GADGET GIZMO REVIEW .........PHICOMM PASSION P660

GADGET GIZMO REVIEW

PHICOMM PASSION P660

Phicomm is one of the new brands to arrive in India and their first offering, the Passion P660, delivers top-notch specifications and features at a surprising price point.

The first thing that impresses about the Phicomm P660 is design. It sports a matte finish in a unibody with chrome finish on power button and around the camera module for style. On the right side is a micro SIM slot and a hybrid slot (nanoSIM or microSD card) while volume keys are on the left.

It is one of the cheapest smartphones to offer a 5-inch display with full HD resolution. We were impressed by the sharpness, brightness as well as viewing angles of the screen. The only thing we found off was that the Android buttons for home, menu and back under the screen were not backlit.

Inside the 6.5mm slim body is an octa core Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB RAM and 16GB storage. Hardware per formance is top-notch -no visible slowdown or issues with any game or app. Battery life from the 2,300mAh battery was good. It lasted from morning to evening regularly with mixed usage of calls, social networks and multimedia.One issue we had with the smartphone was with the sound output -the loudspeaker volume is low and the output is completely flat.

The 13MP rear camera on the P660 takes superb images in day as well as lowlight. In our usage the camera captured natural colours with good details although there is visible noise when viewed on a larger display such as a computer. There are multiple settings available including colour effects, pressure and altitude watermark, exposure, white balance as well as various modes to play around with. Video recording quality is also impressive but you can only record in 1080p full HD or 720p HD resolution (no option to select lower resolutions). In comparison, the front 5MP camera disappoints -lack of autofocus led to capture of blurry shaky photos, 7 out of 10 times. The interface is close to stock UI on Android 4.4, but has been slightly modified by Phicomm. The flat icons mirror the material design ethos and you also get gesture controls that work well. It has a built-in pedometer app with a floating icon on the home panel for quick access. Note that unlike other Chinese brands, this UI does not offer any built-in themes or apps for customization. There are apps for backup, file transfer via WiFi direct as well as to access the phone storage wirelessly . A barometer app is also present on the phone but it crashed every time we launched it -we hope Phicomm fixes this soon. Overall, the user interface by Phicomm works and looks well but needs some work to compete with the user interface of other brands.

For the price, the Phicomm Passion P660 is a good offering considering that its 4G ready , offers great build quality and top-notch performance. However, it will face heavy competition from the Xiaomi Mi 4i, which is slightly more expensive but offers better battery life and is a more popular brand in India.

SPECIFICATIONS

5-inch IPS (1920 x 1080 pixels) display, octa core Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, microSD slot, dual SIM, 13MP rear camera, 5MP front camera, 4G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Android 4.4, 2,300mAh battery, 110g

karan.bajaj

ET17JUN15