US-based InFocus is very ambitious. You've got to give it that. The Indian smartphone market, particularly the budget segment could be very taxing, especially for a new-comer. But InFocus seems all focussed at succeeding.
Its first phone, launched recently, wasn't bad at all. The phone called M2 had potential. But the mind-boggling influx of some really good quality affordable handsets in the Indian market lately means it's a rough ride ahead for the M2. That said the M2 could still get away with it since InFocus has priced it very aggressively. At Rs.4,999 the M2 is a decent buy for the set of specifications it brings to the table.
The same cannot be said about the M330, the company's latest phone in India. InFocus's second device in the Indian market has been priced higher at Rs.9,999: a segment that is full of some good phones from the likes of Xiaomi, Micromax's Yu and Lenovo.
Unlike the M2, the M3330 fails to excite: one due to its price point, and two due to lack of any compelling feature. We take a closer look...
Design and build
The InFocus M330 is a fairly decent looking handset at its price point. It's no design marvel, but it's certainly better looking than the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G even though it falls slightly short of the Micromax Yu Yureka in this department.
It's nice to see InFocus trying to maintain its individuality with this one to some extent. While the front would remind you of the Redmi Note to some extent, the back is a different story.
It's still a candy bar design that you get, but the back panel is certainly a breath of fresh air in this price bracket. The back panel consists of removable plastic that has a slight matte finish to it -- less than the Yu Yureka, but certainly way better than the Redmi Note's glossy plastic - making it easy to hold and grip handset.
The edges curve gently to improve your grip and end in a strip of brushed metal that extends all through the device. The metal finish gives the M330 a bit of premium feel over counterparts in this price range.
The square camera on the rear with an LED flash, both enclosed within a black rectangular space, give the M330 some hint of sophistication. The speaker vent is located on the lower end of the back, which is not the best of placements but we can live with that.
The back houses a removable battery, two regular SIM card slots and a micro-SD card slot.
The front panel houses three backlit capacitive touchscreen buttons on the lower end that offer decent tactile feedback. Meanwhile, the left edge has the volume rocker and the right edge contains the power buttons, both of which seem firmly etched but are easy to press.
On the downside, the M330 is huge and chunky. At 153.4mmx78.1mmx9.3mm and 170g, it is way heavier than counterparts in this price bracket. We don't expect a 5.5-inch handset to be paper thin, but we've seen Lenovo achieving a 140g with the A7000. Single handed operability will be a problem for many with this one, especially for those having smaller hands.
Display
The InFocus M330 features a 5.5-inch HD IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with a 1280x720 pixels resolution. These are pretty standard specifications in this price range. All the 'good' devices in this price range (Yureka, Redmi Note, Honor 4X, A7000) have the exact specs.
Keeping numbers aside, we were pretty impressed with the display output of the M330. The display was bright with really crisp viewing angles, at this price point. Colours looked sharp and neutral on most counts, and icons and animations did their job of popping out pretty well.
But again, there's not much difference from what you can already get in the Yureka or Xiaomi's offering, although the display seemed better than the one on the Honor 4X. We see the Lenovo A7000 having an upper hand in this one.
On the plus side, the display is not much of a fingerprint/smudge magnet unless you have very greasy fingers. Outdoor visibility is therefore pretty nice on this one.
Software
The InFocus M330 runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out-of-the-box with the company's InLife UI on top, the exact OS that runs the company's ultra-affordable M2.
As explained in our review of the M2, the InLife UI follows the same pattern that many Chinese UIs that have mushroomed up lately, use. The skinning is on the heavier side, with majority of apps and icons having a distinct look and functioning. The stock camera app would give you the KitKat feel to some extent, but overall the UI seems like any other Chinese UI.
It still looks like a work in progress though, and is miles away from being a certain MIUI, but it gets the job done. Folks back at InFocus haven't touched the UI much, and have simply resized the apps and icons to fit the larger phablet form factor.
Again, the InLife UI is not as polished as Xiaomi's MIUI. It is also devoid of the many customization options we get on the Yureka, courtesy CyanogenMod.
The one plus side is that the InLife UI is low on the eye-popping icons and glossy animations, so if you like it plain and simple, then the M330 could work well for you.
Performance
The InFocus M330 is powered by a 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592 CPU with Mali-450 GPU and 2GB RAM (1,968MB available).
We have always maintained that the Yureka is the most sought after handset in terms of performance in the under Rs.10,000 price bracket. And the arrival of the M330 doesn't change much of that.
The M330 is certainly an upgrade over the M2 spec wise, but it's still not much of an upgrade when you look at counterparts in this price range.
Still, the processor on-board the M330 is a fairly capable one for its price, unless you're pushing it. It can handle your everyday basic tasks well, and the 2GB RAM ensures multi-tasking is not much of a problem on this one.
The processor upgrade means the M330 is significantly better than the M2 in terms of performance. Unlike in the M2, closing and opening of apps is not much of a problem in the M330. There was minor lag observed when we had too many apps opened (to the tune of 15) but that's like way too many intended for the purpose of testing. We are sure most users won't have that many apps opened at the same time and if you do, you now know the outcome.
The device can run graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Modern Combat 5: Blackout lag-free at lower graphics settings but the lag is a problem when you select higher graphics settings.
Basic games like Candy Crush Saga and Temple Run, however, run lag-free on this one.
The InFocus M330 comes with 16GB of internal storage of which about 12.6GB is available for use which is pretty standard. The device supports expandable storage of up to 64GB via micro-SD card.
The speaker vent on the M330 is located on the back lower end. Output wise, we were pretty pleased with the M330's speaker. It was pretty loud and clear, although the bass could have been better, but it is still a decent speaker device at it price.
There is an Audio Effect feature that lets you play around with your bass and treble settings, although the effect of these is only minute on sound quality and is barely noticeable.
Also, sound quality may suffer depending upon the kind of surface you place the phone.
Phone calls made with the InFocus M330 are of acceptable quality and we did not see any major call drops with our review device. The device supports 3G on both SIMs, however, at this price range we are getting 4G handsets, so the M330 is not doing anything out of the ordinary, to say the least.
Camera
The cameras on-board the M2 really surprised us, therefore, that was the first thing we started testing when we received the M330 for review. After all, we were sure InFocus wouldn't screw up, at least in this department. And boy, were we wrong!
While InFocus has managed to (up)grade almost every department in the M330, the camera seems to have had a (down)grade. We feel it's an opportunity lost for InFocus since this could be one parameter that could have helped propel the company to newer heights.
We are not saying the M330 is a bad camera phone, it's just that the M2 was so good at it price on this front that we expected heck of a lot more from the M330.
The M330 sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and LED flash along with an 8MP front-facing snapper.
Images clicked in outdoor ambient lighting conditions have decent amount of detail on most counts; however, we found metering issues with many of these images. Most of the images clicked in such situations were under-exposed so even though there was detail, the images looked paler than they actually were.
Although the images were true to their colours on most counts, they did not seem all that bright and punchy.
The level of detail in case of indoor well-lit conditions was fairly decent depending upon our accuracy and hand stillness. Surprisingly, we liked the images clicked in such situations better than the output in outdoor environment. There's a very capable HDR mode on-board.
The level of noise increases as the intensity of light decreased, which is fairly common for a camera phone in this price range.
Overall, we feel the phone has a decent camera but it has some metering issues in well-lit conditions. While it's still not as good as the M2, we still feel that InFocus as a company is the one to look out for in future as far as decent budget camera phones are concerned.
The front camera chalks out a decent selfie experience (with little noise even in well lit conditions), with standard properties like photo enhancer and smile auto selfie. Still there's nothing we haven't already seen before.
Both cameras can shoot full-HD videos at 30fps.
Check the following image samples to get an idea of InFocus M330 Camera performance: Sample 1 , Sample 2 , Sample 3 , Sample 4 , Sample 5 , Sample 6 , Sample 7 , Sample 8 ,Sample 9 , Sample 10 .
Battery
The InFocus M330 uses a removable battery with a capacity of 3,100mAh, which is rated to deliver up to 550 minutes of 3G talk time and 30 hours on stand-by.
We subjected the device to some real extremes and the result was not very encouraging even though the M330 has a sizeable battery (same as the Redmi Note).
In our battery benchmark, we subjected the device to almost an hour of gaming (graphics intensive), three hours of 1080p video playback, web browsing (desktop mode), music on speakers (max volume) and phone calls every now and then (to the tune of an hour) and we got close to five and a half hours with the device.
Toning down a bit will ensure you reach 12-13 hours. The power saver mode does help in churning out an hour or so out of the device.
There's another downside to the M330: it heats up very quickly. Mere 15-20 minutes of graphics intensive gaming heated up the device significantly, which is not a good sign.
Should you buy it?
While the M2 held its head high in the crowded budget smartphone market, sadly the M330 somehow doesn't fit it.
It's still a very decent smartphone, with a big and bright display; decent cameras and lag-free multi-tasking experience. The problem is competition and in the current scenario, there's abundance of it. The M330 seems to be a little out of place in such a situation.
Companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo, Micromax and Huawei have really stepped up their game in the recent times, and companies like InFocus have to do the same. While the M2 may still get away with its aggressive pricing, unfortunately the M330 gets lost in the crowd.
Also Read: Our full review of the InFocus M2
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