Priced at R9,990, the device comes with differentiating features—accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. They are powerful and have been aligned properly to provide smooth gaming experience to the user. Other than these, has the device anything substantial to offer?
By Mohd Ujaley
With all the key mobile operators in the country announcing their mega plans for 4G roll-out across different cities, the device ecosystem for 4G LTE is also catching-up gradually. Today there are many affordable 4G-enabled smartphones available in the market. Mostly thanks to Chinese smartphone makers, however the home-grown mobile manufacturer are not far behind, they are also flooding the market with their new launches.
Recently, one of the key home-grown mobile manufacturer Intex Technologies sent their latest 4G enabled handset —Intex Aqua Trend for a review. Priced at R9,990, the device comes with differentiating features—accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. They are powerful and have been aligned properly to provide smooth gaming experience to the user. Basically gyroscope uses earth’s gravity to determine orientation while accelerometer is designed to measure non-gravitational acceleration. And, when both of these are used together, they provide clean and responsive experience. Other than these, has the device anything substantial to offer? To find out, let us look into the device.
In the hand, the first thing you notice about Aqua Trend is its classy look. The front is dominated by 5-inch LCD display that offers 1280 x 720 pixels resolution with 294 ppi pixel density. It allows a user to enjoy both videos and games without any pixellation and smooth access to other features. Overall the display quality has been fairly satisfactory and it is at par with any Android device in this price range. Also, adaptive display works fine indoors and you will not have to blink a lot to read in direct sunlight.
The front of the device is home to a 3.5 mm headset jack and the front camera on the top, while three capacitive touch keys are placed in the bottom. The detachable rear panel is home to Intex branding in the centre along with rear camera and LED flash at the top and a speaker grille at the bottom.
Inspired from brands like Apple and recently launched InFocus, the power and volume rocker keys are placed at the left edge while right is completely free from any distraction. Unlike other Android phones, all the buttons and keys are not customisable, so you cannot assign the task as per your convenience. With a thickness of 8.9 mm and a weight of 152 gms, the device is neither too thick nor too heavy. It is comfortable to hold and operate, and is non-slippery at the same time.
Probing the innards, the Intex Aqua Trend runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop and its entrails are powered by Quad-core 1.3 GHz MediaTek MT6735 processor with 2 GB of RAM. During the review period, the phone worked without any major hiccup. While doing multitasking or switching between the apps, the device handled most of the things pretty well. In fact, it handled some of the graphics intensive games quite easily. There was no serious lag to write about except the issue of over-heating. With mere continuous use of data, the phone did overheat, which I personally feel majority of the users will be uncomfortable with. The phone has 16 GB of internal memory for storage of which about 9.5 GB is available for general use. The storage can be further expanded to 32 GB with the help of a microSD card.
On the camera front, Aqua Trend comes with a 13-megapixel auto focus LED flash rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. The rear camera captures decent landscapes and macro shots in normal lighting conditions, while same could not be repeated in low light. There is nothing much to write about front camera. Overall, the
camera section has nothing special to offer. The camera app is very basic and you get only the general modes, filters and a few adjustment options. If you compare some of its nearest rivals in this price range, few of them such as Panasonic Eluga Icon has more to offer in camera division.
The device is packed with a replaceable 3000mAh Li-on battery. And, this could have been a major differentiator as not many companies offer 3000mAh battery in this price range. However the overall performance of the battery has not been at par with other Android device in this range. During the review, it only lasted between 8-10 hours with multitasking and continuous data usage. The device supports 4G on both SIM slots, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM Radio, 2G, 3G and 4G.
The Intex’s Aqua Trend has nothing unique to offer but in nutshell, it is an average device with decent display, average camera and battery performance and also supports LTE on both SIM slots.
SPECIFICATIONS
* Display: 5 inch, 720 x 1280 pixels
* Processor: 1.3 GHz Quad-core MediaTek MT6735
* Operating system: Android 5.1 Lollipop
* Memory & storage: 2 GB RAM + 16 GB internal storage
* Camera: 5 MP front; 13 MP rear
* SIM type: Dual SIM
* Battery: 3000mAh, replaceable
** Estimated street price: Rs 9,990