InFocus entered into the Indian market with the launch of M2, a budget smartphone with 4.2-inch 355PPI display, 8MP front and rear cameras with LED flash, aggressively priced at Rs. 4999. Later it launched the M2 4G for Rs. 5,499. The company launched the M370, another budget 4G smartphone in India back in July at Rs. 5,999, which will go on sale soon. There are several 4G smartphones in the similar price range, including the latest YU YUNIQUE. Is the Infocus M370 worth the price? Let us find out in the review.
Display, Hardware and Design
The 5-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at 294 ppi is bright, offers vibrant colors and good viewing angles. The sunlight legibility is good, but the display is a bit glossy and is prone to fingerprints. Overall the display is pretty good for the price. The smartphone is 143mm tall and 71.5mm wide. Width of the smartphone is decent for a smartphone with a 5-inch display and it is easy to hold, but it is a bit tall, mainly due to huge bezel below the display.
The earpiece is present on the top. It has a 2-megapixel camera with f/2.4 aperture, which is not the best for selfies and video chats since there is a lot of noise. It can record videos at 720p HD resolution. It has the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors next to the camera and also has a LED notification light.
It uses on-screen capacitive buttons, but there is a large bezel below the display with Infocus branding. You can adjust the background color of these on-screen touch buttons to white or black from the display settings, and also change the position of the home and back buttons to either left or right.
The power button is present on the right side and the volume rockers are present on the left. The micro USB slot, primary microphone and the 3.5mm audio jack are present on the bottom. The smartphone is 8.13mm thick and has a black rim with smooth finish running on the sides, offering a nice grip, so that the phone doesn’t slip out of your hands easily.
Even though the smartphone looks stylish, the polycarbonate body doesn’t feel premium. The smartphone weighs 126 grams, which is good for a smartphone with a 5-inch screen. It has an 8-megapixel camera on the back with a single LED flash and a secondary microphone next to it.
The back cover has tiny patterns and has few small ridges that reflects light at certain angles offering a glittery look.
Removing the back cover reveals a primary micro SIM card and a secondary hybrid SIM slot that either takes a nano SIM card or a microSD card. This is one of the disadvantages since most budget dual SIM smartphones offer a dedicated SIM card. In this phone you have to sacrifice either secondary SIM or the expansion slot.
It has a 2230mAh removable battery. Overall, the build quality is just average and not the best compared to other smartphones in the price range.
Camera
The smartphone has an 8-megapixel auto focus camera with f/2.4 aperture and single LED flash. The camera UI is simple with options to select different scene modes, effects and adjust white balance. It also has burst shot and option to add watermark with time, date and weather in your location.
Coming to the image quality, daylight and macro images are decent, but the images are dull in most conditions. HDR shots are good, but low-light images have a lot of noise and the objects are not visible clearly if you don’t have enough light. Images with flash are good and is not overpowering. It’s a decent camera for the price, but it could have been better.
Check out some camera samples (Click the image for full resolution sample)
It can record videos at 720p HD resolution. Video is decent, but it doesn’t have much details. Audio is crisp, thanks to the secondary microphone. Check out the HD video sample below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjA6wm_gQlo
Software
Coming to the software, it runs on Android 5.1.1 (Lollipop) with InLife UI 2.0 on the top. The homescreen has a folder with frequently used apps that gets updated automatically depending on the apps you use.
The drop down notification bar has several toggles that can be rearranged. The task manager shows memory occupied by apps so that you can kill unused apps to improve the memory. You can also remove downloaded apps to increase the storage. The smartphone has several motion features that lets you turn over the phone to reject call, mute the ringer when you pick up the phone, get notified with vibrations when you pick up the phone if you have unread messages or missed calls and shake the phone to change to next song.
You can select either SIMs before dialing in the dialer or use the SIM toggle button on top of the message screen to select either SIM cards. It has stock Android Lollipop keyboard, which is easy to type.
Out of 8GB of internal storage you get 3.97GB of usable storage. Out of 1GB of RAM, about 893MB of RAM is usable, out of which just 364MB of RAM is free when the phone is idle with default apps running in the background. You can also move apps to the SD card when you insert one.
Apps
Apart from the usual set of apps and Google apps the smartphone comes pre-loaded with WPS Office, Snapdeal and Bobble stickers app. The Mobile Assistant app lets you manage memory, clean the storage, save power and control app permissions, all in one place. The app traffic control app lets you restrict a particular app from accessing WiFi or data.
Music Player and FM Radio
The music player can play a range of audio formats. It also has equalizer with different presets, option to enable Bass boost and 3D effects when you are listening using earphones. It also has FM Radio with auto scanning and recording. The loudspeaker output is not the best since it there is distortion in high volume, but audio output through earphones are good. The smartphone can play 1080p videos.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It has 4G support with support of 4G LTE bands (TDD B40 2300MHz and FDD B3 1800MHz) for India. Only the dedicated micro SIM slot has 4G support, while the other hybrid nano SIM slot comes only with 2G support. It has the usual set of connectivity features including, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS, but lacks USB on-the-go (OTG) support. Call quality is decent, and we didn’t face any call drops.
Performance and Benchmarks
Coming to the performance, the smartphone is powered by a Quad-Core Snapdragon 210 processor with four ARM Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.09GHz per core. The performance is not smooth and the smartphone has occasional lags. Since it has only 1GB RAM, multitasking is not smooth too. It runs out of memory quickly if you run several apps in the background. It gets a bit warm when playing intensive games or using 4G or 3G in hot conditions, but it doesn’t get too hot. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores.
It scored 9098 points in the Quadrant benchmark.
It managed to score 17288 points in the AnTuTu Benchmark 5.
It managed to 297 points in the GeekBench 3 Single-Core benchmark.
It managed to score 986 points in the Geekbench 3 Multi-Core benchmark.
It managed to clock 517.4 frames or about 8.6 fps in the GFXBench 2.7 T-Rex benchmark.
It clocked 244.8 frames or around or about 4 fps in the GFXBench 3.0 Manhattan benchmark.
It managed to score 4242 points in the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited GPU benchmark. It has 409 MHz Adreno 304 GPU. Gaming is decent with low-end graphics, but the GPU can’t handle high-end games. We also faced occasional lags in some high-end games.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the 2230mAh offers good battery life. The removable battery is also an added advantage. It received an One Charge Rating of 11 hours and 56 minutes, mainly due to brilliant talk time. It also scores well in other tests that are decent compared to other smartphones in the price range. It lasts for the whole day with average use and for more than a day with minimal use. We will bring you the complete set of battery life test results soon.
Conclusion
At the price tag of Rs. 5,999, the InFocus M370 is not the best 4G smartphone in the market, mainly due to laggy performance due to low-end processor and just 1GB of RAM. The smartphone will go on sale exclusively on Snapdeal starting from 9th October. Even though the company is a new entrant, it has 118 service centers across 105 cities in India, according to its website. We are not sure about the quality of the service though.
Even though it has a good display, runs on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop OS, features a stylish design and offers good battery life, it lacks OTG support and the hybrid SIM slot might be a deal breaker for some. It faces a tough competition since there are several 4G smartphones around the similar price range or even cheaper that offer better performance, dedicated SIM slots and overall better value for money. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.
Pros
- Good display
- Decent camera
- Good design and very light
- 4G connectivity
Cons
- Average performance and laggy UI
- Hybrid dual SIM might not be useful for everyone
- Only primary SIM supports 4G