Hands on with the 5.5-inch Ecoo Shining Pro

Ecoo’s known for their budget full HD offering, the Ecoo Focus, which we also reviewed some days back. The 5.2-inch screen phone is basically a replica of the Samsung Galaxy S5, and doesn’t score high on design. It also comes with just 1GB RAM, which simply doesn’t cut it for a lot of buyers these days.

The Shining Pro is Ecoo’s second smartphone. The design is a bit more original this time, but it still has a bit of Vivo in it if you look closely. Specifications wise though, the Shining Pro has the upper hand over the Focus, with a larger screen (albeit with a lower resolution), greater RAM, and more on-board storage.

The phone feels substantial in the hands, naturally. It also has a good heft to it, but this unfortunately doesn’t really translate into great build quality. On the other hand, the Ecoo Focus definitely impressed with a great build quality. On the Shining Pro, Ecoo have gone for chamfered edges, which do look good from a distance but up close, are a bit tacky.

The same applies to the power and volume buttons. You can hear rattling sounds that come out when you shake the phone, which is not at all a good sign. I hope this is a one-off case and the retail version of the device does better. Which it should, because there’s only a couple of chamfered edges that feel tacky, while the rest are nicely in place.

On the software side though, the phone is pretty slick and fast; more so than the Focus. This could be because of the lower resolution (720p vs 1080p), and the fact that the Shining Pro packs a good 2GB of RAM. Apps loaded much faster, and the effect is also seen on the camera app where the phone is quite a lot faster than the Focus. Another relief is that the Shining Pro runs Android v4.4 KitKat out of the box, unlike the Focus which is still on v4.2 Jelly Bean.

The camera itself looks decent, again better than the Focus. We’ll be posting camera samples and the likes in the full review which will come in a few days. Speaking of the camera though, the lens does bulge out which makes it prone to scratches and the likes, so you’ve got to be careful in laying the Shining Pro down, even though there’s a little metal lip around the lens itself (Vivo style).

The phone has a 2650mAh battery which seems to be holding up surprisingly well. Besides the battery, the phone can hold two SIMs (normal + micro) and a memory card.

So like we said, expect the full review in a week or so. Meanwhile, feel free to comment below any thoughts that you have about the device, or any feature that you would like us to test out on the Ecoo Shining Pro. Cheers!