Freeyond F9 Review: specs and features, camera quality test, gaming benchmark, user opinions and photos (2024)

FreeYond F9 - a novelty that deserves attention

Smartphones of the low price segment are becoming more and more popular, because every year the functionality they provide increases, and the design, autonomy and performance become closer to those of expensive counterparts. The variety of inexpensive models is increasing daily, dozens of the largest manufacturers want to get their part of the audience. Surprisingly, in such a competitive market, new players are also appearing who are trying to win the hearts of millions of users. The young company FreeYond has also become such, whose new smartphone, called the F9, is the hero of the review.

The complete set of the phone is rich for the value category. Firstly, I would like to separately thank the FreeYond Official Store for the branded polo shirt. Unfortunately, in size it does not quite fit the author of the article, but still very nice. Secondly, a nice white cardboard box contains not only a smartphone, but also a high-quality silicone case, a USB cable, a 2A 5V charger, a clip to remove the SIM tray, and instructions for using the gadget. The latter has not been translated into Russian, but, believe me, you would not use it anyway. The interface of the operating system is already quite clear. A nice addition to all of the above is the presence of a factory protective film on the screen. There is no oleophobic coating, and there is none on the display glass itself, which is excusable for an affordable gadget. Thus, the complete set of the device deserves an excellent rating.

The design of the novelty turned out to be quite successful. The body plastic is matte, fingerprints are practically not left on it. The shape of the monoblock is ergonomic, the phone fits comfortably in the hand, however, it is not very convenient to operate the device with such a large display with one hand. The dual camera unit looks relevant and stylish, but the frames of the 6.52-inch IPS panel could be smaller even taking into account the democratic price tag of the phablet. The fingerprint scanner is present, it is located on the side face, there are no complaints about the accuracy of its work, but unlocking the switched off display occurs with some delay. As a result, the exterior of the device causes more positive emotions, but it definitely could be better.

What is definitely hard to find fault with is the quality of the 6.52-inch IPS display. Although it has a modest resolution of 1600x720 pixels by today's standards, the image does not crumble into individual pixels, only small fonts may seem slightly blurry. The margin of brightness is not bad for IPS-matrices, it is comfortable to use the smartphone indoors and on a cloudy day. The direct rays of the December sun also leave the picture visible. The display does not have an increased image refresh rate, however, the technical characteristics used would hardly have coped with such a load, and opponents do not differ in such chips. Surprisingly, the picture is not distorted at tilt angles, only slightly loses in brightness. The backlight uniformity is not bad, the black color does not look light gray even in pitch darkness. The IPS panel is characterized by 10 multi-touch, the result is better than that of most competitors. The display correctly reads touches, its sensitivity is at a good level. Thus, the quality of the IPS screen becomes one of the competitive advantages of the gadget.

Technical characteristics are one of the controversial places of the Android smartphone in question. The eight-core processor UNISOC SC9863A is far from the worst solution for an inexpensive phone, reminiscent of the performance of the popular MediaTek Helio P22. Unfortunately, the full potential of the chipset and the PowerVR GE8322 video accelerator is not given by a modest 2GB of RAM. So, the Chrome browser with 7-8 running tabs collapses after a few tens of minutes of being in the tray, a similar situation happened with games. As for gaming capabilities, they are, albeit limited. In the Antutu v9.4.7 benchmark, the chipset scores under 100 thousand points, the Geekbench 5 benchmark gives out 121 Single-Core / 416 Multi-Core points. PUBG Mobile operates smoothly at close to the minimum graphics settings, the frame rate is stable, you can only find fault with rare friezes and long downloads. Projects like Call Of Duty Mobile and World Of Tanks Blitz will also be playable, but before launching them, you will have to unload all applications from the tray and be prepared for the fact that after half an hour or an hour of gameplay, these games may still close due to lack of RAM. The heating of the device can hardly be called significant even after a long gameplay session. Surprisingly, with 2GB of RAM, the developer decided to allocate 64GB of ROM. This configuration is rare in Android smartphones. You can expand the internal storage, but you will have to sacrifice one of the SIM cards. Processor performance during everyday use of the gadget is average. If the user had experience with flagships, but some thoughtfulness of the device will catch the eye when opening applications and heavy web pages, however, such delays cannot be called critical, and animation lags in the operating system were rarely observed.

PUBG Mobile gameplay on the FreeYond F9 smartphone can be seen at this link

Communication problems with FreeYond F9 were not observed. Reception is similar to Realme GT Neo and OnePlus 9RT. The speaker is quite loud, when talking in the room, about 70% of the volume was enough, near a busy highway, the figure grew to 90-100%. The interlocutors did not complain about voice distortion or other sound artifacts. Directly, the Internet connection is slightly weaker than that of the above smartphones of a higher price segment. Where the OnePlus 9RT holds up well to 4G, the Freeyond F9 can jump to a 3G connection. However, this does not happen very often. WiFi connection is stable, reliable reception was observed through 2 walls and about 5-6 meters from the signal source. But it should be noted that the device does not support WiFi 5G networks, only 2.4G format. There is only one main speaker, it is unlikely to miss a call, but it is completely unsuitable for listening to music. After 40-50% of the volume, the sound turns into a mess, in which the upper mids predominate. The sound through the headphone output is not amazing and is standard for an inexpensive smartphone without a dedicated DAC and amplifier.

Daytime photos

Photos taken in twilight conditions

The photographic capabilities of the main 13 and 2-megapixel photomodules are at a decent level for the price segment. With autofocus and LED flash, the sensors are suitable for simple shooting scenarios. So, with them it is easy to capture the text of documents, daytime landscapes also come out quite well. Of course, it's hard not to notice problems with the dynamic range, because of which objects in the shadows are hardly distinguishable, but the detail and color reproduction deserve a positive assessment. Shooting indoors is less successful for photosensors. Noises become noticeable, objects in the background are often blurry. The use of LED flash slightly improves the situation. In the evening, you can get at least a satisfactory frame quality only when shooting close to the flash. However, it is impossible to criticize cameras for such problems, because the solutions of opponents for a similar price show either similar or worse results. As for video recording, it should be done only in clear weather, while standing still. There is no electronic stabilization, the slightest deterioration in lighting turns the video sequence into a set of noise and other kinds of artifacts. The 8-megapixel selfie camera is very simple, it can be used for video calls, but you can count on high-quality frames for social networks only in perfect lighting.

There are no problems with autonomy either. Unfortunately, it was not possible to track the battery statistics normally, since the data was reset about once every half a day. It is possible that this is a software glitch directly on my smartphone instance. However, according to the aggregate data, the device withstood approximately 7 hours of active screen time in a day and a half of use, while leaving 26% of the battery charge. Moreover, at this time, it included about 30-40 minutes of gameplay in PUBG, about 40-50 minutes of using the gadget's camera. The USB Type-C port may make you think of fast charging, but its power was only 10W. As a result, from 5% to 100%, the device was charged for about 3 hours and 20 minutes. Conclusion - it is better to put the phone on charge at night.

The phone is based on the Android 12 GO operating system. During the use of gadgets, critical bugs were not encountered. There were no sudden crashes of ordinary applications, reboots or other problems. In addition, I would like to praise the translation of the OS. Usually smartphones of not the most famous and large manufacturers sin with a large number of untranslated from English or Chinese words, but this situation is not typical for FreeYond F9. Software support from the developer is present, however, the update did not differ in its huge size (35 megabytes) and, as a result, the list of fixes. But the very fact of its presence, of course, pleases.

Thus, FreeYond was able to make a balanced inexpensive smartphone that can find its fan. Even if the device does not make a revolution in the price segment, it adequately keeps up against the background of eminent opponents.

The advantages of the device are:

• decent basic equipment, including a silicone case and a protective film for the screen;
• nice-looking case design;
• bright 6.52-inch IPS display with good color reproduction;
• good eight-core processor UNISOC SC9863A;
• side fingerprint scanner;
• the presence of a dual main camera with a main sensor of 13MP;
• 5000mAh battery providing about 8-9 hours of active screen time;
• confident reception of communication, stable 4G connection, WiFi connection;
• current Android 12 GO, devoid of problems with optimization and translation;
• 64 GB of internal memory with the possibility of expansion;
• separate headphone jack.

The list of shortcomings of the device includes:

• modest 2GB of RAM in a configuration with 64GB of ROM;
• inexpensive plastic case;
• not the most outstanding sound of the main speaker;
• poor photo capabilities of cameras in evening lighting;
• no WiFi 5G support.

Thus, FreeYond F9 definitely deserves attention due to its excellent price-performance ratio. For the smartphone provided for review, we express our gratitude to the FreeYond Official Store.