Each passing year we’ve seen a massive growth in different segments of mobile phones, in the past few years, the budget entry-level smartphone market has grown a lot. Several brands have focused on adding value to their smartphones and now include features which were once restricted to the flagship devices. Intex recently unveiled their Elyt Dual, which is a budget smartphone priced at Rs. 6,999 directly competing with the Xiaomi Redmi 5A and the 10.or E to name a few.
As selfie camera has become a very important feature and the portrait mode is quickly becoming famous, Intex chooses to focus on the front camera of this device and did a decent job. In this review, we’ll talk about the design, specifications, interface and most importantly, the camera of the device.
Design
The Intex Elyt Dual choose to go with a removable back cover which is rather rare these days and has the antenna strips on the top and bottom of the device similar to as in the case of iPhone, although this is purely for the design purpose and they don’t actually serve as an antenna. The device is pretty heavy at 149 grams and the company tried to add a relatively premium feel by adding the matte black texture to the back of the phone. The device is perfectly sized and with the curved edges, it becomes extremely easy to hold it in one hand. The only major downside of the device is the lack of fingerprint sensor on the device which has now become common even in entry-level devices like the Redmi 4 which comes for the same price.
Come to rest of the design, the device has the charging port on the bottom of the device and a 3.5mm jack right next to it. The power and volume buttons are placed to the right of the device and although the buttons are plastic, they do add a good tactile feedback to the press. The device feels rugged and you can be confident while using the device, the thick bezels of the device on the top house all the required sensor and even the dual front camera.
Specifications and Interface
The device runs on a quad-core Spreadtrum 9850 chipset and comes with 2GB of RAM. The processor is a very basic one and you shouldn’t be surprised to find stutters or lags on the device occasionally. The internal storage of the device is 16GB which can be further expanded to 128GB via MicroSD card.
From our usage, the device felt smooth with very few apps, however, with a few other apps installed including Snapchat, the device started slowing down and gave occasional hiccups. This might be a good device for basic usage with limited apps but will surely get difficult if you try to install high-performance games or apps.
The device runs on near Stock Vanilla Android with some bloat installed, the Android version is 7.0 Nougat. The Stock Android helps the device perform very well compared to the other device while using the basic functions. The camera app is very basic and adds limited functionality.
Battery
The battery of the device is yet another letdown, with devices from Xiaomi in the same segment offering up to 4000mAh, the 2400mAh battery on the device sounds puny. The company still claims to offer up to a day full of usage on a single charge given the optimizations, but we couldn’t get the same results on our basic test. The device runs on Android 7.0 Nougat, so the Doze feature helps conserve a little of the battery.
Camera
The most important aspect of this smartphone is the camera itself, especially the front selfie camera which is a dual camera setup. The front shooter is a combination of an 8 megapixel and a 2-megapixel camera. The 2-megapixel camera is to add the depth effect and the software has a bokeh effect mode which you can turn on to manually set the aperture effect in the camera app. There is also an option to change the background of the image using the software, however, in our experience, this turned out more of a gimmick and the results were far from impressive.
There are several modes in the app like the smile shutter, audio pics and slim face (beauty mode) which add more functionality to the device.
Coming to the rear camera of the device, it is an 8-megapixel sensor with dual flash to add a more natural tone to the images. Although this isn’t the best camera phone even in the price range, the device does offer decent optics and the front camera portrait mode is very much welcomed at the price point. We hope the device camera gets better with a software update but nothing much can be said about it at this point.
Conclusion
The device is pretty good at the price point, but if you buy it only for the front camera and the bokeh effect then you might be slightly disappointed. The stock variant of Android helps the device perform better even with limited resources. The biggest downside of the device is the battery and the lack of fingerprint sensor, but otherwise if you are okay with it and are having the selfies and camera features as one of the needs, then the Swipe Elyt Dual is a good deal for the price it is being sold at, and having a decent design.
