InFocus Turbo 5 review: Decent budget phone with long lasting battery

Indian is second biggest smartphone market and growing. The country is home to more than 200 mobile-makers. Manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo have reached the top in quick time, thanks to the right marketing tactics and quality products.

InFocus, an American company, has been releasing reasonably good phones in the market for quite some time. The brand awareness of the company, however, is not on the par. But the recently launched Turbo 5 has the potential to make a difference.

Also read: Xiaomi Mi A1 first impression: Premium Android One we've all been longing for

The device costs Rs 6,999 and comes with a massive 5,000mAh cell, which guarantees two full days of battery life under mixed usage. InFocus Turbo also features pretty decent hardware including metal-clad body, quad-core processor, 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front snapper and runs Android Nougat OS.

We used the InFocus Turbo 5 for little more than a week and here's our review:

InFocus Turbo 5: Design and display

InFocus Turbo 5 comes with refreshing good design language. The front-panel, thin-bezel on the left and right sides make the phone visually appealing. We must say watching videos on the phone was a delightful experience. The device also features 2.5D curved glass cover on top which adds appeal to the exterior.

On the back, the phone bears a simplistic design with a single-camera module and LED flash on top left corner cutting through the metal-polished antenna lines. The phone has a finger print sensor at the top center and 'InFocus' engraving.

However, the placement of the rear-facing speaker at base cause distortion of sound.

Furthermore, the Turbo 5 has no back-lit buttons on the front and it becomes tiresome to use the phone in the dark.

InFocus Turbo 5: Performance

InFocus Turbo 5 comes with a generic configuration of 2GB RAM, 16GB storage and a 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6737 quad-core CPU with Mali T720 GPU. App loading and switching between the apps don't take time. We played a low-profile Temple Paradise Game, which comes pre-loaded with the phone, without lag. But graphics-rich video games might not work as fast.

During the benchmarking tests, the phone scored 29,657 points on AnTuTu and on Geekbench, and managed to get 564 and 1151 points on single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.

InFocus Turbo 5: Camera

InFocus Turbo sports a 13MP camera on the back with LED flash and f/2.2 aperture. The camera gave good pictures in bright conditions, but performance under low-light condition was below par and it takes a while to autofocus the subject.

On the front, it houses a 5MP snapper with dedicated LED flash-- a good value addition to the phone. The image quality of the selfies was reasonably good.

InFocus Turbo 5: Battery

The key highlight of the InFocus Turbo 5 is its cell capacity. The phone's really got a marathon battery life. During our tests, it lasted more than two days with mixed usage. We did not go for extreme tests like binge watching videos and marathon gaming sessions; but normal stuff like audio calls, internet surfing, Facebook update checks, FM Radio, WhatsApp calling and video games. 

We were also impressed with reverse charging capabilities of the InFocus Turbo 5; users just need to have the right cable to do the task.

However, the device takes frustratingly long to get full charged - 2 and a half hours to be precise.

InFocus Turbo 5: Final verdict

InFocus Turbo 5 is a decent budget phone in terms of system configuration (OS+RAM+storage), but the inclusion of the high-capacity 5,000mAh and fingerprint sensor, makes it a formidable phone to give popular Xiaomi Redmi 4A series, a run for its money.

However, the camera seems to be the Achilles heels of the Turbo 5. Its 13MP rear shooter is slow to focus on the subject and in the night, it becomes irritatingly so. Having said that, the image quality of the device is decent enough for a sub-Rs. 7,000 range phone.

We recommend InFocus Turbo 5 [more preferably the 3GB RAM+32GB storage variant] for people who are migrating from a feature-phone to a smartphone.

Pros:

• Massive battery
• Good Display design with narrow bezels on the right and the left side
• Fingerprint sensor [Less than a handful of sub-Rs. 7,000 devices boast this feature]

Cons:

• Camera could have been better
• No back-lit buttons on the front
• Hybrid dual-SIM tray; users can use either two nano SIMs or one SIM + microSD, as there is only two slots available in the tray.