CAT B15 Phone Review

Your pretty standard affair here, you get a region specific charger, USB cable, quick start guide and obviously the phone. You do get a pair of headphones, but they’re really not even worth contemplating.

The back of the device is actually really quite grippy and seems to have some kind of rubberised coating on it. The ridges are quite deep and far apart, allowing a decent grip even with slippery(ish) hands

There is one issue that has been hard to capture on camera, but due to the design of the USB port I have found that not all cables work; some are too wide and do not quite connect far enough in. Ones from my HTC devices work, but not my Motorola or some third party cables. This was a bit confusing to start with and may have lead to me being rather frustrated that it wouldn’t charge of my usual cable… Go me!

One of the biggest plus points for me has to be that the B15 runs almost perfectly stock android. There are a few tweaks (and inconsistencies) due to the dual SIM setup, and a couple of short-cuts that forward you off to CAT websites.

The customisations they have put on are actually pretty cool. My favourite, whilst rather simple, is the ability to change the status bar colours for the images of the different SIMs. Sure, there are only 4 options, but it makes it very clear what account has signal and where your data connection is coming from.

The dialler has also been modified a little as well, as you would expect, to allow you to pick which account you want to actually call from - again this has your accent colour next to the SIM selector so you can pick quicker than reading.

The last noticeable difference, from my point of view, is the auto on and off feature. More phones need this. It’s quite simple in what it does, but it makes a whole lot of sense. You can set a time that it will automatically turn off, say 23:30, and back on, say 06:58. No more annoying phone calls whilst you try to sleep after passing out in a less than coherent state. Score! I do believe it will also let you disable it if you are using the phone at off time.

There are also quick settings in the notification drop down which makes changing a few settings a bit easier. This is set into 3 pages so you get a fair few options.

As I said, there is a bit of an inconsistency in one of the changes they have made to stock Android. They have made a nice change to the lock screen to show what networks you are connected too, but in the status bar it only shows what is in SIM slot 1. Inconsistent, yet minor, but rather noticeable.

Other than that, it is pretty much stock Jelly Bean, with the Google Play apps thrown in - again another plus point.

I initially wrote a quite bad review of the camera as every image I was taking was turning out rather poor with a horrible purple ting to the corners and the colours being incredibly washed out. Luckily, it turns out I have turned on a setting called ZSD or Zero Shutter Delay. In short, do not use this unless you really have to - It is probably the second worst camera feature ever (the first being digital zoom).

Anyway, back to the camera. In daylight it works pretty well for a fairly basic 5MP snapper. I did get some issues with focusing, but I think that may have been more to me. Colour reproduction was quite good, provided there was not too much going on in the picture, and the contrast ratio was a little out of it at times.

For everyday use, I’d say it’s definitely usable. If you’re just going to post stuff to twitter and Facebook, or even that Instagram thing, you won’t be disappointed. Not bad for a 5MP camera.

I was surprised to see one additional feature in here. HDR actually makes an appearance and seems to work rather well improving images. It is actually quite quick as well, so there is less of a ghosting effect then can be had from other devices.

Initially, I was very impressed with the screen. It’s viewing angels aren’t too bad for what is a lowish mid range phone. Everything seems to display nice and crisp, and the colours are more or less what I would want.

Outside is a different issue entirely. The screen just doesn’t seem to be bright enough to be able to read outside, even with cloud cover. You can make out shapes or very large text at a normal distance, but if you want to check your twitter stream, or even line up a picture, expect to get very close and find a bit of shade.

The B15 was actually quite surprising in terms of performance as well. It is perfect for day to day use; handling web, mail, and phone calls with no issue at all. But as you would no doubt expect for a device with a less than awesome 512mb of RAM.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun at all though. Asphalt 7 certainly runs reasonably smoothly, as do games such as Gunslugs and Pocket League 2.

The OS as a whole is very responsive and I have not yet suffered any input lag, apart from when installing a few apps during first set-up. The touch screen is really quite decent and accurate, but it does suffer if you are exploiting it’s water resistance whilst trying to change song when in the shower… As you’d expect. It is also gorilla glass, of some variety anyway, so is quite well protected there as well. The we finger tracking does work if you are just outside in the rain, or have wet fingers for some other reason.

The speakers are a little weak though. Sure, this is expected from rugged or waterproof phones to an extent as they need to protect the electronics, but I can’t help but feel corners have been cut here. The ear speaker seems to suffer from distortion with quite little volume, and the rear speaker is exceptionally tinny and not really suitable for listening to music, but more for being used as a speaker phone.

The battery seemed to be a bit of a mixed bag. likely due to me using it fairly hard and with both SIMs running. The 2000mAh battery does lasts a day comfortably, but with the scheduled reboot on, it seemed to have a massive drop come the morning.

It’s also quite hard to put a value on how well it performs for day to day use, so I shall now have to resort to benchmarks…

I’d be tempted to leave this alone. I have done a bit of research into rooting and it is not as simple as some processes that I am used to, and may not be for the faint hearted. It does seem that there may be root out there, as people are discussing it here on XDA-Developers, and user rayoo has made a decent guide on page 6 or so.

I haven’t been able to find any custom ROMs yet, so rooting becomes an argument between stopping any future updates from the manufacturer vs root abilities. I wouldn’t bother, personally.