coverstory mid-range when masses met classes Gionee A1 Asus Zenfone 3 Laser

Price: `16,999/- Price: `19,999/-

SCORE Price: 8.8/10 Performance: 5.9/10 SCORE Features: 7.8/10 Price: 10/10 Performance: 5.9/10 Overall: Features: 6.3/10 7.4/10 Overall: 7.5/10 sus Zenfone 3 Laser is similar to Zenfone 3 Max which we ionee A1 tapping selfie-obsessed consumers, with its metal phone reviewed previously. It comes with a 5.5-inch full HD display IPS that looks premium, the phone also uses A6000 aircraft-grade A(1920x1080p) with 2.5D curved glass on the top. The screen Gmaterial to build the . It feels sturdy and premium shows vibrant images that look crisp with rich colors and have wide while holding the device in hands. It comes with a 5.5-inch full-HD viewing angles. (1080×1920 pixels) AMOLED display producing rich colors and the good Asus uses PixelMaster 3.0 with Laser to capture life moments quickly amount of brightness. and easily. It can capture decent quality images in daylight condition with It has 16 MP camera at the front with LED flash. It captures beautiful vibrant contrast and quick autofocus. With rich details and colors, images images in with vibrant colors and details. The rear 13 MP camera clicks come alive with every shot and you can also use the macro mode. The front images with accurate colors but sometimes looks oversaturated. Both, camera also clicks decent selfies and is wide enough to capture groupies. daylight and low light condition shots are good. But motion blur can be The phone is backed by simple hardware which is powerful enough to seen when you see them at full size. handle daily tasks. You can play with the phone without experiencing any Overall both cameras are good to capture beautiful images. visible lag. We used the device for more than three weeks and stuffed it Performance: Gionee A1 comes at mid-price but its performance is with several apps and games to test its real world performance. As it’s not not compromised. I installed games like Asphalt 8: Airborne, WWE, Mortal a high-end device, we were satisfied with its performance during moderate Combat and NFS. There was no frame rate drop while paying any one of the usage. We browsed the internet, captured images and played games like games. Even while switching between them, I didn’t see any performance Asphalt 8, NFS, etc. There was not any visible lag in performance while lag. The only issue is heating with the phone while playing a game for enjoying the game, though when switched between games, we noticed a about 30 minutes it starts heating and with high graphics intensive games, bit delay. it becomes uncomfortable to hold. The phone is backed by a 3000 mAh battery that can last for a day with moderate usage, approx more than 16 hours. In our video loop test, Key Specs: 5.5-inch AMOLED Fully charged battery can last (1920x1080p) Screen, 13 MP rear for more than a day with moderate it lasted for 5 hours and 14 minutes and 16 MP front camera, Octa Core usage, net surfing, videos, games, Key Specs: Octa Core while playing video over YouTube with 2.0GHz CPU, Android 7.0, 4 GB, 64 Snapdragon 430 64-bit Processor, full brightness and sound. music etc. And in our video loop test, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB ROM, Expandable GB internal storage, expandable up to Bottomline: For a camera 256 GB, 4010 mAh battery it lasted for 5 hours 27 minutes. Up to 128 GB, 5.5 inches Full HD Bottomline: Gionee A1 has a Display, 13MP Primary Camera, 8MP enthusiast, Zenfone 3 Laser could Pros: Good front camera, Front, 3000 mAh Battery, Android 6.0 be a good choice, but it has average performance, battery life good selfie camera, offers powerful performance and decent battery life. Marshmallow with ZenUI 3.0 performance, you can consider Cons: A bit heavy and heating Pros: Build quality, camera, screen issue while playing games The rear camera is decent but not buying Zenfone 3 Max with the large impressive, so if you are selfie lover Cons: Average performance battery or Lenovo Zuk with overall then you can consider Gionee A1. good performance.

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Oneplus 3 Hyve Pryme

Price: `17,999/-

Price: `26,999/- SCORE Price: 9.6/10 SCORE Performance: 6.8/10 Price: 6.9/10 Features: 7/10 Performance: 9.6/10 Features: 7.4/10 Overall: 7.8/10 Overall: 8/10

yve looks premium but is heavy. Above the display, we have the nePlus 3 comes with an ergonomic solid design which gives it a front facing camera, earpiece and standard sensors along with a premium look and comfortable feel in your hand. The body of the Hfront-facing flash. Ophone is carved out from a single piece of aluminum that means However, the design of the phone is very generic and there’s nothing it has a uni-body design. Overall about the design, we would like to say unique about it. The display has decent viewing angles, but visibility under it has the mixture of the elements borrowed from the iPhone 6 and the direct sunlight can be a problem. Overall the display is good thanks to a Galaxy edge 7. The display of OnePlus 3 is 5.5-inch AMOLED display 1080p resolution. with 1080×1920 (Full HD) resolution with density of 401ppi. The Turbo Download works using cellular and Wi-Fi to download large files AMOLED screens are not bright as IPS LCD but they are better when faster. This works with files larger than 20MB. Another interesting feature is it comes to black levels, contrast ratio, and color reproduction. The the phone’s ability to use different networks and combine them to increase color level and viewing angle of the phone is great and make it best for download speed. watching videos and playing games The benefit of having a deca-core processor is that it can run all the The OnePlus 3 camera section uses a 16-MP along optical image apps without any lag with a quick load time. But, you’ll observe a slight lag stabilization and RAW image format support. Image colors are vibrant while typing and the touch latency is higher than expected. and bright. The low light shots are a little bit grainy. The rear camera can This phone is superb for multitasking and we had 15 apps running in capture the videos up to . At the front, there is an 8MP selfie the background but we didn’t face any issues. The device comes with a shooter camera which captured images in a daylight with outstanding fingerprint sensor but the response time is slow compared to other phones. details and sharpness but on another hand, it becomes grainy in low light We played some graphic intensive games on the device and the results conditions. were not that good. From surfing web pages (on Chrome browser) to playing games; from We were not impressed with the overall image quality of Hyve Pryme. launching apps to taking pictures everything works so smoothly and fast, Images lack detail, especially when you expand them. Under the low light thanks to its 6GB RAM. We ran 24 applications including games like Asphalt condition, the camera performance suffers and it can’t capture details. 8 and Mortal Kombat all are running in the background still we didn’t find However, if you are shooting in any lag while doing any task. Key Specs: 13MP camera with broad daylight then Hyve Pryme For Gamers, this phone is future proof, it has 530 GPU which dual flash, 5.7-inch FHD IPS display, Android v6.0, 2.5GHz Cortex A72 + won’t disappoint you. The front 8MP makes this phone perfect for gaming 2GHz Cortex A53 + 1.4GHz Cortex shooter comes with a flash and is all kinds of high graphics games for A53 MTK Helio X20 deca-core good for people suffering from selfie- Key Specs: Gorilla Glass 4, 5.5- Android. If we talk about fingerprint processor, 4GB RAM, 32GB internal inch AMOLED Full-HD Display, 16MP syndrome. scanner then it unlocks the device in memory expandable up to 200GB and rear and 8MP front camera, Android dual SIM (micro+micro (hybrid)) dual- The battery on Hyve Pryme can M, 2.2GHz + 1.6GHz Kryo Qualcomm a breeze without any delay. standby (4G+4G) and VoLTE support, last for a day on regular usage. In our Snapdragon 820 quad-core processor, OnePlus has 3000mAh, it stands 3500mAH lithium-ion battery. battery test, it lasted for 7 hours. Adreno 530 GPU, 6GB RAM, 64G ROM, for 7 hours and 20 minutes in our Pros: Large display, Deca-core Bottomline: The phone has 3,000 mAh battery. 1080p video loop test. processor, near-stock Android a slightly big display with a good Pros: Premium design, 6GB RAM, Bottomline: One Plus 3 is a experience, decent gaming battery life but is too expensive for mute button, fast charging, AMOLED perfect device combining powerful performance display, front camera the kind of limited performance it hardware at very affordable price and Cons: Price, camera performance offers. You can also consider LeEco Cons: No micro-SD slot in low light not good it might be one of the best choices for Le Max2, Lenovo Z2 Plus, and Xiaomi a smartphone to buy around 27K. Mi Max. pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] JULY 2017 PCQuest 33 coverstory mid-range smartphones

Moto G5 Plus Honor 8

Price: `16,999/-

SCORE Price: 5.9/10 Performance: 6.6/10 Features: 6.9/10 Price: `29,999/- Overall: 6.5/10

SCORE Price: 6.5/10 he Plus sports an aluminum finish and feels sturdy. The Performance: 7.9/10 power and volume buttons are on the right, located comfortably Overall: Features: 7.3/10 7.2/10 Tfor single-hand operation. The 3.5mm audio jack and Micro-USB port for charging and data transfer are at the bottom. We like the fact that this phone can accommodate two SIMs as well as a microSD onor 8 has very compact and aesthetic design. The unibody metal card simultaneously. The Moto G5 Plus features a 5.2-inch IPS LCD design sandwiched between two glasses with the 2.5D curve, display with a full-HD resolution for an impressive 424ppi pixel density. Hadding premium looks. Though it looks cool, the glasses are prone There’s a water-repellent nano-coating to save the phone from water to fingerprints, also it is quite slippery. splashes and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 from scratches. The screen was It sports an LTPS (Low-temperature polycrystalline silicon) 5.2 inches full good enough for videos, movies, and games. Sunlight legibility was HD display which looks very sharp. It produces natural and punchy colors decent, and viewing angles were good too. There’s a Color mode with great sharpness. The display is enough bright to read the text under feature in the display settings that lets users select between standard the direct sunlight without any problem. Also, to save your eyes from the and vibrant color reproduction. stress, there is a feature called ‘EYE’ that filter the blue light of the display. The Moto G5 Plus handled multi-tasking with ease, and apps The camera of Honor is packed with a dual 12-megapixel configuration launched quickly. Different types of media files were handled to captures the images with better depth and sharpness. For creating blur well. We were able to play heavy games like Marvel: Contest of background effect the camera app has features called ‘Wide aperture”. It Champions, Dead Effect 2, and Asphalt 8 with no stuttering but with can blur the selective amount of image background using a slider. some heating issue. The Moto G5 Plus uses stock Android which The images captured by the Honor 8 are crisp and possess a good also made the multitasking smooth and lag free, thanks to its 4GB amount of detailing along natural colors. If you are a selfie lover, then the of RAM. front camera of 8 megapixels is not going to disappoint you. It sports a 12MP rear camera with Dual LED flash and a feature If you are multitasker the phone is not going to disappoint you as it has called Dual Autofocus Pixels which lets you lock focus in a blink. The 4 GB RAM and 32 GB of storage that can expandable up to 128 GB using camera app is easy to use and launches without delay. The image Hybrid SIM card slot. The processor is enough to run heavy apps and quality was decent, daylight pictures come with good details along games smoothly, we didn’t find any major lag while multitasking. Also, we punchy colors, in low light, photos had some noise, and at times did notice some heat while updating and using the camera. appeared too grainy. This was mostly when there was very little light The phone is backed by a 3000 mAh battery to power its hardware. In around. A 5-megapixel front camera along display flash that could our battery test, we ran a video loop test in which we got 8 hours and 10 come in handy in dim areas. minutes battery backup at high volume and brightness. Moto G5 Plus has a 3000mAh Bottomline: Honor 8 is a well-designed smartphone with a great battery and in our video loop combination of hardware. Though Key Specs: 4 GB RAM, 32 GB Key Specs: 5.20-inch in comparison with Oneplus 3, at ROM Expandable Upto 128 GB, test, it gave us 7 hours 10 1080x1920 pixels Display, 1.8GHz 5.2 inches Full HD Display, 12MP minutes. Fast-charging is another octa-core CPU, Front Camera. some places, it wins and sometimes Rear Camera, 5MP Front Camera, advantage that the Moto G5 Plus 8-megapixel. RAM, 4GB, Android it loses the battle. Some missing 3000 mAh Battery, 2GHz Octa has over its most direct competitor, 6.0, Storage 32GB, Rear Camera features like FM and VoLTE made it core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 12-megapixel, 3000mAh not so preferred phone as compared Processor the Xiaomi Note 4. Pros: Premium design, Powerful to OnePlus 3 and Asus Zenfone Bottomline: If you are looking processor, and performance, Good Pros: Decent battery, Full HD 3. However, if are looking for a Display, Fast charging, Android N for a new budget-friendly with good looks and great Cons: Little bit Heating issue smartphone, the Moto G5 Cons: No FM, Slippery body Plus can be your next decent performance with clean UI and companion. battery then Honor 8 is for you.

34 PCQuest JULY 2017 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] shootout

HTC Desire 10 Pro Nubia Z11 Mini S

Price: `20,640/-

Price: `16,999/-

SCORE Price: 10/10 SCORE Performance: 7/10 Features: 7.5/10 Price: 7.1/10 Performance: 6.3/10 Overall: Overall: Features: 7.8/10 7.1/10 8.2/10

TC Desire Pro is spruced up with a matte finish and antenna lines – golden in the case of the white color – along with the outline Hof the body. The front has capacitive buttons for back, home, and multitasking-related haptic interaction. These are illuminated on touch and the duration of light can be he Nubia Z11 Mini S stand out from the crowd is its slim design customized. The front sports a 5.5-inch screen which is preserved under a and compact form factor. sheath of Gorilla Glass. T The Z11 Mini S comes in a unique design, the antennas on the The rear take landscape shots with great detail. The focus is quick, back panel have been covered by a plastic strip. The fingerprint sensor is however, lost equally easily if the phone is shaking. This brings us to our placed on the back while volume and power keys are placed side-by-side only complaint with the camera – the exposure or the amount of light in a on the right-side panel. picture does not change the focus; it changes on the basis of the center of The 5.2-inch FHD display looks rich and colorful. The text in web pages the picture frame. and ebooks look crisp. Wide viewing angles are also good and so is visibility The colors on the front camera are vivid and nearly as rich as the rear under bright sunlight. The only limitation is the lack of protection in the camera. The front camera features retina flash which significantly adds to display. Also, it picked up scratches within a few days of use. low-light selfies, but it really hates pairs of spectacles. The Z11 Mini S has a 23-megapixel rear camera which can take With this multitasking something, you won’t have to fret over, save a few clear and detailed photos in daytime. The photos it captured are not over minor lags. The processor is not necessarily the fastest processor for the saturated like other Nubia smartphones. It is also fast and was able to lock price but it does daily chores without feeling out-of-breath. 4K video is not focus on close objects very well. Photos in low light conditions look a bit supported on the 10 Pro owing to lack of capabilities of the Helio processor. grainy but colors came out very well. The front camera is a 13-megapixel While testing, we played Alto’s Adventure, Badland 2, Mekorama, Asphalt and it takes clear shots even in indoor conditions. Xtreme, Vector 2 and Modern Kombat 5. During gameplays, minor seizures It is a fairly powerful mid-segment chip and allows the smartphone could be easily observed and although there were no episodes of hanging, to handle most tasks with ease. Switching between apps was smooth, these seizures can cause ripples in the gaming experience. multi-tasking doesn’t make it sluggish and games such as Real Racing 3 The 3000 mAh battery pack is ran without any frame drops or heating issues. It comes with 64Gb ROM really robust as it lasted six hours in while Moto G5 Plus runs on the same Key Specs: 23MP rear and 13MP Key Specs: 20-MP rear 13-MP processor with 4GB RAM but offers our video loop test. front facing camera, 5.2-inches LTPS selfie camera, 5.5-inch FullHD Bottomline: You cannot clearly FHD, Android v6.0.1 Marshmallow, 32GB internal storage. It packs only Display, MediaTek Helio P10 Octa- 2.0GHz 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon a 3,000mAh battery, yet managed to core processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB expect a slayer performance from 625 MSM 8953 octa core processor, ROM (Storage) with MicroSD support the HTC Desire 10 Pro. It doesn’t, deliver more than a day’s backup on Adreno 506 GPU, 4GB RAM, 64GB up to 2 TB a single charge. In our Video loop test, however, displease at any point. internal memory expandable up to Pros: Stunning selfies and detailed The camera is good enough for your 200GB, 3000mAH lithium-ion battery. it gave us 7 hours and 30 minutes. Bottomline: Nubia Z11 Mini S is rear camera shots, snappy fingerprint social media usage, and the manual Pros: Good Battery, Impressive Cons: Low speaker volume, mode makes you feel that you have a Camera, smooth performance a truly remarkable smartphone with stylish looks, a good camera, steady mediocre processor, weak GPU little more control. However, If clicking Cons: Old Android great landscape pictures is what you performance and dependable utilize the phone mostly for. battery life. pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected] JULY 2017 PCQuest 35 coverstory mid-range smartphones

Moto Z2 Play Pro

Price: `25,990/-

Price: `27,999/-

SCORE Price: 7.3/10 Performance: 7.2/10 Overall: SCORE Features: 7.6/10 7.3/10 Price: 6.9/10 Performance: 6.3/10 Overall: amsung Galaxy C7 Pro launched this year and followed it up with the Features: 7.3/10 6.8/10 Galaxy C7 Pro with the almost same design but with striped down Sspecifications. Samsung Galaxy C7 Pro has a full metal unibody he Moto Z2 Play is the successor to the Play and supports design and capsule-shaped home button. The rear of the phone has two mods too. It metals back that makes it look quite premium. It has very prominent antenna band lines running on the top and bottom. The T16-pin connector at the back which is made of 23-Carot gold. camera module is placed just below the top band, and the LED flash is right There is no design change as compared to the Z Play so that existing next to this. Mods of Moto can fit easily. Galaxy C7 Pro has a vibrant 5.7-inch SAMOLED display. The thin bezels The smartphone comes with a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display with on the side give ample space for watching videos, browsing your social Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on top for protection against scratches. The display media feeds. The colors and viewing angles are very good. Overall the is bright and super vivid. The viewing angles are on point, the display display is excellent. is sharp and the brightness levels, both minimum, and maximum are The Galaxy C9 Pro camera wasn’t too much impressive but it was good. adequate. It includes a 16MP camera on the front and rear of both these phones. The The smartphone comes with the 12MP camera and the images it phone is quick to focus and capture shots, and they come out sharp with captured outdoors and in situations with moderate to adequate light turn accurate colors. Low light and indoor shots come with noise and grain out extremely well, with natural colors, good contrast, and minimal noise. which almost problem with every smartphone camera. Objects at a distance The images are a bit soft occasionally though. On the front, there is a 5MP lack detail and there is considerable noise in the output. Photos taken with camera comes with a dual-LED flash to enhance the low light performance. the selfie camera are good enough for sharing and social media. All in all, the front camera is more than adequate for social media use. Coming to performance, C7 Pro might not have the powerful The Moto Z2 Play has 3000mAh battery and in our video loop test at full Snapdragon 820 like OnePlus 3T, but can handle your daily tasks easily. brightness and volume, playing 720p content it gave us 7 hours 20 minutes We didn’t face any issue using this phone for regular social media, video backup. consumption or even gaming. It handles high-end games easily and Stock Android and the Snapdragon 626 SoC give the Moto Z2 Play a it heats but it is bearable. For those who want to play Asphalt 8, Nova boost in terms of performance. We had no trouble while browsing through Legacy, etc., the Galaxy C7 Pro can the UI and multitasking performs fluidly. We played games like Clash Royale Key Specs: 16MP rear and easily handle these tasks. and Asphalt 8. In there was some heating issue while the 16MP front camera, 5.7-inch Full HD On the battery front, Galaxy C7 Pro Moto Z2 Play ran relatively cool. The Super AMOLED FHD display, Android has 3000mAh battery and in our video Key Specs: 4 GB RAM, 64 GB v6.0 Marshmallow OS, 2.2GHz loop test at full brightness and volume ROM, 5.5 inches Full HD Display, battery still drained rather quickly Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 12MP Rear Camera & 5MP Front while playing. 626 octa-core processor, Adreno on 1080p content, it gave us 7 hours Camera, 3000 mAh Battery, 2.2 GHz Bottomline: If you want a sleek 506 GPU, 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM and 50 minutes. It does support fast- Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon modular smartphone running stock expandable up to 256GB and charging and takes a little over one 626 Processor. 3300mAh lithium-ion battery. Android then the Moto Z2 Play and a half hours to get to full charge. Pros: Super AMOLED Display, is pretty much your only option. Pros: Colorful and vivid display, Bottomline: Samsung Galaxy C7 Light, and well-designed, Good Decent battery, fast charging Pro has a good display, sleek design, battery However, if you aren’t interested in Cons: Average camera and the camera is average especially Cons: Expensive Moto Mods the Moto Mods then you can go for performance some other options available in the in low light but still all make this market. device stand out from the competition.

36 PCQuest JULY 2017 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected]