I’m unpacking the Mobistel / Elson Cynus T1 together with you – a phone very similar to the Alcatel One Touch 997D Ultra, which I recently tested. Both are based on the MediaTek MTK6577 chipset, sport a 1GHz dual-core CPU, 4.3″ display with WVGA (480×800 pixels), 8 MP camera and the typocal features like UMTS, WIFI etc. Biggest difference at first sight is the RAM, of which the Cynus T1 has 512MB, but the Alcatel boasts 1GB. This unboxing is also the kick-off for a more detailed test, in which I will compare both smartphones. But let’s first have a look at the box, it’s content and a first side-by-side with the Alcatel 997D:

The first impression is qute promising: The phone feel well-built, although the shiny plastic back with its fancy pattern will surely not be liked by everyone – I definitely prefer the more rubbery look of the Alcatel. On the positive, the Cynus uses the screen more efficiently, as it has separate buttons (for home, menu, back and search) while the Alcatel sacrifices valuable screen-pixels for that. As one result, the Cynus shows an extra row in the app-drawer. But when using the phone these keys quickly start to annoy, as they are almost never lit when you need them – they are only iluminated after pressing one of the, so the first keypress is always done “blindly”. The first test shot with the 8MP camera look acceptable, luckily the LED flash does not show the ugly yellowish stains (but is not perfectly homogeneous either).

Luckily Mobistel / Elson (the phone is sold under the Mobistel brand in some countries, as Elson in others) did not pre-install a lot of apps in the Cynus T1 – there’s not even an LED flash-light. Although users new to android might see this as a disadvantage, I very much prefer to choose my own app for such tasks (and avoid installing one with the hilarious permissions the Alcatel LED app has). The Cynus comes with a simple file manager, FM radio app, facebook and twitter – that’s about all. Of course it also includes all the standard google apps such as play store, google mail etc. Android itself is only changed in a few aspects: A new set of icons (not the same as Alcatel), the typical MediaTek extensions for SIM management and profiles (quite nice!) and that extreme bounce-back effect – all this is identical to the Alcatel 997D, including the “vanilla ICS look”.

So far the Cynus T1 compare very well with the Alcatel. It has it’s positive (more usable screen space, no bloat-ware) and negative differences (less RAM, shiny plastic, hard to see buttons), but non of these are really crucial.

I will be an interesting comparative test – stay tuned and please let me know if you want to see the final test in English as well

A big “thank you” to getgoods.de for providing the test device. You can buy the phone for affordable 177,90 EUR in their shop: Mobistel Cynus T1 at getgoods.de.

More German shops selling the Mobistel Cynus T1:

black 177,90 EUR bei Notebooksbilliger 179,90 EUR bei cyberport.de 180,00 EUR bei Amazon

white 179,00 EUR bei Notebooksbilliger 179,90 EUR bei cyberport.de 190,92 EUR bei Amazon

Vendors and prices for the Alcatel One Touch 997D Ultra (in Germany):

ardesia (grau) 155,85 EUR bei Amazon 160,00 EUR bei Notebooksbilliger 161,00 EUR bei getgoods.de 161,00 EUR bei Home of Hardware 165,90 EUR bei cyberport.de

dark red 157,99 EUR bei Amazon 159,90 EUR bei cyberport.de 161,00 EUR bei getgoods.de 161,00 EUR bei Home of Hardware 165,00 EUR bei Notebooksbilliger

orange 161,00 EUR bei getgoods.de 161,00 EUR bei Home of Hardware 161,00 EUR bei Notebooksbilliger 165,90 EUR bei cyberport.de 167,00 EUR bei Amazon