Nowadays it is very difficult to find a good Android smartphone in the market around Rs 5,000. Bingo 21 equipped with 2 GB RAM can be a good option in this price. The front camera and design along with colorful color combinations and flash give the feeling that the phone has been specially designed for the youth. Know from our review whether Bingo 21 passes or fails and whether it is worth buying according to the price and features.
Look and design
With its shiny orange frame, Bingo 21 will grab your attention from every angle. The phone is made of plastic body but looks sturdy. The phone has a 4.5 inch (480×854) resolution FWVGA display which makes the phone pocket friendly. However, the low resolution of the screen is easily visible. The screen density is 216ppi. There is a 5 megapixel front camera with LED flash and a notification LED at the top of the screen.
The power and volume buttons are on the left side of the phone and are very soft. The headphone jack and micro-USB connector are given at the bottom of the phone.
The back of the phone is detachable. The battery is of 2300 mAh. The straight vertical lines on the rear cover give a good grip to the phone. Apart from this, there is an 8 megapixel rear camera with LED flash and a speaker at the bottom.
With the Bingo 21 you get a charger, cable, headset and manual, although our review unit only came with the headset. We feel that InFocus has done a good job on the design and finish of the phone for this price. The phone has not been forcibly presented as a premium device and this is a good thing for the phone. The look of the Bingo 21 is decent for its budget.
Specifications and software
The phone is equipped with the Chinese semiconductor company’s Spreadtrum quad-core Shark L (SC9830) processor. Although this processor is not very well known, you will find this chipset in many smartphones of this price. Bingo 21 is equipped with four ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores running at 1.5 GHz. For graphics, there is ARM’s Mali-400. Its benchmark numbers are excellent for 2 GB RAM and its price. The performance of the phone is decent.
Talking about other specifications, the 8 GB storage can be expanded up to 64 GB with the help of a microSD card. Bingo 21 is a dual-SIM smartphone that also supports Band 40 for 4G. LTE works in both SIM slots. The phone comes with Wi-Fi b / g / n, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio and GPS. The USB OTG provided in the phone did not work when we tried.
Talking about the software, the phone runs on Android 5.1 with Inlife UI 2.0 skin on top. InFocus has given its own tweaks like EZ Launcher which makes the phone easier for new users. Users have the option of single and dual layered mode. An app called Safebox has also been provided to keep private data safe.
Bubble is an app to add fun to photos by adding virtual bubbles to them.
Performance
The general app performance of the phone is good but it is not at all suitable for multitasking. If you have opened a lot of apps then the phone becomes very slow and it takes a lot of time to go back.
Despite having 2 GB RAM, only 460 MB RAM is left for the user. Talking about storage, only 4.6 GB is available for the user. We did not see any problem in the call quality of the phone and the phone works smoothly even on 4G network.
The display is viewable in all light conditions except direct sunlight. InFocus has also provided a blue light filter and you can change the colour temperature of the screen. Multimedia playback is also not bad and the phone handles 1080p files with ease. The loudspeaker works well during alerts but don’t expect much from it. The handset that comes with the phone is decent for audio.
InFocus Bingo 21 comes with Google Camera app which is simple and easy to operate. But the quality of both the cameras is not good. There is no detail in landscape photos in daylight and the colors are also not correct. The camera focuses quickly in daylight but does not work properly in low light. Photos taken indoors also did not look good.
The video recording quality also appeared below average. The flash provided for the front camera is nothing more than a flashlight.
Battery
The best thing about Bingo 21 is its battery. During our video loop test, the battery lasted for 12 hours and 2 minutes. Even with normal use, the battery lasts more than a day on a single charge.
Our verdict
While we don’t expect much from smartphones at the entry level, it seems that the smartphone market has reached a point where there is no need to compromise on low prices. The size and form factor of the InFocus Bingo 21 is fine but everything else, especially the display, is sub-standard. You can find smartphones with HD screens and great specifications at this price point. The Xolo Era X and Carbon Titanium S205 are better options with good resolution displays.
The battery of Bingo 21 is good and some software also makes it good but there are many things wrong with it. At this price, you can get many other better phones in the market.