About two years ago, a typical smartphone buyer in India would have had genuine apprehensions about buying a phone that was perhaps new in the market or did not have the sort of recall value that the leading brands enjoyed at the time. Fast-forward to now, and what you get is a rather vibrant market, where the consumer is more than willing to “take risks”, as long as the specifications and price tag indicate a potential value-for-money smartphone. This week, Reliance Retail has entered the Android smartphone market with a bunch of products across price points, including the LYF Flame 1 (Rs.6,699), LYF Wind 6 (Rs.7,499) and LYF Water 1 (Rs.17,399). What we are testing here is the flagship, the most expensive of them all—Earth 1, priced at Rs.25,800, is now on sale.
Design: sophisticated yet functional
At first glance, the Earth 1’s aluminium alloy chassis doesn’t reveal much, but a closer look reveals a bunch of fine design aspects that make it useful. While it is a flat slab on the front and back, the brushed metal rim is curved outward slightly, extremely useful while holding the phone. Secondly, it does give you a better idea of the finger position for the power and volume keys on the right spine when you aren’t looking at the phone. On the back is the glass layer, something very similar to what Sony and Samsung do with their expensive phones.
Compared to the OnePlus 2’s aluminium and magnesium alloy and sandstone finish on the back and the YU Yutopia’s aircraft-grade aluminium finish, the final choice will boil down to what you prefer. This is perhaps the most diverse competition we have seen in a long time in this price range. However, where the OnePlus 2 still has the advantage is the notification toggle on the left spine that lets you turn off alerts quickly without having to turn on the screen, unlock the home screen, slide down the quick settings from the notification bar and then turn on the “Do Not Disturb” mode.
Display: all-round canvas
The 5.5-inch display is the AMOLED type, a panel that is quite common in smartphones. The advantages include good contrast level, good visibility in sunlight and rich colours that almost pop out of the screen. All in all, this display should work well for media consumption as well. The resolution of the Earth 1’s screen is Full HD (1,920X1,080p), which is on a par with phones in this price bracket. We quite like the reading experience on this display, the text is sharp and clear.
It is too close to call between the three, even though the OnePlus 2 (Rs. 24,999) and the YU Yutopia (Rs. 24,999) use the IPS (in-plane switching) LCD panels. However, the Yutopia has the advantage on the specification sheet thanks to the higher 2,560x1,440p resolution on its 5.2-inch screen—it just looks that much sharper than the other two phones. However, we must clarify that for most users, a Full HD resolution will be more than adequate for almost all tasks.
Performance: with great power comes great responsibility
The Earth 1 runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, with 3 GB RAM. That is adequate power for even the most serious multitaskers, and you can pretty much run a dozen apps in the background. Sluggishness is not even a remote worry, but what stands out is that while gaming, extensive camera use or even severe app load, the Earth 1 does not heat up as much as some other phones running the same processor tend to. The battery from the 3,500 mAh pack lasts one day, and if you are judicious, it may even get you to lunch time the next day.
In comparison on paper, the OnePlus 2 and the YU Yutopia both run much more powerful processors—different variants of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, with 4 GB RAM. However, both phones suffer from severe heating issues even under minimum stress, and that severely affects battery life.
Camera: when in Rome...
The Earth 1 is going back in time, and seems to be taking inspiration from what HTC did with the One M8. It has dual cameras on the back panel, where the 13-megapixel one clicks a colour photo, while the 2-megapixel one clicks a black and white photo at the same time and then blends them together. All this happens in the background, and the idea is that by blending two images, a lot more detail can be captured and recreated. From our test shots in various lighting scenarios, the performance is on a par with that of its rivals. Good-light photos capture a good amount of detail and colour, and you can zoom in quite a bit before distortion starts showing up. Lowlight performance depends more on the source of light and its positioning, but the Earth 1 largely does well in terms of giving photos that can easily be shared on social media.
Network capabilities: future ready
The unique point of the Earth 1 is the fact that it will be able to use certain capabilities of the forthcoming Reliance Jio 4G mobile networks, if that is the network you happen to use at that point. One of them is the VoLTE feature, short for voice over LTE. This will allow high-definition video and voice calls, conference calls as well as one-tap switch from a voice call to a video call. There are a whole bunch of messaging, health apps preloaded on the phone, which Reliance hopes will become a solid ecosystem in itself.
Verdict
At present, Reliance Retail’s LYF brand of smartphones are very new and don’t command recall value. However, given what we have experienced with Earth 1, there is nothing worrisome. The phone runs on a relatively clean Android, offers smooth performance and a good battery life.
