It’s no secret — flagship phones are a dying breed, and there are few takers for the incremental upgrades each year. “Bang-per-buck” is the new mantra — each of these phones I look at today delivers great value for its price, and you could consider one if you’re shopping around for a great deal.
Moto G 3rd Generation
This original Moto G is the one that started the trend in 2013 — to redefine what a budget smartphone could do without compromising user experience. Fast forward two years and the 2015 Moto G refines much of what the original did right, but does it stand out among the much-improved offerings from the competition? Let’s find out.
In terms of design, the phone, while very much a Moto G, takes inspiration from Moto X by way of premium-looking metal accents. The result is a clean yet grippy easy-to-hold design. By far, the standout design change is waterproofing to IPX7 standards, which means the Moto G can handle immersion in water 1m deep for up to 30 minutes. Though you can’t use the phone under water, water resistance is something I think should become standard across the board.
The Moto G has a 5-inch HD 720p display which offers good colours and viewing angles, but it’s baffling why Motorola chose not to upgrade to a full-HD display given the intense competition at this price point. The 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chip with 2GB memory/16GB storage variant is well worth the extra thousand bucks, and I wouldn’t suggest you look at the 8GB variant. The combo runs the near-stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop quite snappily, and I quite like Motorola’s tweaks and gesture tricks. Subtle but handy. What’s improved though is the camera — if you’ve seen (and been disappointed by) images from previous Moto Gs, the camera this time around is a competent ittle shooter.
The Moto G is a phone that scores high on lag-free user experience, and unless you hanker for better hardware (on paper) at lower prices, is well worth your time.
- Rating: 8/10
- Price: Rs 12,999 (16GB/2GB)
- URL: http://bit.ly/TT-MotoG3
OnePlus 2
The OnePlus One came from nowhere last year to offer a flagship killer at mid-range pricing. With the OnePlus 2, OnePlus is setting its sights on 2016 flagships now! To test their claim, I took the OnePlus 2 through its paces and this is what I found…
Straight off, the OnePlus 2 looks and feels classy. The familiar sandstone-textured grippy back and the metal alloy frame look refined and ‘flagship like’. In a first for an Android device, there’s a physical mute switch (a la the iPhone), which lets you quickly put the phone on silent without having to unlock your phone. It’s easier in the hand than any other 5.5-inch device I’ve used, but it’s a tad heavy at 175g. The other big change — a fingerprint scanner — doubles as a home button. It takes some time to get used to, but then you can unlock the phone almost instantly, without even waking up the device first.
Top notch specs — Qualcomm’s top end Snapdragon 810 processor, 4GB of memory, 64GB of storage and a 3,300mAh battery — power a near-stock Android 5.1-based Oxygen OS. The 5.5-inch full-HD 1,080p display is perfectly usable, and after seeing the impact of quad HD displays on phone battery life, may well be a prudent decision. The camera sees a massive upgrade with snappy laser autofocus, optical image stabilisation and a more light-sensitive sensor that takes great shots (though I preferred the Galaxy S6 and the iPhone for pure results).
My quibbles about the device are just that — quibbles. No quick charging or wireless charging capabilities, no NFC for contactless payments and a slightly-barebones OS means there’s still ground to cover before it can be an out-and-out flagship killer for 2016. At its price though, nothing else comes close, value wise.
- Rating: 8/10
- Price: Rs 24,999
- URL: http://bit.ly/1HEZLfR
Yu Yureka Plus
YU made quite the splash with the Yureka last year, and the Yureka Plus is here for more. It may look exactly the same as the Yureka, but the Plus sees a massive resolution bump from 720p to 1,080p, and the display is clearly the highlight of the product. Great colours, good viewing angles, sharp contrast, and a layer of Gorilla Glass 3 round out this beauty. Camera results are better than the original as well, which had a good camera anyway. As with the original, the Plus runs a customised version of Android called CyanogenMod, which I’ve lauded in the past as being extremely usable for first timers and geeks alike. The only downside, if any, is that the phone is slightly less snappy driving that full HD display, but not enough to bother most. Great for folks looking at the sub-10k segment.
- Rating: 8/10
- Price: Rs 8,999
- URL: http://bit.ly/TT-YurekaPlus
Xolo Black
All glass with a smattering of plastic, the Xolo Black is quite the looker and has a hint of the stylish Sony Xperia Z series. Going head to head with the Xiaomi Mi 4i, it checks of a lot of boxes in pretty much the same way — a full HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage and a 3,200mAh battery. Where it differentiates is by offering dual rear cameras — the two cameras work in tandem to allow for faster focusing and a perception of depth when clicking photos. The results are great in daylight, but low-light photos could have been much better.
In use, Xolo’s own Hive UI (based on Android 5.0) is attractive for the most part and shows a level of attention to detail, but it’s sadly let down by intermittent sluggish behaviour. All in all, the Black is a stylish budget segment phone, but a few tweaks could really make this a winner.
- Rating: 7/10
- Price: Rs 12,999
- URL: http://bit.ly/TT-XoloBlack
