[Q] Star N9599 MTK6589 Quad CoreWith S-Pen 5.7 Inch 720P HD Screen 3G Sma

[OpenMinded]

Hi davidayling,

I just received mine today (from: hongkongeek[dot].com since they promised to refund customs and VAT); excellent and quick service btw!

This is the first time I bought one of these china phones; encouraged by the many and mostly positive reports...

About the Phone:

+ To me it does look and feel just like the high quality brand phones
+ NOT A SINGLE CHINA APP!!! Just vanilla 4.2.1 - very good performance; smooth animations, transitions
+ 3800 mah battery - though I'm not sure if it really will deliver that much energy - but it says 3.800 on the label at least
+ Display (likely really an IPS): bright (even outside), wide viewing angle - very close to the front glass; comes very close to Samsung S3 amoled
+ 2nd battery included; additional flip cover included
+ Pen looks like a real S-Pen - no softtip; anyway the capacitative finger-touch recognition is not stopped when using the pen; so that can cause inconvenience when using it
+ GREAT (!) web browsing experience: 5,7" & good performance with JS-rich web-apps (like groupware web-clients)
+ Dual-SIM (with dual standby); however just one line can be used at the same time; and only one is WCDMA capable.
+ Worked on two carrier networks instantly

- no compass; well my last phone had one; I'm not sure if I really need one
- 220g = 170g phone + 50g battery - it's not a feather...

I am actually planning to flash CWM & root it; also I haven't tried out the GPS yet - So I'll be back regarding this later.

Many greet's from the hights of the austrian alps!

lupiro

Interesting! Is the pen pressure sensitive then?
I am looking for a nice Samsung Galaxy Note alternative.

 

[lupiro]

Hello,
I just noticed this phone too and there is even a thread about it on XDA (yay )
What are your thoughts about this phone?
the only thing im afraid about is because I heard STAR and some chinese branded phones are unreliable and may suddenly stop work one day.. is it true? or STAR is a reliable company?
I saw it being sold for 213$ for the mtk 6589T version..so.. overall, should I get this phone? how is its size compared to the note 2 ? is it much larger? or about the same? will it be hard to grip it? I mean it's 5.7.. even the note is 5.5 lol
Thanks!~

Hi,

I don't know anything about the company/manufacturer - regarding reliability the phone works fine, however I've been using it for a bit more than a month now and that does not really say much if it's durable in the long run. It's a little bigger than the note2, not significantly though; but as you said, it has a 5.7" screen...

What do you mean "hard to grip" - I enjoy using it; certainly with 5.7" you can hardly reach the whole screen with one hand (unless you have a looong thumb).

Battery is excelent, much better than I expected; brightness and contrast of the screen is absolutely ok... I'd buy it again.

Hope I could help you; many greetings

lupiro

---------- Post added at 01:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 PM ----------

Interesting! Is the pen pressure sensitive then?
I am looking for a nice Samsung Galaxy Note alternative.

Hi,

the pen is not pressure sensitive. In fact, I hardly use it. Only when I have to "touch" small items in web-apps (like calendar widgets in the groupware's webinterface)

If you don't need NFC, from performance and usability perspective it's a great phone!

Greetings

lupiro

 

[OpenMinded]

Thanks for the info! I ordered a MTK6589T version with 1080p resolution.
I wonder how it performs and behaves on battery.
I am also curious about what technology they use, because I read somewhere it was not the usual soft tip, but a hard tip?
About to find out in about a week I guess .
cheers

 

[verynoob]

Thanks for the info! I ordered a MTK6589T version with 1080p resolution.
I wonder how it performs and behaves on battery.
I am also curious about what technology they use, because I read somewhere it was not the usual soft tip, but a hard tip?
About to find out in about a week I guess .
cheers

that's weird, it seems this phones has these variants: mtk 6589 with 720p, mtk 6589T with 720p and mtk 6589T with 1080p?
sometimes I wonder how do all these chinese factories look from the inside lol it's like everyone is doing whatever he wants there

 

[OpenMinded]

that's weird, it seems this phones has these variants: mtk 6589 with 720p, mtk 6589T with 720p and mtk 6589T with 1080p?
sometimes I wonder how do all these chinese factories look from the inside lol it's like everyone is doing whatever he wants there

Most of these phones have either a 720p or 1080p screen and MTK6589 or MTK6589T.
Look at the Thl W8, it comes between 4 and 16 gb with either resolution and the beyond version has the MTK6589T SOC.
Tip: do not buy a FHD screen without MTK6589T because performance is not too good.

 

[verynoob]

Most of these phones have either a 720p or 1080p screen and MTK6589 or MTK6589T.
Look at the Thl W8, it comes between 4 and 16 gb with either resolution and the beyond version has the MTK6589T SOC.
Tip: do not buy a FHD screen without MTK6589T because performance is not too good.

Yea so far I think the best is MTK6589T + 720p, I mean, is overclocking the MTK6589 to 1.5Ghz (6589T) really helping the smoothness of phones with 1080p, or it's still slow and for the 1080p chinese phones you should wait for the upcoming eight-core cpu from MediaTek ?

 

[OpenMinded]

Yea so far I think the best is MTK6589T + 720p, I mean, is overclocking the MTK6589 to 1.5Ghz (6589T) really helping the smoothness of phones with 1080p, or it's still slow and for the 1080p chinese phones you should wait for the upcoming eight-core cpu from MediaTek ?

1080p with MTK6589(T) is not slow, but Thl W8 with 720p gives about 13000 in Antutu and with 1080p around 11000.
Not slow, but definitely less smooth.
Besides, I did not see too much difference in detail between the screens.
The T obviously adds some tot the smoothness, but also to battery usage.
I would love to see those 8 cores, let's hope they will have good batteries .

 

[verynoob]

1080p with MTK6589(T) is not slow, but Thl W8 with 720p gives about 13000 in Antutu and with 1080p around 11000.
Not slow, but definitely less smooth.
Besides, I did not see too much difference in detail between the screens.
The T obviously adds some tot the smoothness, but also to battery usage.
I would love to see those 8 cores, let's hope they will have good batteries .

So you say that 6589T actually increases battery life although it is more powerful?

 

[OpenMinded]

No I posted it adds to battery USE not to battery LIFE.
It most certainly uses more battery.

 

[dorin1989]

Hi guys, i order last week a HDC Galaxy Note 2 N9599, and i search for a root possibility, but i didn`t find anything. Can anybody post a link with a certain root solution?
Thanx

 

[OpenMinded]

Hi guys, i order last week a HDC Galaxy Note 2 N9599, and i search for a root possibility, but i didn`t find anything. Can anybody post a link with a certain root solution?
Thanx

How about you search before you post? This is a MTK6589 based phone, there are many ways to root it.
I used MTK droid tools.

Turns out the device I ordered just has MTK6589 and 1280x720 resolution, not MTK6589 and FHD.
So perhaps there is no such version .

 

[carolinaandrade]

Hello! Does anyone already root it?
Thanks?

 

[lupiro]

Hello! Does anyone already root it?
Thanks?

Yes, I did. Google for "MTK6589 root", should do the trick

 

[OpenMinded]

Hello! Does anyone already root it?
Thanks?

Did you read my post?
Please also follow the forum rules and SEARCH before you ask!
Apparently user dorin1989 did not find my answer satisfying and he has sent me an annoying insulting message via p.m.
Pretty pathetic if I may say, is that a reason for mods to ban him?
Just needed to express that bit of frustration.

Meanwhile I have compiled CWM 6.0.3.3 for my (supposedly Star) N9599 with big thanks to C3C076.
I am on to trying to get CM 10.1 working.
I compiled it already but it will not flash (error 7).
It will not be usable in the beginning, because it will not support dual sim.
Guess that has to be figured out later .

I like the device, but it is no replacement for the note 2.
No NFC, compass (magnetic sensor) and while the screen has some extra sensor for the hard tipped pen, it is different from the pressure sensitive technology used for the note.
The note pen does not work on the star and vice versa.
If there was no note, I would definitely use it as main device.
I like the size, better for gaming than the note .

cheers

 

[verynoob]

So how is the device working after these 2 months? Is it OK ? because sometimes these chinese phones die without warning

 

[OpenMinded]

So how is the device working after these 2 months? Is it OK ? because sometimes these chinese phones die without warning

Mine is working fine.
Never had a Chinese phone stopped working.
With which model and type did you experience that?

 

[OpenMinded]

CWM 6.0.3.3 for N9599 MTK6589

Hi people,

Like I mentioned I created a CWM 6.0.3.3 for the Star N9599.
It is needed to flash for example CM10.1, which does not work on CWM 5.
A few regular disclaimers:
- flash on your own risk
- I am not responible for any damage to your device
- I am not responsible for any other issue you may have like a dead cat or a burnt house, or your device being bricked
That being said, if you have a similar device, you should be safe.
Any way, MAKE A BACKUP! If your device is different you may lose valuable drivers and you might for example end up with a non working camera.

To flash:
- use a recent SP Flash tools and make sure you have the usb vcom drivers installed
- preferrably use a self created scatter file (mtk droid tools), I attached the one I used
- open sp flash tool, select only recovery and choose the file attached to this post
- turn off the phone, pull battery and just after putting the battery back connect the usb cable
- recovery should flash
to enter recovery: keep volume up pressed and switch phone on

Please let me know if it worked for you and hit thanks if it did .
If you have issues, please search first, there's plenty of info on mtk6589.
Thanks to Bruno Martins for his MTK-tools and C3C076 for helping with compiling.

his sources are here:
https://github.com/C3C0/android_bootable_recovery
I will put up my own github when I have time.

Md5sum of the img file: 84ade7fc01d445fbb2d06363af593d6a

some roms available:
http://www.needrom.com/phone-roms/star/n9599/

Please feel free to start fiddling like I did, perhaps we can compile CM10.1 .
cheers

 

[carolinaandrade]

Hello, I'm so sorry I really didn't find any thread about this phone, thank very much for your information, so I hope you can complete to get CM 10.1 working just fine and I will be happy to flash it later

Can you tell me if the phone size is the same? ( not the display) because I would like to buy some cases to it, but I don't know if they fit

Did you read my post?
Please also follow the forum rules and SEARCH before you ask!
Apparently user dorin1989 did not find my answer satisfying and he has sent me an annoying insulting message via p.m.
Pretty pathetic if I may say, is that a reason for mods to ban him?
Just needed to express that bit of frustration.

Meanwhile I have compiled CWM 6.0.3.3 for my (supposedly Star) N9599 with big thanks to C3C076.
I am on to trying to get CM 10.1 working.
I compiled it already but it will not flash (error 7).
It will not be usable in the beginning, because it will not support dual sim.
Guess that has to be figured out later .

I like the device, but it is no replacement for the note 2.
No NFC, compass (magnetic sensor) and while the screen has some extra sensor for the hard tipped pen, it is different from the pressure sensitive technology used for the note.
The note pen does not work on the star and vice versa.
If there was no note, I would definitely use it as main device.
I like the size, better for gaming than the note .

cheers

 

[OpenMinded]

what do you mean by size then? Mine has 1/16gb ram/rom.
did you try the recovery yet? I am wondering if the devices are the same.
Make sure you make a backup of recovery with mtk droid tools before flashing, so you can go back.

 

[carolinaandrade]

I mean the mobile size, is it the same of galaxy note 2?
I haven't done anything yet, because I prefer to wait by someone better than me doing it with the stuff you provide me

what do you mean by size then? Mine has 1/16gb ram/rom.
did you try the recovery yet? I am wondering if the devices are the same.
Make sure you make a backup of recovery with mtk droid tools before flashing, so you can go back.