In a recent report, it's said that seven more Chinese brands will enter the Indian market in 2017. The story appeared in the month of February, and now we're in May. Already few Chinese brands have launched their smartphones in India, and the brands are iVoomi, Tecno, and Lephone. Tecno Mobiles have launched a slew of phones in the mid-range segment, while iVoomi has launched three phones till date in the entry-level range.
Recently, iVoomi unveiled the Me and Me 1+ smartphones at Rs. 3,999 and Rs. 4,999 in India. The Me 1+ has the specifications in-line with the Xiaomi Redmi 4A. The company has sent us a review unit of the Me 1+ and here are our first impressions of the device.
Starting from the design of the iVoomi Me 1+, there's nothing fancy as the device boasts of polycarbonate body. However, at first glance, I have mistaken that it has the metal body because of the gold coloured back panel.
At the front of the phone is a 5-inch HD display with a 2.5D curved glass on top. iVoomi has gone with capacitive hardware buttons instead of the onscreen navigation keys. That said, the keys are not backlit, and you may face difficulty while using the phone during low-light conditions.
The loudspeaker is present at the rear bottom, making it difficult to hear the audio if you place the phone' speaker downwards. The micro USB port and the 3.5mm headphone jack is present at the top side of the phone.
The volume rockers and the power button is placed on the left side, and they offer decent tactile feedback. However, there's less gap between the volume and power buttons, and I have mistakenly pressed the volume down button thinking it as the power key. As said earlier, there's nothing fancy with the design of the phone, but the addition of 2.5D curved glass is an appreciated move from iVoomi.
The 5-inch HD display offers decent viewing angles along with acceptable sunlight legibility. For the asking price of Rs. 4,999, it surely has the best display.
The iVoomi Me 1+ is powered by a quad-core Spreadtrum SoC with all the cores clocked at 1.5GHz. The mediocre chipset is accompanied with 2GB of RAM and Mali-400MP GPU. In my brief period with the phone, it handled all the necessary tasks such as phone calls, messaging, opening the camera app, etc. with ease. Also, games such as Subway Surfers, Temple Run 2, Beach Buggy Racing ran without any issues, but the device struggled a lot while playing the Asphalt Xtreme.
The device comes with connectivity options such as 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11/b/g/n, Bluetooth, GPS, and USB OTG. Further, the device runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, and the company pushed an OTA update that fixed touch latency issues and improved the overall performance as well. The icing on the cake is iVoomi is promising the Android Nougat update for the phone in coming weeks.
The device has an 8MP rear camera with autofocus and LED flash. Up front, there's a 5MP front-facing camera. The camera app has the same design of Google Camera app with modes such as HDR, Panorama, Beauty. The camera performance is yet to be tested, and we'll update it in our full review of the product later this week. Nevertheless, don't expect any groundbreaking performance though.
Lastly, the entire package is backed by a 3000mAh battery that also has support for fast charging technology.
So, for the asking price of Rs. 4,999, iVoomi is offering an HD display, bigger battery where other phones in the similar price range come with a smaller battery, and a promised upgrade to Android Nougat makes the device a front-runner for the best budget smartphone. However, the overall performance and the camera of the phone is yet to be tested, and we will give a final verdict of the product in our full review.
