There was one fine day, my friend happened to introduce me a smartphone brand called Wiko Mobile, I immediately come to a conclusion and thought, not another Chinese smartphone again! The Malaysian smartphone market has been flooded by too many Chinese phones, let alone most of them have some pretty funny names that won’t even create an impression in your mind. After visiting the company’s website, I started to get interested in the company’s product line ups, it used to have a smartphone that’s powered by NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 chip and it also happen to place an emphasis in churning out great smartphone design, last but not the least the phones are actually designed in France. Today, Wiko Mobile has officially established its Malaysian presence and brought in the Wiko Fever 4G, a handsome looking mid-range device that can also be considered as the company’s hero smartphone for its entry to the Malaysian market.
Wiko Fever 4G Hardware Specifications
Processor: Mediatek MT6753 1.3GHz Octa Core
RAM/ROM: 3GB/32GB
Display: 5.2″ Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS
Camera: 13MP Autofocus (Main), 5MP (Front) with LED Flash
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, BT 4.0
Networks: LTE/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery: 2900mAh
Beautiful Hardware unrelated to the French
The Fever 4G may not have the most unique smartphone design, but you can’t deny that the French smartphone maker has taken bits and pieces of design cues from various companies. For instance, the faux leather removable back comes originally from Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3, the 2.5D curved glass display from many other premium smartphones and the smooth and rounded aluminum frame from Apple’s iPhone 6, which makes this phone less of a copycat since it adapts the best design cues from many of its competitors.
Featuring one of the best screen sizes, the Fever 4G is neither too small nor too big to hold in one hand, and in most cases I have managed to use the phone with a single hand, the phone is a little heavy than some similarly sized smartphones I have used but thankfully it didn’t feel too slippery to hold, all thanks to it comfortable aesthetic and faux leather back. The most attractive part of its design would be its glowing frame, which illuminates in total darkness so that you won’t misplace your phone, I find it at times a useful gimmick if I ever need to look for my phone when I need to use it on bed (its unhealthy, don’t do it)
While I can’t really assume the Fever 4G has a true French design, it definitely looks better than some devices in its class, but I was rather disappointed that Wiko has blocked access to the device’s battery and two Micro SIM slots instead of nano SIM, this is not a major flaw but could have been avoided in modern smartphone design standards.
Software and User Experience
The flexibility in Android has always led to some interesting custom skins by OEMs, while Wiko has simply called its software the Wiko Launcher, it is no different from what you see in Chinese handsets, it has no app drawer and leaves you with pages of apps as you keep adding them, motion gestures that lets you access shortcuts to apps or features of the phone, and a stock UI in most parts of the phone’s software, it’s a good thing that Wiko hasn’t included any unnecessary apps or features to mess up the software.
Throughout the review period, I’ve been using Google Now Launcher as my preferred launcher, since I like to keep my home screen clean with only a few apps and widgets that I only use, there’s a little UI lag in between usage but most of the time the experience has been flawless, all thanks to the ample amount of RAM. In addition, this is one of the few mid-range smartphones that comes with 32GB of internal storage, so if you aren’t a media whore you shouldn’t find it an issue, otherwise you can simply expand the phone’s storage with a MicroSD card.
The Fever 4G’s display is one of the very best I’ve ever come across on a mid-range device, the IPS panel produces natural looking colors and it is surprisingly bright under direct sunlight which delivers decent visibility, it is also a responsive touch screen that will do decently in fast typing. Within its own category range, the phone also has the highest pixel count for its display, making texts looking crisp and watching videos very satisfying.
Overall, the Fever 4G is a decent performer on day-to-day smartphone tasks except for gaming, where the phone’s GPU isn’t up to par even when I played Asphalt 8 in medium graphics setting, frame drops in games is obvious and you may not want to use this as a heavy gaming device, on a side note the device also gets warm after a certain period of usage.
Camera
Wiko snapped on a 13-megapixel sensor on the Fever 4G, which has been a standard for mid-range smartphones recently, it takes good looking pictures nonetheless, but certainly not the best in class, you might find colors a little washed out when taking pictures indoors and don’t expect to take sharp pictures under low light. On the other hand, the software is the thing that fails the picture taking experience, focusing and shutter speeds are slow, which you won’t be able to take fast moving objects easily.
The phone has also taken care of the selfie whores as Wiko has included an LED flash light next to the front 5-megapixel camera, while I would prefer a yellow LED found on the honor 7, the white LED flash can be extremely blinding, but you can never be worried of taking bright front facing pictures when you are in the club.
Benchmarks and Test Notes
We used AnTuTu, GeekBench and Epic Citadel to measure the benchmarks of smartphones, and in the Wiko Fever 4G’s case, the phone managed to perform well in processor benchmarks and score results on par with Snapdragon 801 devices, graphics is unfortunately the disadvantage in scores as the Mali-T720 GPU is underpowered in rendering 1080p graphics.
With a reasonably beefy 2900mAh battery, the Fever 4G usually delivers a full day of battery life with general usage, a result that is very close to Alcatel’s Flash 2, while I personally feel that it could be better if Wiko has opted to use a Snapdragon SoC on the phone. In addition, the phone doesn’t support fast charging so it will take a while to juice up that huge battery.
