Mycell Iron Blue: The new entrant
In the Bangladeshi smartphone market, a trend we have been noticing in the last couple of years is shift of focus from flagship smartphones to mid-range. But now in Q4 of 2015, we are seeing the battle move to the front line of the entry-level segment. Now, not only are the entry-level smartphones aggressively priced, they are also armed with really good hardware (at least on paper!). The device that we are reviewing today is a new entrant in this particular segment. It's Mycell Iron Blue. But can this phone stand up in the crowd? Let's find it out:
As the name suggests, the phone gives off a metallic vibe. Drawing inspiration from the older (read: 'better looking') iPhones, it has a uni-body design with metal bezel encircling the phone. The back is made from sturdy polycarbonate. The phone is heavy, but not the kind that weighs you down. The edges are shiny, smoothed and curved. We wouldn't say it has a minimalistic design, rather it's got a posh look that's rare these days.
Dominating the front is a 5-inch HD (720p) IPS display. The 3.5mm headphone jack is right above the display. The SIM and SD card tray is on the left. The volume rocker and the power button are on the right. Like most Android smartphones, the Mycell Iron Blue also has three touch buttons right below the screen.
The 2.5D gorilla glass-protected 5-inch IPS screen offers vibrant colours and decent brightness. Thanks to the good viewing angles and soft-tone colour reproduction, the phone's outdoor legibility is better than average. It is undoubtedly a fingerprint magnet, but we found that no smudges were left behind. Mycell has also incorporated bluray technology – a technology that reduces the emission of gamma rays, thereby protecting the user's eyes.
The hardware specs of Mycell Iron Blue is a run-of-the mill ARM Cortex-A7 1.3 GHz quad-core processor powered MediaTek MT6582 chipset. Paired with 2GB of RAM, the device delivers moderate performance. Truth be told, we didn't find the Iron Blue lagging in any way as long as we were limiting multitasking activity. And this goes for all the budget smartphones. The only delay we found worth mentioning is when booting the phone and turning on the screen from sleep mode. Other than that, everything was as snappy as you can get on a 10k budget.
Coming to photography. The phone is equipped with a 16MP camera. The camera app UI is plain and easy to use. It has some of the common modes, i.e. colour effect, panorama, face beauty etc. We were baffled not to see any manual mode to play around with. The images captured by the camera were bright and detailed when used outdoors with good colour accuracy. There was a hint of graininess though. This graininess (or noise) amplifies when you take pictures indoors or in low light environment. The full HD videos were surprisingly better. The 8MP front camera was good and selfies came out better thanks to the front LED.
The phone runs on Android Kitkat 4.4.4 with custom ROM. The built-in theme has a retro-vibe. If this doesn't suit you, then you can download a third party theme generator from app store.
The phone has some unique features, like the pedometer, heart-beat monitor, air gestures, and an eyeball tracker. All the works pretty well. We compared the pedometer and heart-beat monitor with the Galaxy S5's. The results are almost the same.
One area that the future iteration of Iron series needs to improve is the battery life. It comes with a non-removable 2,200 mAh battery. With energy saving apps, the phone can last up to a day on regular usage. If you are a heavy user, then be prepared to carry a battery bank. Less than one hour of phone calls, hourly social media updates, 15 minutes of gfx-intensive game (Asphalt), real-time synced seven email accounts, two hours on Wi-Fi and an hour on 3G – gave us a backup of 17 hours.
Specs:
Display: IPS 5 inches, 720 x 1280 & Gorilla Glass
CPU: Quad-core 1.3GHz
OS: Android OS v 4.4.4 (KitKat)
ROM: 16 GB
RAM: 2 GB
Camera: Rear-16 MP, Front-8 MP
Battery: 2200 mAh
Sensors: Heartbeats sensor, Light, Proximity etc.
Price: Tk 10,999/-
Verdict:
Priced at Tk. 10,999/-, the Mycell Iron Blue boasts of great build quality with good features. I loved the front camera & quality of the display. While the rear camera manages to pass of as average, the overall performance is decent. The custom rom might take some time to get accustomed to but once you get used to, you will start enjoying it. Well, I did. I used this phone as my secondary phone for a while now. Other than the battery and occasional performance glitches, I liked the phone.