Chinese start-up Phicomm ruffled quite a few feathers with its high configuration-low priced Phicomm Passion 660 (Rs.8,999) last year. None of its phones, launched in the last 4-5 months, have impressed us the way it did. Their latest phone, the Energy E670 (Rs.5,499), seems like another phone, but when it comes to performance it doesn’t disappoint. The phone takes on the Redmi Note 2 Prime (Rs.6,999).
Design: Plain looking but well-built and handy
The Energy E670 looks like any other budget smartphone. The soft matte finish on the back feels good in the hand. The overall build quality is impressive. Despite the all-plastic finish, it doesn’t feel cheap. It weighs 130g and will easily fit into the smallest of hands with ease. The back is removable and can be easily taken off. It carries two micro SIM slots and a micro SD slot.
Display: Sharp but colour look washed out
The phone’s 5-inch display has a screen resolution of 1280x720p. For the screen size, this is good configuration. Even though the display looks a bit underwhelming in terms of colour reproduction, one can’t tell the difference with regular tasks such as browsing, typing and reading. It shows when you are playing a game or a movie on the phone. The wide viewing angles are a bit poor. Also, the display is a finger-print magnet and like most budget smartphones, it smudges too much.
Software: Old Android with a minimal interface
Unlike its other Chinese counterparts Phicomm has wrapped the Android 5.1(Lollipop) OS under a customised but minimalistic user interface. There is an app drawer but the background is transparent instead of plain white. You can change the size of the app icons, text size, the grid size of the home page and switch between vertical scroll and paged scroll in the app drawer. Barring these, there aren’t any notable customisation features. The settings page and the multi-tasking window look just like the plain Android interface. Only here you can close all apps running in the background with a single click instead of swiping each and every slide to close it. If you are into interfaces that allow you to play around, Xiaomi’s MIUI has a lot more to offer.
Performance: Smooth with most tasks until stressed
Phicomm has used a low-power Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 quad-core processor to drive the phone, and has paired it with 2GB RAM. To our surprise, the device handled most mainstream tasks without any issues. We even played some games such as Smash Hit and Asphalt Nitro and didn’t notice nay sluggishness or heating up on the back. However, when we had more than 5-7 apps running simultaneously in the background, we did notice sluggishness while switching between apps or scrolling through the home screens. This is a dual SIM phone with 4G connectivity. It offers 16GB of internal storage and supports micro SD cards. This makes it one of the best endowed phones in terms of storage at this price point. Its battery back-up isn’t the most impressive, but the 2,300mAh battery can eke out a day’s back-up if you are not a heavy user.
Camera: Average picture quality
The phone’s 8-meagpixel camera is fast but the picture quality is average. It tends to oversaturate colours which gives its a slightly brighter look. However, it struggles with detailing and sharpness. The level of noise in non-focus areas is too high. Even the area under focus begins to crack if you zoom in a little or look at it on a bigger screen. The low-light shots look blurry and washed out.
Verdict
The Phicomm Energy E70 is a well-built smartphone with a light form factor. It delivers a smooth performance, but still runs an older Android variant, albeit with a very usable custom interface. At this price, this phone seems to be ticking most of the boxes. However, if you want a better display and superior camera, you can also consider the Xiaomi Redmi 2 Prime.
