MPIE 909t Review MT6582 720p – New Kid on the Block

mpie is a new kid on the block and a few of their models are coming with some interesting specifications.

The 909t includes a fingerprint scanner and 1900MHz WCDMA and I was interested to see if it was one I could recommend.

When we’re looking for a phone, it’s not only brand we should be looking at in regards to quality, but individual models. The THL 5000 is one such example. They normally come very solid and physically problem free, but the THL 5000 came with a crooked display.

This phone provided by Gearbest. Many of their phones will discount with code “chinaphonearena”, Coupon or not, this is one of the top China tech and gadget shops in the business and they come highly recommended by Gizbeat.

Often a brand will use entirely different factories to make their phones from one model to the next, so we can’t entirely tell something about a brand based on one model, but it can often hold some clues.

mpie 909t review SoC

The SoC in the mpie 909t is MT6582@1.3GHz. This is plenty enough juice GPU and CPU wise to run Android OS smoothly.

mpie 909t review GPS

The GPS on the 909t can be rated as very good. The phone connects to satellites rapidly and maintains a strong signal. Here is the GPS after just a few seconds outside.

mpie 909t review external speaker

The 909t speaker can be rates as excellent. Perhaps the best I have heard on a China phone. Whatever speaker configuration mpie used in the 909t, it is top notch.

mpie 909t review design and style

The 909t is a very squarish phone with well-lit and interesting capacitive buttons.

I’ve mostly been using the somewhat bulky iNew V8 and while the 909t is the same height and width, the depth of the 909t is a couple mm thinner and it made a big difference when holding the phone.

The back of the phone somewhat looks ruberized, but in is just plastic. No problem, I like the way the back looks and feels in the hand.

mpie 909t review frequency support

While it took some manufacturers until just recently to begin including it, and some are still holding out, mpie came right off the bat with 850/1900/2100 WCDMA. They deserve props for this and it’s excellent to see.

mpie 909t review LCD

The LCD is as good as any 720p display on a mobile that I’ve seen. It’s an IPS LCD and colors and contrast remain true.

mpie 909t review fingerprint reader

The fingerprint reader on the mpie 909t normally works quite well. Scanning does take some getting used to, but once you got it down, it’s quick and effortless to unlock the phone with the fingerprint reader.

The fingerprint reader can be used to lock specific apps as well, which adds an interesting dynamic to keeping your phone locked from your significant other.

At one point after unlocking using the fingerprint reader, the phone rebooted itself several times. Showing the boot animation again and again until finally booting properly, at which point the fingerprint scanner was no longer usable. Clearing the cache and data from the fingerprint.apk fixed the issue and the problem did not come back again.

mpie 909t review OS

Generally speaking, the mpie 909t OS is smooth and typing rapidly was no issue at all. The standard app test of Skype/Facebook/Play/Gmail went off without a hitch.

mpie 909t review fake specifications

Now we get down to the nitty gritty. That is the fake specifications of the mpie 909t. The OS shows the specs of the phone as 2GB RAM/32GB ROM. While Gearbest lists the specs of the phone correctly as 1GB RAM/8GB ROM, some shops are selling this phone as 2GB/32GB which is absolutely not the case.

The faking of the specs in itself are not a big problem with me. It has been sold as 1GB/8GB and that’s what it is. It’s likely not mpie themselves, but a “middleman” who is modifying specific batches of mpie 909t to show the faked specs.

Whatever the case, the big problem here is that in my testing, with the stock ROM and EBR, the phone storage always shows 32GB of 32GB free, which means you will never quite know how full your phone storage is. I have not completed the testing yet, and this issue could possible be bypassed, but for the average consumer, this is not something they should have to deal with.While the fake specs of the ROM may or may not be directly the fault of mpie, the battery is. It’s sold as 3000mA to shops and has 3000mA printed on the battery label. In my tests, this simply is not possible as the phone only gives about 4-5 hours onscreen. Physically it’s significantly thinner than the 2400mA iNew V8 battery as well. Another tick in the “against” box.

mpie 909t review internal storage

The stock internal storage of the mpie 909t came with .8GB of free space. This is seriously anemic and when installing my standard set of 40 or so regular apps, it ran out of space. Nothing else could be installed after installing about 30 of them. These were not huge apps, such as 3D games and such. We are talking Facebook, Skype, Line, Viral, CPU Spy etc…

mpie 909t review conclusion

I was impressed with the hardware of the phone. The fingerprint reader is a novel and interesting feature, the LCD is excellent, the exernal speaker might be the best I’ve heard in a China phone and it’s one of a handful of phones that include the 1900MHz WCDMA 3G frequency.

However, the disturbing reboot of the phone, the faked ROM and battery specs, and the terribly small stock internal storage, are very disappointing.

This phone provided by Gearbest. Many of their phones will discount with code “chinaphonearena”, Coupon or not, this is one of the top China tech and gadget shops in the business and they come highly recommended by Gizbeat.

Contenders such as the iNew V8 and the Doogee DG550 are stronger in the $150-200 range. I will continue to see if I can make the 909t one to recommend with the caveat that a ROM flash will be required to fix the internal and phone storage issue, but as it is now, this phone can be crossed off the short list.