Micromax Bharat 5 is the third smartphone from the company in the Bharat series following the Bharat 3 and the Bharat 4, and the device comes at a price of Rs. 5555 and is available for sale offline. While Micromax has been active not just with the smartphone markets but also with the feature phones, the Bharat 5 adheres to a very basic set of users. The budget market has been over shadowed by the likes of Xiaomi and with 10.or now joining the race, there is stiff competition in the segment and very difficult for any other manufacturer to please the buyer.
In this review, we will talk about the various aspects of the phone while highlighting certain aspects that are worth a mention.
Design
The Micromax Bharat 5 comes in glossy black color and is very compact making it a perfect fit in the hand. The device has a 5.2-inch HD display and the top of the device houses a selfie camera with a front flash making low light selfies possible. To the right of the device you will find the volume rockers and the power button, the bottom of the device has the speaker grill and the MicroUSB port for charging and data transfer.
The 3.5mm jack has been conveniently placed on the top of the device in the left corner. Despite the plastic body of the device the metallic finish helps give the device a better feel I the hand without feeling awfully cheap.
Display
The display on the device is a 5.2-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280×720, from our usage, we found the display on the Bharat 5 to be better than that on the Redmi 5A in terms of colors and brightness. The display provides surprisingly sharp text and better color production for the price that it is offered at.
The big bezels do take up the looks of the device but, the display more than compensates for it. The display of this device is more vivid than the 10.or D but the brightness of the 10.or D was slightly better of the two.
Performance
The device is powered by a relatively old MediaTek MT6735 processor, unlike the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor as in the case of 10.or D or Redmi 5A. The Micromax Bharat 5 also runs on the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system and has its own skin atop Android. The software does have some bloat including the Modi app and the Hike messenger app. The skin of Micromax does make the device slightly slower, but the overall performance of the device is not greatly affected.
The device handles most of the basic applications including WhatsApp and messenger without any issues, but similar to most of the budget phones, even the Bharat 5 faces difficulty when we load heavier apps on the device. Basic games including Ludo and Edge, work great on the device while the graphics intensive games like the Modern Combat and Asphalt 8 start showing issues and crash very often on the device.
Camera
The Bharat 5 comes with a 13-megapixel rear camera which is very similar to the other phones in the same budget. The device did better than what we expected for the price range, the colors were natural and despite the mixed results across various conditions, the device did pretty well overall.
There are several options in the camera including the beauty feature, HDR and panorama mode. Although the indoor low light images weren’t the best, the outdoor images turned out pretty good with good sharpness and color reproduction.
The secondary camera on the device is what gets it the brownie points, despite being just a 5MP sensor, the front camera along with the LED flash performs pretty good and on par with its competitors. Even the low light captures using the front camera were good in our experience, however, there was a little noise that was noticed.
[Camera samples to be updated soon]Battery
The device has a huge battery, the 5000mAh battery on the device helps the device last over 2 days on basic usage and a day and a half on moderate to heavy usage. The device takes equally long to charge and can take anywhere between 2.5 to 3 hours to get the device to a 100 percent charge. This is probably the best part of the device if you are looking for a budget smartphone and the battery is your priority then look no further.
Final Verdict
The device is overall a good buy at the price point, while there are better options such as Redmi 5A and 10.or D, the Bharat 5 clearly outperforms them both in terms of the front camera and the battery life. If selfies and battery life are your prime concern, then this might be the best option. However, if you need an overall performer then you might want to give the 10. or D and the Redmi 5A a look.
great battery beast for the price!!