Symphony Xplorer H175
We were sent the white device which seems to be the in thing for many device manufacturers. The back cover is a crosshatched white plastic with a machined aluminium edge going all round. At first glance, it's a safe design approach that won't offend anyone. The five inch display and the resulting bezel is just the right balance for most people to comfortably hold in their hands for one handed operation.
Pick it up and it has a bit of heft making it feel comfortably well built. The buttons are spaced and placed within easy reach without having to look down.
Overall, this is an easy phone to get acquainted with.
DISPLAY
The 5 inch HD display does 1280x720 resolution at 294 ppi. Keeping it at five inches mean the lower pixel count isn't noticeable with small text being rendered sharply.
BATTERY
The big update over the previous devices is that this has a 400omAh battery that we've found to easily last over a day and a half worth of usage with constant Wi-Fi support.
SOFTWARE:
It comes out of the box with Android 5.1 Lollipop. While Symphony has toned down a bit on the bloatware installed, we would prefer a more cleaner version with removable apps.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Gesture control allows you to use taps and swipes on a sleeping screen to activate certain preset features. It's a nifty touch for a phone in this range. You can tap the screen to wake it and swipe to bring up certain features like the music player. The gesture control in sleep mode works well most of the times. Occasionally it takes an added tap get the desired feature to come on.
POWER:
Powered by ARM Cortex A53 chipset, the 64 bit 1.3GHz quad core processor is mostly enough to power you through most tasks. 2GB of RAM is the standard right now and any lower is unthinkable. The Mali 720 GPU was able to run most games we threw at it. A couple of marathon sessions of Asphalt Nitro stressed out the set a bit but the game didn't slow down. Frame rates were consistent although some of the graphics was turned down a little by default.
CAMERA:
The 13MP rear camera has a few nifty features like motion tracking and an ability to lock onto particular set focus points so you can try to get sharp images even when it or the camera moves around. We tried it on the resident kitten and it works most of the time. At times the focus point moves to the tail instead of the face so you need a tap again to get things right. A few manual features are there to adjust the output of your images such as the ability to change color saturation, brightness and contrast with simple low, medium and high options. You can play around to get decent images but make sure lighting is bright to get optimum results. There is a slight shutter lag so you have to try a few times to get a sharp shot of a moving object. Despite the lag, images come out with good detail and color reproduction. We've got a few sample shots online for you to check the image quality.
Specs:
Display: HD IPS 5 inches, 720 x 1280 & Gorilla Glass
CPU: Quad-core 1.3GHz
OS: Android OS v5.1 (Lollipop)
ROM: 16 GB
RAM: 2 GB
Camera: Rear- 13 MP, Front- 5 MP
Battery: 4000 mAh
Sensors: Accelerometer, Light, Proximity sensor etc.
Price: Tk 10,490/-
Verdict
Two things we'd want to see in upcoming devices from Symphony is a cleaner OS and perhaps new colors. It's time to look into other hues like gunmetal grey, mica blue and bronze. IN phones of this range, style is often more important than the mid-range specs. As for the rest, Symphony took the safe approach to creating a device that doesn't offend or turn off anyone. They went for a device with adequate power, a size that is pleasant for most people and features that are easy to use. We've had a few graphics intensive games run well so it can manage your boredom. What this has going for it is the big power pack. For the price, this phone does most of what you will need it to do.