Earlier this year, we were introduced to the Android One initiative, Google’s push to bring an affordable Android experience to the public. From that initiative came a duo of affordable Lollipop phones from Cherry Mobile and MyPhone, aptly named the One and the Uno, respectively. Only a few months removed from that launch, Starmobile shows its eagerness to jump (no pun intended) into the affordable Lollipop market with its debut of the JUMP Neo.
Like the Android One phones, the JUMP Neo is priced around P5,000. It’s a bit cheaper than the P4,599 MyPhone, but more expensive than the P3,999 Cherry Mobile. On paper, the JUMP Neo is an incremental upgrade to the Android One phones.
The JUMP Neo sports a 5-inch IPS display, definitely bigger than the 4.5-inch screens of Android One. The battery is also a step up. Cherry and MyPhone offer batteries below 2,000mAh. The JUMP Neo has a 2,400mAh battery.
Other specifications of the JUMP Neo are similar to Cherry Mobile and MyPhone. It’s powered by the same 1.3GHz quad-core Cortex A7 chip with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, which is expandable to 32GB via microSD. The camera combination is also a 5MP rear and 2MP front.
Most importantly, it also comes installed with the latest Android Lollipop OS, but with a more Starmobile flavor as opposed to the vanilla Android experience from Cherry Mobile and MyPhone. It comes with Starmobile apps, like the SYNC 2.0, Starmobile Care App, and the Starmobile App Store.
The Starmobile JUMP Neo isn’t part of the Android One initiative per se, but its build is definitely similar to Google’s. On paper, the JUMP Neo is the similar but slightly better Lollipop experience for the affordable market. For hands-on performance, we’ll wait and see.
