ThL T100 Monkey King II - A Frontliner in the Octa-core War

Introduction

There was a time when smartphones coming from China were looked down upon and considered as copycats of Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s flagship handsets. But riding on the waves of success that Google’s Android operating system is currently enjoying, China-branded smartphones are now gaining increasing recognition from many consumers. There is Xiaomi which has been identified by observers as a threat to giants Apple and Samsung. Oppo officially launched in the Philippine market last month, expanding its presence in the Southeast Asian region. Gionee has been actively introducing new smartphone models since last year. And there is also ThL which is one of the first companies to bring an octa-core smartphone to the Philippines.

ThL stands for Technology Happy Life and its local distributor, NOVO7Tech, “soft launched” the T100 Monkey King II some time in December last year. Hence, the T100 is one of the first octa-core smartphones that reached the Philippine soil, preceding the octa-core offerings from local brands such as the Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z2 and the Starmobile Diamond X1, both of which surfaced in Q1 2014. Like the two smartphone models that were mentioned, the T100 is also powered by MediaTek’s MT6592 octa-core chip.

Design and Display

One of the first things that we noticed about the T100 is its neat design. Looking straight to its fascia, it is perfectly rectangular in shape, does not have mechanical buttons on the front, and is punctuated only by the front-facing camera and the speaker grille above the display. Instead of mechanical buttons, the T100 comes with three capacitive buttons (Menu, Home, and Back) below the screen that light up when being touched.

The T100 sports a 5-inch touchscreen with Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution. The images rendered on the T100’s IPS display look clear and vivid as if you were looking at a Samsung AMOLED display. Under bright sunlight, the display may appear washed out due to glare, but content rendered remain legible. While other 5-inch smartphones are wide, the T100 looks long and feels slim in hand. What further enhance the experience of handling the T100 are its subtly curved left and right sides, and the matte texture of its dark gray back cover. Speaking of the back cover, it can be removed more easily compared to other smartphones that we tried before. Removing it, the T100 reveals its slots for microSD and SIM (one regular and one micro SIM).

The top and bottom sides of the T100 have a netted texture. The top side hosts the device’s 3.5mm audio port and micro-USB connector, whereas the left and right sides host the power button and volume rocker. One’s grip on these switches is enhanced, thanks to their concentric texture.

Camera

Imaging-wise, the ThL T100 Monkey King II is equipped with front and rear cameras. Although both of them have a 13-megapixel image sensor, LED flash is limited to the rear camera. Images captured with the T100’s camera during the day are impressive: they show sharp details and brilliant colors. Even when you view and zoom into them on a regular computer display, the sharpness and brilliance remain. Selfies taken with the T100’s front-facing camera also look good. Images shot under low light conditions, particularly at night, manifest fuzziness and noise, but details remain conspicuous. The T100’s camera offers up to 4x digital zoom, but we advise users to refrain from using it as outputs tend to become pixelated. Shooting modes available in the T100 include Live Photo, Motion Track, Face Beauty, Panorama, and Multi Angle View.

Scroll down to view some of the sample images captured with the T100. Click each to enlarge.

Below are Full HD videos recorded with the T100.

Benchmark Results

Running on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) OS, the ThL T100 Monkey King II comes with a MediaTek MT6592 octa-core processor, clocked at 1.7GHz with Mali-450 GPU (700MHz) and 2GB LPDDR3 (666MHz). With this set of hardware components, we anticipate the T100’s performance comparable to other octa-core smartphones in the market such as the Cherry Mobile Cosmos Z2, Cherry Mobile Omega Infinity, MyPhone Agua Infinity, Starmobile Octa, Starmobile Diamond X1, and even to the T100’s larger sibling, the 6-inch T200 Cyborg. But because we did not have these handsets at the time of testing, we just compared the T100’s scores to some of the devices that we reviewed which manifested a similar level of performance.

Starting off with AnTuTu Benchmark, the T100 yielded a score of 26023. Based on AnTuTu Benchmark’s chart, the T100 is positioned close to HTC’s previous flagship, the One, and a bit behind Samsung’s preceding champion, the Galaxy S4. Do note that both devices come with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600. This outcome suggests that the MediaTek MT6592 octa-core chip is as powerful as Qualcomm’s quad-core processor. Another MT6592-powered device is also shown on the chart, the Xiaomi Redmi Note.

In Quadrant Standard, the T100 scored 14959. This is where the T100 shone and surpassed the likes of the HTC One (12413) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 (12292). Although the One’s CPU runs at the same clock as that of the T100 and the Galaxy S4 operates at a higher 1.9GHz clock, the T100’s GPU, a Mali-450, is faster (700MHz) than the Adreno 320 (400MHz) of the Snapdragon 600 chip.

Speaking of the GPU, the T100 scored 6789, 4586, and 5600 in 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited, Ice Storm Extreme, and Ice Storm subtests. Having the same GPU hardware, the Xiaomi Redmi Note (5994, 4210, 6069) and the Zopo ZP998 (6803, 4107, 5553) registered scores that are relatively close to those of the T100. Zopo is another Chinese smartphone brand carried by NOVO7Tech.

After playing games and running benchmarks, we noticed that the T100’s body became very warm. It recorded a CPU temperature of 46 degrees Celsius. With a 2750mAh battery module, the T100 lasted more than four hours (255 minutes). Its battery life is close to that of the 2300mAh HTC One (257 minutes), yet both handsets are overshadowed by the 2600mAh Samsung Galaxy S4 (647 minutes).

Conclusion

Now that the local market is rife with several octa-core Android smartphone models that are powered by the MediaTek MT6592 processor, do anticipate these offerings to manifest similar levels of speed and performance. Based on the test results of the ThL T100 Monkey King II, MT6592-powered devices are as good as previous generation flagships such as the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4. That said, factors such as design, image quality, price, and other features are some of the differentiators which consumers should look at when choosing the right MT6592-powered device for them.

Considering these factors, the T100 has a number of positive points. We appreciate its strongly rectangular design that makes it look like a premium phone with subtle elegance, reminding us of some of Sony’s Xperia handsets. Its two 13-megapixel cameras can capture impressive photos and videos that are worth sharing and posting on social networking channels. Do note that not all smartphones have a high-megapixel front-facing camera that performs as good as the main camera, so if you are into shooting selfies, the T100 is certainly recommendable. Apart from support for 3G, Bluetooth, USB OTG, and Wi-Fi, which are common connectivity modes in today’s handsets, the T100 also offers NFC, making the smartphone future-proof once NFC’s potentials are fully realized. Carrying a price tag of PhP 13,499, the T100 is neither the most affordable nor the most expensive MT6592-powered smartphone out there, but considering all of its capabilities and features, we find the price reasonable.