Elephone P6000 vs JiaYu F2 vs Cubot X9 – A quick look at 3 budget smartphones

Guest PostApril 30, 2015

If you are in the market for a budget Android smartphone for around $130 take a look at this quick comparision between the Elephone P6000, JiaYu F2 and Cubot X9.

You could spend a fortune on smartphones nowaday, but with budget phones now offering higher performance than every before is it really worth shelling out the extra money? If your main objectives of a smartphone are calling, message, internet, GPS, apps and decent cameras then one of these sub $130 phones should fit the bill.

Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2, Cubot X9: Specifications

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Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2, Cubot X9: Design

The three phones have similar body size with 5” HD display. Jiayu F2’s plastic back cover has a grid texture, the Elephone P6000 has the piano like glossy back cover, Cubot X9, on the other hand, has a finish close to the iPhone 6.

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Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2, Cubot X9: Performance

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Each phone is powered by a Mediatek chipset, but each phone is running a different model chip. The Elephone P6000 uses the most modern SoC of the trio being the MT6732 quad-core chip with 64bit architecture. The MT6732 offers native LTE support and also a boost in graphic performance. The JiaYu F2 also has a quad-core chip but an older 32bit MT6582, the MT6582 also needs a additional LTE modem for 4G. Finally the Cubot X9 has an octacore MT6592, last years top of the range MTK chip, but a far cry from today’s 64bit SoC in performance.

Elephone P6000 Antutu

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JiaYu F2 Antutu

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Cubot X9 Antutu

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Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2, Cubot X9: Cameras

Indoor light comparison

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Color difference is obvious if viewing the pictures side by side. The Elephone P6000 portrays the actual colors and has good saturation, the Cubot X9 is over exposed and seems and needs the white balance to be adjusted. The Jiayu F2 made a better job than Cubot X9 but still lags behined the Elephone slightly in overall performance.

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Elephone P6000 Night Photo

JiaYu F2 Night Photo

Cubot X9 Night Photo

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The first thing you should notice is that the Jiayu F2 has too much noise in low light environment. The camera is also sluggish. That’s caused by the low light algorithm scenarios of camera. When the phone detects dim light, it automatically adjust the ISO and shutter for more light. The idea is that the camera should be able to soak up more light and produce better low light photos, but in use it is too slow and spoils user experience, plus the image is terrible. The P6000 took more saturated color photos if you take a look at the street light and building on the back. It’s not the actual color but still looks decent. Cubot X9 took the best shots under low light condition.

Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2, Cubot X9: Conclusion

The Elephone P6000, Jiayu F2 and Cubot X9 fall in at between $120 to $130 (the Elephone P6000 is only $119.99 at the moment). They are all from popular Chinese phone makers and one might think that they are basically the same device with different designs. As you can see from the benchmarks, design and camera performance though there are major differences between each device even at this price.

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Owsley_66
April 30, 2015
Not trying to hijack the thread but I was just going to look at the specs of the Elephone P6000 when I noticed that the Elephone Vowney with Helio X10 just showed up here: http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/978433d6
Is it real?
- Rob
  April 30, 2015
  Probably that just one of those newly announced ones with no name, just version A and version B.
- balcobomber25
  April 30, 2015
  The X10 is the 6795 which is rumored to be in the 2K Elephone flagship coming out soon. Vowney might be the internal name for the phone, in real life it could be the P8000 or the P7000 pro.
  - - balcobomber25
      May 1, 2015
      - Airyl
        May 1, 2015
        Yeah.
        I still remember the Vowney V5. It was a popular alternative to the Newman K1 and JiaYu G3.
      - Mesterio
        May 6, 2015
        Now why doesn’t that surprise me? ?
        Not heard of them either ?

Carlos T
April 30, 2015
Elephone seems the better one, a shame that it only has 2 bands in 3g, i dont even know why they do that, so a lot of international buyers just dont go for it? because that chip does support other 3g bands in other brands
- balcobomber25
  April 30, 2015
  Most of these phones will only support the bands for the countries they are most likely to sell the most units in. For a lot of these smaller brands international sales are negligible when compared to sales in Asia, the bands it usually supports most. The chips can support it but they have to add an extra antennae for those bands which often times the cost isn’t justified compared to the amount of sales in other markets.
  For a brand to universally support your countries bands it either has to have an official presence or strong demand in a country that does support that band. Until then it is hit or miss whether it will have it.
jasneskis
April 30, 2015
Can you explain why the Jiayu night photo is so much clearer than the Elephant & Cubit? They seem to have the same camera.
- balcobomber25
  April 30, 2015
  - jasneskis
    April 30, 2015
    I wasn’t joking. I see far more detail in the Jiayu. Maybe it does have slower exposure.
    - Steven Fox
      April 30, 2015
      The F2 is a great phone at 99$, not at 129$. Still waiting for the MT6735 Jiayu phone at 89$. Anyway, the MT6582 has problems when running at 720p, the SoC is just not fast enough, and the 2GB of RAM are wasted there. Jiayu should have gone with the 6592M, it would have been a perfect choice.
    - balcobomber25
      April 30, 2015
      It’s not the slower exposure that’s the problem. There is entirely too much light in the photo which is why it looks like there is more details. Just compare the lights on the buildings, which is more closer to what you would actually see if you were standing there?
      - Julian Richards
        May 1, 2015
        The issue may be to do with aperture. With a wide aperture, more light is let in but at the expense of depth of field. I can use this with my Canon camera. If I take a portrait with a small aperture,everything in the shot is sharply in focus. If I use a large aperture (the camera compensates for the extra light), the person is in focus but what is behind them is not and it is all blurry. Makes for a very arty shot (sometimes). Here is a very good example (small f = bigger aperture)
        Am I right to assume that all these cameras have a fixed aperture?
        
        balcobomber25
        May 4, 2015
        Yea every smartphone uses fixed aperture from 1.8 at top of the spectrum (LG G4) to about 2.6 which some of the cheapest phones use. Most use around the 2.0-2.4 range.
- sandro khokhiashvili
  April 30, 2015
  - jasneskis
    April 30, 2015