Phicomm Energy 653 – Review

With Passion 660, the Chinese mobile company Phicomm,  made its entry into the Indian market. Now Phicomm has introduced the cheapest 4G enabled Android smartphone: Energy 653. At Rs 4999, the Energy 653 has very little competition. I got a chance to play with the mobile for a week and here are my thoughts.

Design

The Energy 653 is a small device. Though it has a 5 inch display, its thin bezels make it a tiny mobile to hold in the hand. It does not feel cheap to hold this mobile. The plastic used has a glossy finish to it. The back is removable. It has 2 SIM slot under the cover. SIM 1 supports 4G. It also has a removable battery. The power and volume buttons are at the right and are made of plastic. The USB port and the 3.5 mm audio jack is at the top. The back has a 8 MP camera and the front has a 2MP camera. The design of this mobile exceeds expectations from a sub 5k mobile.

Display

The Phicomm Energy 653 has a 5-inch screen capable of 1280x720p resolution. The screen is a fingerprint magnet. Also the device comes with a screen guard sticker. The IPS display offers good viewing angles and sunlight readability. The images and text are sharp. The color reproduction is good and overall, I am once again surprised with the quality of the display in a sub 5k mobile.

Under the hood

The mobile is powered by a quad-core 1.1GHz, Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 processor and has 1GB RAM. It comes with 8GB internal storage and the memory can be expanded using  microSD cards of up to 64GB. The performance of the mobile in handling the UI is really commendable. But when it comes to intensive gaming, it shows signs of lagging. It scores decently on the benchmark tests. On Antutu, it got 17513, 297 on Geekbench Single core and 977 on multicore. These score may not seem too high, but its sufficient for a mobile to take you through your daily chores.

4G speed

The Mobile’s USP is its ability to connect to 4G networks. I used my Airtel 4G SIM on it and was really happy to find that it gave me upto 30mbps speed. Only SIM 1 is capable of 4G. But for it retains the title for being the cheapest 4G mobile available in India.

Software

The Phicomm Energy 653 runs on Android Lollipop 5.0 with Phicomm’s Expect UI skin on top. I liked the Expect UI, because it retains the pure android experience. It does not have to many features. It has a few UI tweaks but overall the exprience is AOSP Android. The UI was fast and smooth and there were no signs of lag. It is a very sensible UI as it has only the features which its hardware can handle.

Telephony

At the end of the day, even a smartphone is a telephone. I was a bit disappointed with the Phicomm’s telephonic quality. The voice clarity through the earpiece was a bit muffled. It felt like speaking on the old landline phone. While on the call, the dialer has an button to increase the voice volume. That helped a bit. Also there were frequent call drops. Telephony, not so great in the Phicomm Energy 653

Camera

8 MP have becomes so common these days. I remember when I got my Nokia N95 with 5 MP camera, it was the top of the line then and it cost me a bomb. But its never about the mega pixel count. It about the quality of sensor. The N95 can still take pictures that are better than the 8MP camera these days. Inline with the that, the Phicomm E653 has 8MP shooter with LED flash. The quality of the images are decent on daylight and “just ok”under low light.  The front facing 2MP camera is good for video calls, but not a great selfie camera. Here are some of the sample shots from the E653. The shots are not sharp, but color reproduction is good. I like the fact that there is very little software algorithm applied to the camera and mostly the images are directly out of the sensor. The flash is really bright and effective under low light. The video is also of decent quality. Once again this sub 5k mobile surprises me.

Battery

The mobile is powered by a  2,300mAh battery and it is user replaceable. With 4G network always on, the mobile lasts a little more than a day. The supplied charger with the mobile is average. It takes about 2 hours for the mobile to charge up. Also given the size of the display, the battery performance is commendable. It score 2211 in the GeekBench battery test and drained from 98% to 0% in 8:17:30 during the test.

Verdict

You are paying Rs 4999 for a 4G enabled smartphone that runs on Android 5.0 and powered by a Qualcomm processor. This combination is rare. It has got decent performance and battery life. If you are really tight on budget or looking for a backup mobile, the Phicomm Energy 653 is a great buy. But if you can extend your budget a bit, you will be flooded with options.

It is Available exclusively at Amazon India.