With the increasing number of smartphones in the immensely overcrowded budget smartphone market, Infocus came out with its own take on the segment, The Infocus Turbo 5 Plus. With a dual camera setup at the back and a whopping 4,850mAh, it's a phone which is supposed to last days with taking great photos at the same time. All eyes are pointing to one thing, its a camera enthusiast phone for big battery cravers.
Infocus Turbo 5 Plus
The budget smartphone segment is overcrowded with smartphones to the point every phone is almost the same. Infocus Turbo 5 Plus aims to change that. By providing a dual camera setup at the back and a whopping 4,850mAh Infocus wants to stand out from the rest. It's the first phone in the budget smartphone segment to sport a dual camera setup in the back and also Infocus's first attempt at it. Its secondary camera is a wide angle like the LG G6 which is a different approach to the concept. After all the phone is designed to stand out. The battery is something we have seen these budget smartphones packing but the thing that counts is the software optimization. In today's era, a hardware is as good as its software. So the question remains is the Infocus Turbo 5 Plus really worth the hype?
Design
With the 2.5D Glass and a coated back, the phone not only feels good in the hand but also looks great. The Turbo 5 Plus has a big 5.5' inch display with a 16:9 resolution. The phone surprisingly doesn't feel that big in hand. The back of the phone is metal but the coated material makes it a great while holding and while looking. The only problem being the coated back is a fingerprint magnet.
In the front of the screen, there is the front speaker grill in the centre which is rather small but does the job well enough. The secondary camera on it’s left and sensors on it’s right. Below the screen, there is only a fingerprint sensor which is also a clickable button.
On the back, we have a dual camera setup in the top left with a dual tone led flash. There is a small camera bump which gets annoying but the lens is protected with a glass and the bump has the same material on the sides. The bottom back of the phone is plastic to accommodate the antenna lines. The rest of the back is completely empty with InFocus logo sitting flush in the centre. With a coating that's done on the back makes the phone look like a true beauty and makes it stand out in the crowd. However, everything has its negatives. The beautiful looking back is a fingerprint magnet and minute drops will tend to scratch out the paint.
On the right, there is a textured power button and textured volume rockers with the same texture to them. The texture feels good but the same texture means you won't be able to differentiate the buttons in case if the phones in the pocket. The left side has a sim card tray slot which is a hybrid dual sim. It allows for a single nano sim with a micro-sd card or two nano sim cards. The top has the 3.5mm headphone jack which is welcomed and the bottom has a micro-USB charging slot with speakers on one side and microphone on the other side.
All the sides are made of the same materials as the back so that's that. The overall design of the phone is great with nothing to regret that big in that division.
Software
The device runs on the Android 7.0 (Nougat) with the InFocus’s Smile-UX skin on the top. The software is pretty good with almost a stock android like experience with a custom tasteful icon pack and a launcher and few other modifications. There is nothing much to say about the software with almost a stock android the optimisation is very good. A pure stock android version would have been greatly sight for the purists but the Smile-UX has nothing to disappoint you.
Remember the design only had a fingerprint sensor on the front doubling up as a button? The navigation is done by On-Screen Buttons which can be hidden with a small button on the leftmost side of the nav bar. You can decide to show that button or not or disable the nav bar at all in the setting. The main method of navigation is that button only. A short touch acts as a back button, a press acts as a home button and a double click acts as a multitasking button. Pretty clean.
[Update] The device's software got an update last week adding an app called power manager as a system app. The app lets users know the data they consumed during the time the device was locked if the device is locked for 5 minutes or more. It shows that you consumed 5 or 7 KB of data depending on how much data was consumed. This can be turned off and is annoying. Also, that app enables to tell you that an app is consuming power in the background as soon as the screen is locked. That app is always the weather service pre-installed on the phone. Basically, the phone is telling you that the weather service is consuming battery and you cant do anything else. Most annoying thing an OEM can put on the phone. Don't update the software if you get the chance.
Performance
The performance is a major area of concern in any device. The device was made for long lasting battery therefore high performance wasn’t expected. To our surprise, the device performed equally well as it lasts. The device comes with a MediaTek 6750 coupled with 3GB of RAM. The device was able to run all day to day tasks pretty smooth as well as didn’t lag much while gaming.
We ran our usual AnTuTu Benchmark and GeekBench. The device gave a score of 40,848 on AnTuTu and yielded a 610 single core and 2544 multi-core score on Geekbench.
We also ran a graphics intensive game like Need for Speed: No Limits and the game ran absolutely while even on long gaming sessions.
Display
The device has a good 5.5-inch(1080×1920) full HD display with great sunlight readability with full brightness. The colours were not that vibrant and vivid. The display was average. Nothing great and nothing bad about it. It is a perfect balance of everything.
Camera
The Infocus Turbo 5 Plus has a dual camera setup in the back with a wide angle lens for wide-angle shots to cover more in one image. The setup is a 13MP plus 5MP f/2.0 aperture in the back and a 5MP f/2.0 aperture in the front.One of the most anticipated things was how is the dual camera setup in a budget smartphone. To be honest, it's pretty bad.
The shots in the natural light were okayish with the wide angle shot being blurry. The camera in the low light performs below average and the 5MP wide-angle lens totally destroys the photo. The indoor shots were a bit better but nowhere near to what the competition is.
If your main focus is the camera then leave this one out.
Battery
Packing a 4,850mAh battery the phone lasts almost 2 days with constant usage and mild gaming. The charging times with the included chargers is pretty good for the performance. It takes 3 hours to charge up to 100 from 0. It lasts around 2 days with semi-heavy usage.
We ran the PC Mark's Work 2.0 Battery Life test which subjects the phone to heavy usage and finds out the battery life in that condition. The Phone gave a score of 18 hours 15 minutes. That's more than twice the OnePlus 3T gives and it costs three times as much.
If you wanted a phone with good battery, this is your go-to definitely.
Conclusion
Infocus Turbo 5 Plus with a price of ₹8,999 is a great budget segment phone if you don't mind the bad cameras. The device trades in camera performance for great looks and build along with an unexpectedly high battery life and a clean UX. If you are willing to make do with sub-par camera performance with a phone with stands out in every other criterion in its segment, Infocus Turbo 5 Plus is your go-to phone definitely.
