Impressions: 360 N7

I wanted a phone to play games on.

Originally I wanted a tablet, but it turns out tablets aren’t really an option anymore — Google went and released the Pixel Slate, so a big-screen phone was the only choice left.

What I wanted from a gaming phone:

• Enough performance
• Strong battery life
• A large screen
• Decent feel in the hand
• No touch dropouts or connection drops
• As cheap as possible

Xiaomi phones all seem to have that tradition of the touchscreen failing when it gets hot, Meizu phones all have connection drop issues, the Smartisan Pro 2’s build quality is a joke and the screen even lets water in, and there are plenty of MediaTek phones, but their performance is absolute garbage.

Then I saw 360 phones were on special on JD. Took a look — the 360 N7, originally discounted by one yuan to 999 yuan, and paying with Baitiao knocked another yuan off, two yuan off total, so I got it for 998 yuan.

Why go for this “notorious” 360 phone? Because it meets my needs:

• Snapdragon 660, plenty for gaming
• 4GB RAM, easily handles games
• 5000mAh battery, killer endurance
• 5.99-inch screen, and 18:9 too, so games get extra field of view
• Most importantly of all, it’s cheap!

When it arrived it felt about the same as any other Chinese phone, with a plastic film pre-applied, and on first boot it asked me to update the system firmware:

Turns out the latest firmware version couldn’t connect to the network at all, so I had to go to the official site, download the flash package and flash it manually. After that, I found that even though it’s a 5.99-inch screen, it isn’t much bigger than the phone I was using before — goes to show how much a high screen-to-body ratio helps.

After some light tinkering, I found this phone actually has a lot going for it… let me go through them one by one:

1. You can enable GMS (the whole Google suite) with one tap

If you bought a Xiaomi or Meizu, you’d have to download a Google installer yourself, or flash some overseas ROM to get Google services. On the 360 phone, you just open Developer Mode, and there’s a conspicuous “Enable GMS” option; turn it on and you’ve got the full Google suite. Holy shit, it doesn’t get more convenient than that.

2. The phone comes with its own “fridge,” and it can freeze itself

Being a 360 phone, it of course comes with the 360 suite preinstalled, but inside that suite 360 bundled an app-freezing tool like “Fridge,” and this tool… can actually freeze 360’s own suite. I promptly used 360 to freeze 360 itself. Holy shit, it actually worked… and the phone quickly became a clean system with nothing built in besides the dialer and messaging apps.

3. No push ads found so far, and the only ad can be turned off or even uninstalled

Lots of people say 360 phones have ads. I just set the system language to English and froze the various built-in apps, and I haven’t seen any ads… The only ad is the lock-screen magazine, and that can be disabled, or you can even find the installed app and delete it. Nearly a month of use and no ads found.

4. You can change the launcher and get something like the official Pixel interface

The 360 system can’t be rooted, but you can change the launcher — it takes some tricks, though there are tutorials on the official forums. I switched to Lawnchair, which looks like a stock interface, and even has a bit of a Pixel feel.

5. No real small issues, and the battery life is explosive

I bought this phone for gaming, and I’m very satisfied — the touchscreen doesn’t fail when it gets hot, and the screen colors are decent, cold by default, but tweak it a bit and it looks comfortable. Performance can go full tilt. Worth mentioning: 360’s game mode for Honor of Kings actually uses the spoof-the-device-model trick, with the official system doing the spoofing for you, which I think is great. And thanks to that 5000mAh battery, gaming endurance beats the Mi Pad 4 — absolutely insane.

Finally, a word on accessories for this 360 phone — basically just a case and a screen protector:

For the case, there’s a particularly cheap red one on Taobao, and the one with a lanyard hole is the most recommended.

That case is so cheap that the paint sometimes flakes off. If you’re worried, buy the official 360 case.

For screen protectors I don’t recommend the official one; I recommend the “Shanmo” protector. Even though Shanmo protectors have terrible reviews on Taobao, you need to use a special white-edge liquid to solve that problem.

After applying the Shanmo protector the white edges are big; smear on the “AB glue” version of the white-edge liquid, and at first it penetrates poorly, roughly like this:

But don’t rush it — you need 3-4 days for the liquid to slowly seep in. I don’t recommend the wmwx white-edge liquid; it leaves a rainbow edge along the border that looks awful, while the AB glue version doesn’t have that problem.

After waiting 4 days the white edges are gone and the protector is perfect.

If glue leaks at the edge, you can seal it with the wmwx white-edge liquid and that solves it directly.

All in all, for a 998-yuan phone with a Snapdragon 660, a 5000mAh battery, and no connection drops or touch failures, as a gaming machine it’s pretty much perfect. Think about it: anything more powerful isn’t this cheap, anything cheaper isn’t this powerful, and anything cheaper with the same performance has a smaller battery. Where else are you going to find a gaming machine this well matched?

Of course I know the 360 phone system might have backdoors, but I only use it for gaming, so whatever. Besides… you think Xiaomi and Huawei don’t have backdoors? (laughs)