The Otium U5 is a Chinese manufacturer's take on slim bezels

It didn't take long before an underdog Chinese manufacturer saw the Sharp Aquos Crystal with its nearly invisible bezels and said to itself "we can make nearly invisible bezels too!" That's how the Otium U5 was born! Well, not quite. Technically, it's more of a rework of the already available Ulefone U5, but the side and top bezels surrounding the 5.5-inch 540x960 laminated display seem skinnier than what the Ulefone had to offer.

If the resolution led you to the conclusion that this is an entry-level device, you are quite right. It has a quad-core MT6582 chipset, and the rest of its internals probably mirror the $130 Ulefone U5 as well. That's a Mali-400 graphics unit (who knew the ol' girl had so much life in her?), 1GB of RAM, 5MP rear cam, 2MP front cam, and a 2800mAh battery. There's no LTE, and we aren't quite sure whether the Otium U5 has dual front-facing stereo speakers, or is merely punctured for decoration. But we got to love the dotted styling of the software keys. Hopefully, the smartphone runs something more recent than Android 4.2.

The Otium U5's price and release date haven't been outed yet, but we expect this one to be on the cheap. Such phones usually don't sell outside of China by means of official dealership, but importing them is generally easy these days. The U5 supports 3G (WCDMA 2100/850 (HSDPA), and 2G (GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz) networks, so be sure to check whether it supports your carrier's bands.