nicely giving it a more premium look.
Onto performance and unfortunately, we’re stuck with the ageing MediaTek MT6850. While a quad-core CPU, it’s showing its age in 2019 with apps loading slowly and 3D gaming crawling to an unplayable frame-rate. If you’re a light user of social media apps and web browsing the 6850 will perform, but when opening lots of apps slowdowns are apparent even with the more streamlined Android 9 Pie OS.
This is a trade-off with most budget devices though, but I would have liked to see a little more oomph at this price-range.
While the 16GB’s of storage might seem frugal, the R15 does come with a dedicated Micro-SD port supporting up to 128GB cards.
Screen Tech Specs: 6.26″ IPS display, 1520 x 720 resolution, 269 PPI, 19:9 Teardrop Display, Curved Display Corners, 5-point multi-touch
Performance Specs
CPU: MediaTek 6580P (4 Cores 1.3GHz)
RAM: 2GB
Storage: 16GB (expandable up to 128GB)
Cubot R15 – Camera, Connectivity & Battery Life
As with 99% of budget smartphones, the R15 ain’t bad in bright lighting but suffers from grain during darker shots or indoors. The dual-lens is more of a software gimmick, maybe an aesthetics choice rather than a practical bokeh add-on lens.
Connectivity-wise, we get USB Type-C for charging and data connection as well as Bluetooth, WiFi and a headphone jack.
The big elephant in the room is the lack of 4G. We’re used to seeing this in phone around the £60-70 range, but at £100 there is plenty of 4G competition to the R15.
The 3000mAh battery if removable, which is a rare treat in 2019. If you purchase a spare battery early on, this means you can extend the life of the phone swapping it out after a year.
Battery Specs: 3000mAh (removable)
Connectivity Specs: Bluetooth 4.0, USB Type-C, Headphone Jack, GPS/A-GPS, Wi-Fi 2.4G (802.1.1 a/b/g/n), Fingerprint Scanner, Gyroscope Sensor
Rear Camera:
- 13MP + 2MP (Dual Cameras)
- f/2.0 Aperture
- LED Flash
Front Camera (Selfie time):
- 8MP Selfie Lens
Cubot R15 – The Early Verdict
With our early verdict on the Cubot R15 in: Do we recommend the Cubot R15 Smartphone?
Don’t judge a book by its cover comes to mind. The R15 is a good looking phone with the teardrop display giving it a much more premium look than a phone this price should have. But, in terms of raw performance, the R15 left me feeling a little deflated. The ageing processor coupled with the frugal RAM & Storage doesn’t hold up well to the competition.
With that said, build quality on the Cubot phones we’ve tested here at Review Hub has always been excellent with solid software reliability out of the box.
Want to know more about Cubot? What are the Top 5 Cubot Phones?
Cubot R15 – Full Tech Specs
 |
|
|---|---|
| Smartphone | Cubot R15 |
| Screen Size | 6.26″ |
| Pixel Density | 269 PPI |
| Screen Resolution | 1520 x 720 |
| Screen To Body Ratio | 85% |
| Screen technology | 19:9 aspect ratio, Teardrop Curved Display Corners |
| Thickness | 9.1mm |
| Weight | 175g |
| Material | Plastic + Metal Frame |
| Colours Available | Black & Gradient |
| Storage | 16GB |
| Processor (CPU) | MediaTek MT6580P (1.3GHz Quad-Core) |
| Graphics (GPU) |
ARM MP-400
|
| RAM | 2GB |
| Android Version | 9.0 Pie |
| IP Rating (Water, dust) | NO |
| Micro-SD Card Tray | YES (max 128GB / Dedicated) |
| Notification LED | YES (RGB) |
| Finger Print Sensor | YES – Rear Facing |
| Infrared | NO |
| USB Type | Type-C |
| 4G Bands | NA |
| 3G Bands | B1 2100MHz / B8 900MHz |
| 2G Bands | 1800MHz / 1900MHz / 850MHz / 900MHz |
| SIM Support | Dual Nano SIM |
| WiFi | 2.4GHz (a, b, g, n ) |
| GPS Tech | GPS, A-GPS |
| Bluetooth Version | 4.0 |
| NFC | NO |
| Sensors | Ambient light, Gravity, Proximity, Gyroscope, Fingerprint |
| OTG | YES |
| Battery Size | 3000 mAh |
| Fast Charging | N/A |
As always let us know your questions and comments on the Cubot R15 phone below! : )
I’ve just bought one of these today as a replacement for a 3 year old Cubot Note S that had a battery die recently in close to 60°C indoor temperatures. I know I could have just bought a replacement battery, but the R15 was on sale for £76 and I fancied giving a teardrop display a try as well as an upgrade to Android Pie.
The display does have a slightly creamy hue compared to the Note S, although the Note S I own has always looked a little too cool to me with a slight blue hue, so it’s hard to know which one is closer to being correct really. I will say that the R15 display feels gentler on my eyes as a result, so I’m not complaining.
Apart from the display and cameras, specs are fundamentally the same as the Note S, so I wasn’t expecting any miracles. All of the apps I used to run on the Note S run equally as well or maybe slightly smoother on the R15, probably down to Android Pie doing its magic.
One odd quirk is that a 128GB Samsung Evo Plus microSD card shows up as 256GB with 140GB already filled even when it’s empty. I don’t think it’s the card at fault as it checks out fine on a Windows 10 PC. It doesn’t seem to be a problem though as I’ve transferred ~100GB of files to it in the phone and all files seem to read back OK.
Bluetooth headphone range is fine with my Audio-Technica ATH-SR5BTs happily running uninterrupted at a distance of around 10 metres with a clear line of sight. The R15 also shows a headphone battery level percentage reading when paired to the Audio-Technicas which the Note S didn’t, so that’s another nice little bonus.
As long as a person’s expectations aren’t unrealistically high for what it is, I don’t think anyone would be disappointed with it for the money. If I get the same lifespan and usage out of this Cubot as the last one, I’ll consider it to be quite the bargain and will most likely buy another Cubot when this one bites the dust.
Hey JanxSpirit,
Thanks for you detailed and honest feedback. Appreciate it! : )
My pleasure.
I found a fix for the creamy screen hue on the phone and now have it set up to fairly accurately match my calibrated PC monitor. The answer was a free app on the Play Store called Color Calibrator.
This handy little app allows you to apply a custom colour overlay that permanently runs in the background, so it’s a nice set-and-forget solution on any Android device that it’s compatible with.
I set the red slider to around 20% and the blue slider to around 40%. This gives a colour temperature close to 6500K. Photos now look similar enough to me when viewed on both the phone and PC monitor.
Happy days!