One of the most interesting mobile brands that recently arrived here in the Philippines is Kata and earlier this year, they introduced their newest flagship phone, the Kata i3. One advantage of the Kata i3 was the 16 GB of internal storage and the 1.3 GHz Quad-Core MTK6582 processor that packs a Mali-400 GPU which runs pretty well on gaming. There are so much to love about this phone, why don’t you check out my review of the phone after the break.

The build of the Kata i3 was actually the best that I’ve seen on a MediaTek smartphone. The Kata i3 was very thin and solid despite the plastic build. At first, I even thought that the Kata i3 wasn’t made up of plastic because it was really solid and it sports a brushed metal looks. Holding it was real nice and comfortable. The curves?, it was sexy too, one of the best that I’ve seen on an Android smartphone. At the back, there’s the Kata logo along with their fish. I wish they should’ve minimize the opacity of the Kata logo and they just ditched the fish to make the Kata i3 more minimalistic.

The buttons were placed nicely below the phone but I felt that they need to brighten up more the capacitive buttons. I’ve got no problems with the volume rocker and power button which was nicely placed on the sides. To add to that sexiness, the Kata i3 has a chrome accent at the bottom edge of the phone. That small aesthetic addition made the phone look sexier and more premium.

The Kata i3 features a 5.0” HD LCD which was quite good too. The size of the display was just right and the bezels on the sides were just right but I wish they could maximize it more and just eliminate the remaining bezels, heehee. The sunlight legibility of the phone was quite good too. I can see and read the texts on the display even at broad daylight. The colors and contrast of the phone’s display are just acceptable. And if you use gloves on your work, you don’t have to worry anymore because you can use that on your Kata i3’s display.

There’s no NFC or LTE inside but there’s HSPA+ for your internet connection. Guys, you must remember that the current MediaTek processor inside the phone doesn’t support LTE yet. The only MediaTek processor that’ll support LTE is the MTK6595. Inside the Kata i3 is  a 16 GB storage and there’s a MicroSD card slot when you want to add more storage if you feel that the 16 GB is too small.

Unlike other local branded phones powered by MediaTek, the Kata i3 features a 1.3 GHz Quad-Core MTK6582 processor with a Mali-400 GPU which performs pretty well on gaming. There’s a 1 GB of RAM too which is very common on most smartphones at this price range.

The Kata i3 didn’t really shine in the battery test. I was only able to run the phone at 8 hours of heavy usage. Yeah, not the best on a smartphone. I actually recommend bringing a charger or a power bank if you’re a heavy user or if you love to play games on your phone. The speaker grill is placed just beside the Kata logo at the back and it performs pretty well and it was quite loud.

The Kata i3 is still running on Android 4.2.2. No word yet if it will be updated to Android 4.4 Kitkat but I hope it will be. There are no special UI on the Kata i3 which was good because it will just add some lags and will just hog some of the built-in memory of the smartphone.

I also notice the two apps made by Kata – The Fish market but I doubt that you’ll use that because there’s the Play store already and the Fishcloud but as of this posting, the Fishcloud storage is still under construction. But there’s the Hotspot app which will help you set up a hotspot easily.

The Kata i3 was able to get a score of 17274 on Antutu. I was actually impressed with the score it got and the gaming? Well, you could run almost all games on the Kata i3. I played Real Boxing 3 on the phone and it was really smooth. One of my favourite racing games from Gameloft, GT Racing 2, was also running smooth at maximum settings. The most demanding game that I’ve tried was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game was smooth when the settings of the game was place on mid-high settings.

The Kata i3 sports a 13 Megapixel Camera with LED Flash. I notice that the phone shoots very fast but at low light, the noise and particles are very noticeable. However at broad daylight, shooting using the Kata i3 won’t be a problem. I also notice that the images that I shoot sometime turns pinkish. I am actually not sure why that happens.

The Kata i3 surely has a great build quality and one of the sexiest Android smartphone. The MediaTek processor and the Mali GPU was great on gaming too but I was not impressed with its battery life and its camera. The Kata i3 is now available for P8,499. Yes, the specifications and the build the phone was quite good for its price but let’s remember that there will be octa-core phones that’ll be coming this year.