Checking and testing BQ Strike Power and Strike Power 4G smartphones

Review and equipment BQ Strike Power Max (BQ-6035L)

The smartphone came in a white box with a picture of a motorcycle on the front and specifications on the back.

Under the cover we can find:

• The smartphone itself (with factory protective film)
• Extensive user manual
• Warranty card
• Sim card tray clip
• Discount on company accessories with an invitation to participate in a smartphone draw
• Charger 5 V and 1.55 A with European plug
• Micro USB charging cable

Review and equipment BQ Strike Power 4G

This is my first time meeting a device from BQ, and the first impression is important both about the smartphone and about the target manufacturer. And here I am pleasantly surprised by the quality of execution.

A nice box with color printing, indicating basic information and clearly showing the model and color of the smartphone. Immediately under the lid, a BQ Strike Power 4G smartphone was waiting for us with a factory film glued to the screen.

In addition, the box contains the following components:

• Instruction manual, Instagramm business card and SIM card tray clip
• Charger 5 V and 1.5 A with branding
• White micro USB charging cable

Ergonomics and appearance

The model is available in four colors: black, dark blue, gold and gray. The case itself is metal, the assembly is of high quality and nothing comes loose.

There is no sliding effect, it fits comfortably in your hand, but if you have small hands, it will be more convenient to work with it with two hands.

The BQ company began to produce devices with a corrugated power button and it is very tactile, and you will never confuse it with the volume button.

The frames here are standard, so if you are not looking for minimal frames, then the model will suit you.

The power and volume buttons are located on the right side. On the left is a hybrid tray for two SIM cards or one SIM card and a microSD card.

Connectors for headphones and charging are located on the top edge. The speaker and microphone are on the bottom.

The weight of the smartphone is not small - 197 grams, and overall dimensions are 154.3 x 75.3 x 10.9 mm.

Display

The display diagonal of the BQ Strike Power Max (BQ-6035L) is 6 inches. FHD+ screen resolution is 2160 x 1080 pixels, 18:9 aspect ratio with 442 PPI pixel density.

The screen matrix is ​​IPS, the brightness is enough on a sunny day, and at night the minimum brightness does not particularly hurt the eyes.

With factory settings, the colors seem not bright and a little yellowish. However, in the settings you can go to the “Colors and Contrast” item and adjust it as you like. I am more accustomed to cool shades with increased contrast. Therefore, I will leave it this way for future use, but the colors look much richer because of it.

The touch screen is fast and there were no delays; multi-touch supports up to 5 simultaneous touches.

Connection

BQ Strike Power Max showed excellent performance during the challenge. The connection is not interrupted, the conversation with the interlocutor is clear.

There are no problems with GPS and GLONAS satellites in open areas, although in difficult conditions connecting to satellites may be difficult.

The BQ company has found something to bribe users with – built-in NFC. Not all companies decide to use it in smartphones in this segment.

There is also standard support for 4G, Bluetooth 4.2 and single-band Wi-Fi.

Operating system and hardware BQ Strike Power 4G

BQ Strike Power 4G is the first smartphone that came into our hands with Android 8.1 Go Edition on board. And this definitely benefited him. I'm pleased with the speed and smoothness of the interface, as well as the increased battery life. The fingerprint scanner located on the back cover works flawlessly and accurately, not a single error during testing.

It is worth noting that initially the recommended applications of Russian banks and several applications from Yandex are installed on the smartphone.

The smartphone has a new quad-core 64-bit Mediatek MT6739ww processor with a Cortex-A53 core clock speed of up to 1.3 GHz. PowerVR Rogue GE8100 video accelerator with a frequency of up to 570 MHz.

There is also 1 GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 8 GB of internal memory, of which about 3.7 GB is free, so it’s worth thinking about expanding it with a memory card.

• Present sensors

On GeekBench BQ, the Strike Power 4G scored 636 in single-core mode and 1,652 in multi-core mode.

Reading the characteristics of this smartphone, I did not expect smoothness in games at all, but at minimum settings the smartphone can easily handle even quite demanding games, for example, Mobile Legends. What can we say about casual toys in which he feels like a fish in water.

BQ Strike Power Max Camera (BQ-6035L)

The company has worked hard to customize its Camera app and Strike Power Max software. The device received a 13 MP main camera with an additional 2 MP. There are HDR, night shooting, and portrait modes. The photos come out well, they are very dependent on the lighting, the focus is caught quickly.

Selfie camera 8 MP. Frankly, it surprised me, as I expected less detail from a budget smartphone.

Photo + HDR

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BQ Strike Power Camera

The main camera in BQ Strike Power 4G is made in the form of a single module. I am pleased that the BQ company decided not to install any fashionable “fake peephole”. In terms of camera resolutions, everything is also fair - the main sensor has a physical resolution of 8 megapixels and software interpolation up to 13 megapixels.

In good lighting, the camera is capable of producing good detail and a small amount of noise; there are not enough settings in the standard camera, but this can be corrected by installing a third-party camera application. With a large number of details, the algorithm tries to suppress the colors and pull out the brightness of the image.

In the evening and in low light, the pictures are not very sharp and quite noisy, which is quite expected for this price.

The front camera has a resolution of 5 megapixels, with interpolation up to 8 megapixels. The quality of the pictures is not much inferior to the main camera and you can take very good selfies.

Photo + HDR

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Operating system and hardware BQ Strike Power Max

I’m glad that BQ has been installing pure Android 9 Pie in its smartphones for a long time. The smartphone also boasts a reasonable amount of RAM – 2 GB, and built-in 32 GB.

Also responsible for the performance of the BQ Strike Power Max is an eight-core UNISOC SC9863A processor with a frequency of 1.6 GHz (Cortex-A55). And the graphics processor is responsible for the graphics – PowerVR GE8322. No matter how strange it may sound, the smartphone works as quickly as the flagships of 1-2 years ago, but the cost, of course, is completely different, in favor of BQ.

The device performed well in games at medium settings. Nothing lags, no artifacts were observed.

You can see the benchmark results for yourself:

There are also gesture control settings and smart shaking, which is convenient and pleasant.

The fingerprint scanner works great, and it's nice to see a quick unlock every time.

Smartphone BQ Strike Power 4G (BQ-5037)

The line of mobile devices called Strike is the most successful in the range of the manufacturer BQ. Late last year we came across the BQ Strike Selfie phone, which left a strong impression. The company decided not to stop developing the budget segment and released several more models with similar functionality to the market. One of them is Strike Power 4G with number BQ-5037.

The 4000 mAh battery is the most important advantage of the BQ Strike Power 4G.

Distinctive features of this modification: the presence of a 4G module, a 13 megapixel camera and an attractive metal-coated body. Aesthetically, the BQ Strike Power 4G is flawless; I can’t even believe that this device is available in the store for $100.

Technical and functional features

Ergonomic, but quite weighty (due to the long-lasting battery and metal cover), the BQ Strike Power 4G case can be disassembled to install two SIM cards, MicroSD and a battery. The process is completely effortless.

The phone is made well and of high quality. It fits naturally in the hand. In visual terms, the BQ Strike Power 4G is not inferior to famous flagships costing tens of thousands of rubles.

The five-inch screen with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels is moderately contrasty and detailed, but in bright sunlight it is problematic to recognize the displayed colors. By the way, the touch display is nominally protected by a thin, barely noticeable film (a proprietary feature of devices from BQ).

Basic telephone functionality is fully implemented here: 3G and 4G mobile Internet operates quickly, Wi-Fi is stable and fast, voice signal transmission occurs without interference or extraneous noise.

The only criticisms are the overall performance of the smartphone and the bugs that pop up during daily use of the device; more about this below.

Performance, operating system and test results

The phone is made well and of high quality.

The BQ Strike Power 4G runs stock Android 6.0. At first, the phone works as stable and moderately fast as possible. But after two weeks of use, strange things begin to happen to the device.

For example, when you receive an incoming phone call, it is sometimes impossible to pick up the phone by touching the touch screen, a message appears about the incorrect operation of the “Phone” application, and the handset icon flies somewhere in the upper tray area.

The response speed of the touch screen is not very high; sometimes you have to click on the desired icon several times. And the point here is not only in the display, but also in 1 GB of RAM, this is clearly not enough for the fast operation of Android 6.0.

Errors and bugs occur in various applications, for example, in the Yandex browser, which is installed on the BQ Strike Power 4G by default. The phone hesitates for an extremely long time when executing user commands; it feels like the device is frozen. And such software and hardware incidents constantly pop up during the operation of the device.

It uses stock Android 6.0.

In terms of optimization and stability, the BQ Blade and Element are much more sophisticated phones.

After installing 3DMark, the program recommended using the Sling Shot test to evaluate the performance of BQ Strike Power 4G; The benchmark run completed successfully, but the result was zero. Repeated attempts led to exactly the same result. And this is another oddity of the phone under review, albeit a very funny one.

PCMark, in turn, produces a normal digital result, which is comparable to the results of the Motorola Moto E3, Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and LG Spirit.

Camera

The operating interface of the Camera application has undergone visual changes compared to previously tested models from BQ. It is now easier to view the list of adjustable parameters. Everything is at hand (including manual options and filters), namely in the left plane. There is no need to scroll through a bunch of tabs to select the desired item.

Camera functionality in BQ Strike Power 4G

However, a rich assortment of controls does not improve the hardware capabilities of the 13 MP sensor. The published photographs taken in bright sun (there was no talk about insufficient light during the shooting process) are eloquent confirmation of this. Known diseases: unnatural color rendering, low detail of objects, large grain and pixel mess.

Such flaws may not be noticeable on the screen of a mobile device, but this does not mean that they do not exist.

Photos taken with BQ Strike Power 4G

Battery

The 4000 mAh battery is the most important advantage of the BQ Strike Power 4G. The phone can last a couple of days on one charge (in a less active format - four days).

The main thing is that the device does not suffer from energy incidents that are found in budget Chinese smartphones: rapid battery discharge during night inactivity, random shutdowns when the battery level is low (20% and below), etc.

BQ Strike Power 4G is ready for active workload and constant correspondence (but multitasking is not the most important trump card of the phone under review; once again we remind you about 1 GB of RAM and a relatively slow MSM8909 processor).

conclusions

BQ Strike Power 4G is a budget and unbalanced device; and this is very strange, given the experience that the company has behind it.

Previously tested devices confirmed the correct vector of BQ development towards optimization and improvement of each model. BQ Strike Power 4G is an exception.

Among the striking features of today's guest, it is worth highlighting a powerful battery that will definitely not run out in one or two days, a detailed screen (albeit with a not the most responsive sensor) and a magnificent ergonomic design with metal elements.

The remaining functional elements (primarily hardware, software optimization and camera) clearly do not reach the “good” rating.

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Autonomy

The key feature of the Strike Power line is its high battery capacity. The BQ-6035L has an excellent 6000 mAh battery! And this already aspires to a completely different level of autonomy than most smartphones. We conducted some tests that, although conditional, can demonstrate potential autonomy:

• Youtube video 1080p + 100% brightness – 10% per hour
• Gaming on high settings + 100% brightness – 13% per hour

Based on the results, we can say that the smartphone will last 2-3 days on a single charge, with average use, or will not let you down if you want to spend the whole day holding it in your hands.

The 1.5 A charger was a little disappointing; with this current you can fully charge the battery in 5-6 hours. Of course, charge it overnight, but it would be better to see a power supply with a standard 2 A.

conclusions

Despite the low price of 7,990 rubles, the smartphone turned out to be very relevant. Excellent assembly and nice appearance, a decent set of interfaces and the presence of a huge battery make it very balanced and versatile, for almost any person. I was also pleasantly surprised by the camera, which is capable of taking quite beautiful photos.

Only a little disappointing is the limited equipment, but in stores you can always buy the accessory you need. I think future owners of the BQ Strike Power Max 6035L smartphone will be very pleased with their purchase.

What do you think about this smartphone, write in the comments, I will be very interested to know your opinion?