Swipe Elite Plus – Truly Elite (Review)

With every iteration, Swipe Elite series is only getting better. My fellow blogger Shakthi, titled a post, “The best Elite ever” in his Elite Note review and later when he met the Elite Plus, he realized later that the title is not scalable. So lets look at the Elite Plus from a new angle. If you ask me to suggest a mobile with thin and light form factor with a decent camera and good display, that is light on your budget as well, then I am going to suggest you the Swipe Elite Plus. If you counter me with a question, “why?”, you must read this post.

Here are the highlights of the Swipe Elite Plus

• Design and Construction: The Swipe Elite Plus is a handy little device. It weighs less than 150 grams and is very thin at 8.9 mm.
• Display: It has a 5 inch display with thin bezels. The display is Full HD IPS capacitive.The display is protected by Dragontrail Glass.
• Camera: The Rear camera is 13 MP and the front has a 8 MP Selfie Camera.
• Processor: It is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8939 Octacore Processor clocked at 1.5 GHz.
• Memory: It has 2 GB RAM + 16 GB internal storage. It features Expandable Storage of upto 64 GB on a dedicated slot. It is a dual sim device with OTG support.
• Network support: It supports LTE, GSM and CDMA bands.
• Operating system: Swipe Elite plus runs on Android Lollipop with FreedomOS
• Battery: It runs on 3050 mAh Battery. Battery is non-removable, though the back panel is removable.

Elegant Elite

Swipe Elite Plus has a very light weight design. It has a 5 inch display that is very ergonomic to handle with one hand. It weighs 131 grams and less than 9 mm thin. The mobile is not water proof or water resistant officially, but to an extent, the design seals the internal circuits from water. I sprayed water on it, emulating rain and the mobile survived without any damage. It has a unique design with chrome rims and good quality plastic on the body. This is a welcome change from the previous iterations of Swipe Elite mobiles which were predominantly plastic. The 5 inch full HD display is gorgeous. The text is crisp and the images are vivid. A full HD display on this price band is never heard of.

Shoot like a pro

The rear camera on the mobile is absolutely gorgeous. This is one of the best camera mobile I have seen in this price range. It matches the camera from from some of the top mobiles out there. Depth of field is amazing. The Color reproduction is perfect. The brightness and contrast levels are right. HDR mode is slow, but produces pleasing and natural results. The front facing camera is 8 MP and covers a wide angle. It is not a selfie, but I would call it a groufie camera.

Check out the samples for yourself.

Horse power

The Swipe Elite Plus is powered by Snapdragon 615 which is a great performer. Be it games or apps, the SD 615 and its GPU gives you a smooth ride. But Snapdragon 615 is prone to heating and the mobile does heat up on continual gaming. I understand that it is powered by a powerful 615 processor and in such a thin device, the heat dissipation is a challenge. But still the heat on this device could have been avoided with some better engineering design and software/firmware optimization. The processor throttling is evident on gaming. Frame drops and UI lag is not clearly evident. But the throttling has caused the game rendering engine to under-perform. The 3D game artifacts rendering is no so smooth. But again considering the price point and spec sheet, this is not a gaming device. Its a mobile that will help you with your daily tasks without any hiccups.

User Experience

The freedom OS is fast and snappy. It runs on top of Android Lollipop. It offers a wide range of customization options. There are so many settings that, I loose myself and my time just fiddling with them. It is a very interesting OS with its heart and soul on better UX. The intuitive lock screen shortcuts, the better optimized dialer app, launcher customization are a few things that the freedomOS does better than the other custom skins out there.

End of the day, its a phone

Call quality on the Elite Plus has improved manifolds compared to the earlier Elite series. Now the quality of incoming calls is natural and not at all tinny. The speaker is weak. and I miss the calls because of the weak ring tones. The vibration is stronger than expected. Silent mode vibration defeats the purpose and the vibration is very disturbing especially, if you are in a quite place like an office or temple. The mobile GPS locks in under 10 seconds and the WiFi strength is good. Also the network latching is good.

Battery

The full HD screen and a powerful processor drains the battery pretty fast. On intense usage, I get 3 to 3.5 hours of screen on time. On an average, the device battery lasts for 12 hours or less. Also it takes painfully long to charge the mobile. From 0-100% it takes about 3.5 hours, with the 1 Amp charger bundled in the box.

Value for Money

Swipe Elite Plus is priced at Rs 6999. At Rs 7000, the device you are buying is a great value for money. At Rs 7k, the only competitor for the Swipe Elite Plus is the Coolpad Note Lite which has average looks and a mediatek processor. But the performance of CPL is much better than the Swipe Elite Plus and it has fingerprint sensor as well. I would recommend Swipe Elite Plus, if you are looking for an economic option and keen on aesthetics and camera. It is a no frills no thrills device with straight forward objective to give a good user experience at an economic value and very little compromises.