InFocus had launched the refresh, or rather an upgrade to the Turbo 5 as the smartphone market in India saw yet another phone under the Rs. 10000 price mark in the form of InFocus Turbo 5 Plus. What the device excels in, is the battery life. A 4850 mAh battery powers the phone and the company highlights about the dual-lens rear camera combination as well.
As the title of the review suggests, the first feel that you have while holding this large device, is that it is rock solid. It seems large, even though there’s a 5.5-inch display on the front, which is very common these days, only because of the thickness of 8.9mm that resulted because of the large battery. But then, is the comfort of the phone compromising it otherwise when the reason for that thickness is the reason for long lasting of the device without asking for a charge? Let’s check out how the Turbo 5 Plus fares in different departments.
To begin with, here are the major specifications of the InFocus Turbo 5 Plus.
- 5.5-inch display, 1280 x 720 pixels, 268 PPI
- MediaTek MT6750 octa-core processor
- 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, MicroSD card slot
- 13MP + 5MP rear camera combination
- 5-megapixel front-facing camera
- Android 7.0 Nougat with Smile UX
- Dual SIM, 4G VoLTE support
- 4850 mAh battery
To start, the design. It is much better than how the Turbo 5 was, and the InFocus Turbo 5 Plus has a better look, better build quality, and the corners are curvy to make it comfortable to hold. Even on the front, the 2.5D glass makes it smooth towards the edges and the metal backplate makes it feel like that solid phone that won’t get dented easily. Only towards the bottom on the back is a plastic frame that is necessary for the antenna placement, otherwise the phone is well made and the weight is equally distributed, though the phone feels a bit heavy for its size.
The buttons are well placed, with the power and volume rocker buttons on the right frame, and the slots for SIM and MicroSD card on the left, while the speaker grill is located on the bottom, the MicroUSB port sits right in the centre of the two grills. The front of the phone houses the fingerprint sensor, which is also the home button. It is a physical home button and that’s one of the issues of space wasted because while the home button is present outside the screen, the other navigation buttons are a part of the interface, i.e. software buttons and that uses a bit of the space of the display.
A 5.5-inch HD display with the 1280 x 720 pixels resolution sits on the front and the color output is not bad. The viewing angles are good, sunlight legibility as well is appreciable, but in the end, for that large size of a display, the lack of sharpness is clearly visible and you can live with it only with the fact in mind that you are given a HD display and not a Full HD one. Just above the display is the LED notification light, front facing camera, earpiece grill, and a set of sensors.
The custom interface that InFocus uses on its phones is called Smile UX and on this phone, the OS version it is based on is Android 7.0 Nougat. It isn’t a heavily loaded interface as you see easy access to pretty much everything, and the home screens house all the apps, with the pre-installed apps including Prime Video, FM Radio, Xploree Keyboard, Amazon Shopping, Safebox, File Manager, among other apps including the Google ones.
The Settings area is where the interface again differs from stock Android. Features like DuraSpeed are new, and this feature helps boost the foreground app by restricting the background apps. But then, there’s no set of gestures that you can use to enhance the user experience.
The fingerprint sensor located on the front does the job but not at the perfect best. It misses the touch sometimes, and the recognition is not always up to the mark. You might have to sometimes give it multiple tries for the screen to be unlocked, and when your finger is sweaty or wet, the recognition won’t happen at all.
When it comes to the performance, the InFocus Turbo 5 Plus has both, the good and the bad. While the phone could handle some games quite well and there were no lags as such, the interface itself seems a bit dull while browsing through and switching between the apps, or even scrolling between the home screens. While this is a final version of the interface that we are seeing, it seems unpolished and those little lags disappoint the user because it is more of the regular scrolling and switching that is done more than the gaming on a smartphone.
The RAM here is not an issue because after a fresh reboot, there was about 1.3GB available to the user and that is good enough for multitasking and seeing the phone handling it well, but the interface should see some refinement.
While there are some good phones in this price range offering an appreciable camera combination, InFocus has actually done a neat job with the dual-lens setup on the back of the Turbo 5 Plus. The primary purpose of the two cameras here is the depth determination and Background blur effect in pictures. The regular captures done in bright light come out well with good color reproduction and detail.
But then, even with the cameras, since the secondary camera does nothing else but the depth recording, taking pictures in low light conditions is a challenge with this phone. In day light, the focusing doesn’t take long but in low light, while the camera struggles in focusing on objects, there are issues with even retaining the colors as they seemed washed off when there is no adequate light available.
Check Full Size Camera Samples
The front-facing camera is just good enough to take selfies in daylight and similar to how is the case with the back camera, it struggles to do well in low light conditions. The camera app does present you with a lot of features only if you try and make it better with some manual adjustments like filters.
It is the humongous 4850 mAh battery that should save it well for the InFocus Turbo 5 Plus. The number is fascinating, but the performance of the battery is good too. The phone was able to last for two days with ease, that too with the two SIM cards active and the device connected to the Internet for over half the time. For the heavy usage, it still lasted for just over a day, which is again a very good when compared to most of the phones in this price range.
The phone has so much to offer in terms of connectivity, especially with the 4G LTE connectivity and VoLTE support, which is present on both the SIM slots, and while only one can have active 4G connectivity, that is a good thing that InFocus has included the top connectivity on both the slots so you don’t have to switch the SIM cards between the slots anytime, and only the 4G has to be switched on for the particular SIM cards. The signal reception is good and even on Wi-Fi, there is a good reception with quick latching onto the available network.
Final Verdict
The InFocus Turbo 5 Plus is a solid phone that comes as a good upgrade to the Turbo 5, but then it doesn’t hit the bull’s eye in every aspect. While the build quality and battery are the two major departments where the phone scores the best, there are certain areas where it lacks the charm.
The laggy interface can still be lived with, but taking a look at every aspect of the device makes it a tough choice because of the competition it faces from the likes of Xiaomi Redmi 4, Panasonic Eluga 500, among others. Nevertheless, if you want to forgive the camera quality and trade it with a great battery, the InFocus Turbo 5 Plus has it.
Pros and Cons of InFocus Turbo 5 Plus
Pros
- Great build quality
- Excellent battery life
- Simple and neat interface
Cons
- Sluggish UI
- Dual camera not helpful in low light
- Display not sharp
