ocaholic - Jiayu S3 Review - Smartphones

Jiayu S3 Review

Published by Luca Rocchi on 20.04.15

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Design / Build Quality

The Jiayu S3 uses a classic shape that you can find on most touch screen devices on the market. The "bar" design is timeless and well tested. With dimensions set at 152 x 75 x 8.9 mm and 189 grams of weight, as well as the 5.5-inch display, the Jiayu S3 can be classified as a phablet. Therefore it is quite difficult to use the S3 with only one hand. On the right hand side of the device you can change the volumen and apart from that, there is also the power button. At the top there is a 3.5 millimeter jack for headsets/headphones and at the bottom we find a micro-USB port. Overall the build quality is on a good level, and in our opinion, only the back cover could be improved, since the plastic at this point feels rather cheap.

Camera

The Jiayu S3 comes with a 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 5 megapixel one on the front. The rear camera features a dual LED flash, which allows you to take pictures with decent quality in the dark. A closer look at the sensor reveals that it’s the same model, that can be found with the Oppo Find 7, the OnePlus One and the Sony IMX2014 F2.0. However, we want to make it clear that the sensor is only a small part of the camera module, and sharing the same sensor does not necessarily mean that you will get pictures of the same quality like with other smartphones or phablets.

In our opinion color reproduction is on a good level and so is field of view. Apart from that the shutter releases almost immediately. The supplied application includes numerous camera modes and settings, and while using the menu you can adjust almost every aspect of the camera, which includes ISO and white balance. We’ve also shot a few videos at the highest possible quality but we can't say that the video quality is on the same level as the picture quality. It appears there are some software issues causing an aliasing effecty. In addition, the audio sounds very distorted and far from reality, with excessive background noise.