Cherry Mobile Aqua S10 Pro 5G: When Premium Equals Budget

DESIGN
DISPLAY
PERFORMANCE
GAMING
CAMERA
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Cherry Mobile’s Aqua S10 Pro 5G is the company’s newest release phone that promises quality performance for a budget price. In fact, this is one of the best phones that they’ve released over the years.

DESIGN

The unit comes in a nondescript box, or in fact, the other way around. Makikita mo na ang front and back design ng phone outside the box, and the Cherry Mobile branding plus the AQUA S10 Pro 5G. All the specs are listed at the back of the box. 

The phone unit itself is impressive. What’s great about the Cherry Mobile S10 Pro 5G is the napaka-premium ng design even though this phone only costs about PHP8,000. It’s a glossy back finish, but the materials used for the frame are glass front and plastic back. 

Bezels are slim but it doesn’t set itself apart from most phones, however, the phone sits right in the middle in terms of weight. One-handed operation is good since it’s slim width-wise.

Going back to the rear panel, you’ll appreciate the ink black colour scheme. It’s not a monotone black na makikita mo madalas sa ibang faux-premium phones, and it shows a slight bluish-purple tint when reflecting light. We recommend using this phone with a jelly case because the back is a fingerprint magnet. 

Agaw pansin din ang camera array – it has a brushed-steel texture that adds to the premium feels from the Cherry Mobile Aqua S10 Pro 5G. The Cherry Mobile brand name is printed near the bottom of the phone.

At the left edge of the phone, dito makikita ang SIM tray at volume rocker button, and the right side is where the easy access fingerprint scanner/power button is. The charging port, 3.5 mm jack, mic, and loudspeaker is located at the back. Thankfully, AQUA S10 Pro 5G still has a feature most premium phones are starting to remove, kaya bonus ito para sa headphone users.

DISPLAY

As for the display, the AQUA S10 Pro 5G has an FHD+ IPS LCD screen. At this price point, it’s a good balance between price and aesthetics – most IPS LCD screens today are getting better than their predecessors. However, it would be nice if Cherry Mobile put an AMOLED screen on this phone – it would’ve been a banger!

Napakaganda mag rewatch ng favorite movies dito – you can even stream movies like Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness on the display and you will appreciate the vibrancy of the reds and yellows, although medyo partial kami sa blacks during dark scenes since it’s an IPS. 

If you’re looking for a better priced phone with an AMOLED screen, look forward to the Cherry Mobile Aqua SV – that one has a way better display, although magdadagdag ka lang ng konti.

PERFORMANCE

The Cherry Mobile Aqua S10 Pro 5G uses the powerful Mediatek Dimensity 700. In the last few months, Mediatek has been releasing powerful chipsets like the Dimensity 8000 series, and they’re found in phones with great price-to-spec ratios.

Apps launch fast salamat sa optimization ng software or hardware, and there’s little to no delay even when multiple apps are opened. Video playback is smooth too, and the audio quality is good – it’s loud. 

We’ve heard this phone one floor away playing music, and we can tell this phone will make for a good speaker substitute. Hopefully, hindi sumuko ang hardware, since most phones tend to do this unless they have quality sound engineering.


The Mediatek 700 gaming chipset doesn’t disappoint either, as you will see in the gaming section of this review. Storage-wise, you can store a lot of photos or videos na favorite mo (whether this be Tiktok vids, or your secret stash of anime waifus).

Get back to your game ASAP salamat sa battery netong 5000mAh with a fast charging technology included. While we’ve seen phone with 6000mAh batteries, this phone sticks with the norm. It could have gone better if it were a little higher, but at its price point, we couldn’t ask for more.

GAMING

The Dimensity 700 isn’t the latest release ng Mediatek, however, majority of the Dimensity chipsets provide cheaper options to the more famous Snapdragon. In fact, humahabol na sa performance, sometimes, even outperforming Snapdragon ang mga recent Dimensity chipsets. 

We’ve tested the game on Mobile legends ,and we can say the Dimensity 700 holds up really well. In fact, ramdam na namin ang responsiveness ng phone even when we were just launching the apps.

Kayang-kaya ng Aqua S10 Pro 5G ang high-settings sa Mobile Legends, pero hindi pa available ang Ultra High graphics settings, which will soon change kapag nag update na ang Moonton.

As for other games, the Aqua S10 Pro 5G still performs well. We played the CODM on this phone at the highest settings, and at wala kaming na experience na delays or drops in frame rate. 

Although walang dedicated game space ang Aqua S10 Pro 5G, it has a liquid cooling tech na makakatulong sa overall gaming experience. The cooling system really helped – naglaro kami ng Genshin Impact sa device, and the combination of the Dimensity 700 with the built-in liquid cooling resulted in a comfortable gaming phone.

Although merong framedrops sa Genshin Impact, it’s still actually playable sa Aqua S10 Pro 5G. However, the phone lags when the game is set to the highest graphics. We’d rate the Aqua S10 Pro 5G’s performance sa Genshin Impact as “okay”, but “great” in terms of overall gaming performance.

CAMERA

The phone comes equipped with a quad camera setup: a 48MP main camera, a 5MP ultrawide, a 2MP macro sensor, and a 2MP depth sensor. There’s not much to say about the camera performance, but we know that the phone takes really good photos in good lighting. Just check these sample photos from the phone: 

As for the video recording, the Aqua S10 Pro 5G takes 1080p videos, however, this is a downgrade from the Cherry Mobile Aqua S10 Pro 4G, which records 4K videos at 30fps.

PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

This phone is available for PHP8,000 and is now available nationwide. The base variant has a 4GB RAM with 128GB internal memory, expandable up to 512GB RAM.

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