We’ve recently gotten our hands with SKK’s newly introduced budget 5.5-incher, the SKK Chronos Byte (priced at Php 2,599). So far, the experience felt was rather mixed with the goods and the bads.
More posts and reviews can be found here
- SKK Chronos Byte hands-on, full specs
- SKK Chronos Cross hands-on, full specs
- SKK Chronos Byte VS Chronos Cross – Which is better?
Finally, it’s now time to throw down the hammer and find out more on the handset through our comprehensive and in-depth review on the SKK Chronos Byte.
Design
Like I mentioned in my previous posts regarding the SKK Chronos Byte, it looks rather Huawei-like in more ways than one, with a few alterations in the material used, such as the polycarbonate body, instead of metal.
For button positioning, the power button and volume rocker are conveniently located on the right side of the phone, while the single bottom speaker is positioned at the back. The SKK Chronos Byte also comes with a removable back cover, which was a tad bit easy to remove.
The Chronos Byte is a bit lightweight and is easy to handle, which is quite good since the latter does pack a 5.5-inch display and some 5.5-inchers aren’t exactly easy to carry.
Display and viewing experience
The Chronos Byte packs a 5.5-inch display with a fairly decent HD display. It’s understandable that the Chronos Byte could only pack an HD display. One thing to note though is that the Chronos Byte does provide a pretty decent maxed level brightness viewing experience, which was shocking at first. We felt that the SKK Chronos Byte’s display prowess shines at most when watching an HD video since the majority of the detail is at its peak.
Camera performance
The Chronos Byte packs a fairly satisfactorily 5MP/2MP camera pairing. As expected, there isn’t much in the camera category that could impress heavy smartphone camera goer’s, however, its camera does deliver bright outputs on daylight shooting.
When it comes to night shooting, however, everything falls apart, as expected. The camera outputs where pretty much noisy and blurred. However, its night outputs are still entirely a bit distinguishable, thanks to its great brightness level.
Selfies are a bit lackluster, especially the lens. Since there was a problem encountered with the 2MP front camera, the farther backgrounds of the output are seen to be blurred and gives off a rather unexpected “fish eye view” effect.
Performance and benchmarks
A MediaTek MT6580 runs the show on the SKK Chronos Byte, it carries a 23596 benchmark score, which is pretty average, to say the least. The SKK Chronos Byte only has 1GB of RAM, backed up with a very limited 8GB of ROM, though it does support microSD card.
We’ve felt a few lags here and there upon opening and using an app, we also felt lag when we stack up a bunch of apps running in the background, this shows that the Chronos Byte might not be built for multi-tasking, but rather for light activities only.
Antutu ratings
- Chronos Byte – 23596
GeekBench 3
- Chronos Byte – Single: 360, Multi: 1159
Software experience
The SKK Chronos Byte’s software experience has a tad bit mixed feelings of good and bad. First off, it ran on an Android 5.1 Lollipop, which carries a stock Android UI, which is actually pretty old, yet pretty simple.
However, the thing that ticked us off is the constant laggings from using apps or watching videos. The phone also had problems in reading a 4K photo that we transferred to it for the display department, as well as not playing a downloaded video. We’ve also experienced lags while watching Youtube videos, which constantly died down upon prolonged use.
Battery
You shouldn’t expect much on the Chronos Byte’s battery since it only packs a fairly decent 2300mAh battery capacity. Nevertheless, the phone should prolong its longevity if you’re into light tasks, such as web browsing and social media browsing.
But heavy uses and multi-tasking could greatly drain out the battery with ease. It had a 2-hour on screen time, with a 7 to 10 hours of use (moderate use).
- Charging time: 1 hour and 35 minutes
- On screen time: 2 hours
- Moderate use: 7-10 hours
Speaker quality
The Chronos Byte has a single rear bottom speaker, which provides a very loud and widely heard output. However, quality is a bit raggedy, since its outputs is somewhat a bit cracked, though audio output can still be easily heard.
Price and verdict
The Chronos Byte sure has a few drawbacks in its belt, but for its price, its true value pretty much comes out in how you carefully use your Chronos Byte. It’ll be a bang-for-your-buck if you know how to use it well.
Features that we loved on the Chronos Byte
- Budget-heavy price
- Good design
- Display is pretty decent
- Manageable battery life
Features that we didn’t like on the Chronos Byte
- Multiple lagging issues
- A not-so-good performer
- Small RAM
- Old Android OS
- Lackluster camera shots
| Specs/PH price |
SKK Chronos Byte specs, PH price, features |
| Display | 5.5-inch 720p HD display |
| Chipset | MediaTek MT6580 chip |
| RAM | 1GB |
| Memory | 8GB internal, microSD card |
| Main camera | 5MP rear shooter |
| Front camera | 2MP selfie shooter |
| Connectivity | WiFi, Bluetooth |
| OS | Android 5.1 Lollipop |
| Battery capacity | 2300mAh battery capacity |
| Ports | microUSB v2.0 |
| Release Date | April 2016 |
| Official Price | Php 2,599 price from SKK |
I recently purchase chronus byte…. and i wasn’t happy about it~ </3
May i ask if what is the best and yet budjet friendly phone?
Just bought one last Monday as a temporary replacement for my S7 Edge which is being repaired… It worked okay for 1 day… but after putting back the sim card because the S7 Edge still has some defects in the LCD, to my amazement it kept on asking for a password which is different from the PIN I set. I brought it to the service center and they tried software update and reset, to no avail. They said they will just replace it. Freaking rubbish software on phone.