Photo: wowkart.in
Kathmandu
Vividtec Impex Pvt Ltd, the authorised distributor of UMIDIGI phones in Nepal has launched the UMIDIGI G for a competitive price of Rs 14,900. The phone offers state-of-the-art specs on paper but how does it fare during real-life usage? Let’s find out in this review.
Design
The UMIDIGI G is available in Black and Gold colours. The phone looks like any other Android smartphone in this price range. It is supposedly made of aluminium with a polycarbonate coating on top but it feels more like a plastic casing to me. Otherwise, there’s hardly anything to complain about.
There’s a fingerprint scanner with the power button in front and a volume rocker on the left side of the phone. From the back, the UMIDIGI G looks more or less like an iPhone 7. Instead of the Apple logo, there’s an UMIDIGI logo on it.
Display
The display of the UMIDIGI G is good. There are no two ways about it! What you are getting with this phone is a really good 720p HD IPS panel which is protected by Gorilla Glass 4.
If you don’t like the default colour profile of the phone, you can easily tweak it in the settings menu. It’s a really neat touch. Also, the viewing angle of the phone is better than most other phones of this class. The maximum brightness however could be higher.
Performance
UMIDIGI G is powered by a MediaTek 6737 Quad-Core SoC clocked at 1.3GHz. There’s also 2GB of RAM onboard which is plenty to keep all the apps running in the background. The phone was able to run all the apps I threw at it including Temple Run 2 and GTA San Andreas. Running basic apps like Facebook and Twitter was no problem for the phone at all.
Software
The software of the UMIDIGI G is what surprised me. The phone runs Android 7.0 Nougat and has a User Interface which is stock Android-like. The security patch level is also quite recent.
The thing that I really love about the software of the phone is the excellent set of features that are available in the settings. For one, you can boost the performance of the phone while using intensive apps by restricting the background app usage. Also, you can tweak the display of the phone quite a bit. There are advanced features like dynamic contrast boost and colour temperature setup which I really didn’t expect in a phone of this class.
Camera
Okay, I won’t beat around the bush for long with this one. The cameras on the UMIDIGI G aren’t all that great. The rear camera is good enough only when the lighting is adequate. Both the front and the rear cameras perform significantly poorly in a low-lit environment.
The front 2MP camera takes really grainy photos which are simply unacceptable. The 8MP rear camera takes good photos outdoors, and that’s all there is to say about the cameras on the UMIDIGI G.
Connectivity
Connectivity is where the UMIDIGI G really shines. The phone has a hybrid dual SIM slot and both the slots are 4G capable. You can also swap one of the SIMs for storage expansion. The phone supports up to 256GB of MicroSD card. There are a plethora of sensors like the gyro sensor, proximity sensor and GPS.
During my testing period, the phone held on to the mobile network really well. Be warned though, using two SIMs simultaneously impacts the battery endurance quite a bit.
Battery
The battery life of the UMIDIGI G is average at best. The 2,000mAh battery in a 5-inch phone doesn’t sound good enough and it clearly isn’t. The phone will last a day if you are a moderate user but for someone who uses their phone all the time, consider carrying the phone charger to college or work. I was able to drain eight per cent of phone’s battery in just five minutes of gameplay.
Conclusion
There are over 25 smartphone manufacturers that are selling smartphones in Nepal. The competition is tough especially when a phone falls in a segment that sells the most in Nepal. UMIDIGI G is a good phone but I feel there are better phones out there for the same price range. Revising the phone’s price will certainly make it a viable option.
The author is a tech enthusiast and gadget expert. He loves writing tech-related articles and runs the website TechnoNepal.
Source: Technology
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