design
Talking about the looks, Intex Aqua Trend gives a mixed experience. It doesn’t look that bad from the front, but due to the default back cover, it looks very cheap. The good thing is that you can make the look a little stylish by using the flip cover that comes with the handset. The handset is equipped with accelerometer, proximity sensor and ambient light sensor. Capacitive buttons are located at the bottom. It has a 5-inch IPS display with a resolution of 720×1280 pixels. The color reproduction is not very good, the deficiency is visible even in the wallpaper. However, the brightness level is excellent. There is no problem in reading the screen even in sunlight. There is no scratch protection on the display, which is usually seen in phones of this price segment.
The power and volume buttons are on the left side. On the rear side there is a 13 megapixel camera sensor, LED flash unit and speaker grill. The headphone socket is on the top and the micro-USB port is at the bottom.
Intex Aqua Trend measures 8.9 inches thick and weighs 152 grams. Charger, data cable, headset, flip cover and screen guard will be present in the box. This phone is available in black, champagne, grey and silver color variants.
Specifications and software
The phone is powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT6735 chipset and 2GB of RAM. There is an integrated Mali-T720 GPU for graphics. Intex Aqua Trend is a dual-SIM phone and both slots support 4G. Its inbuilt storage is 16GB which can be expanded up to 32GB via microSD card.
The Android 5.1 operating system on the Intex Aqua Trend has been slightly customized, but it is mostly limited to icons and motion gestures. Using MediaTek’s Hotspot feature, you will be able to transfer files with other smartphones equipped with the same feature.
Performance
The phone does not have any problem in running most of the apps and games. However, the phone does get theme-obsessed while playing 3D games. However, we did not face any problem in playing Asphalt 8, a game with high-end graphics, on the Intex Aqua Trend.
The call quality is decent. We did not face any call drop issues during our usage. Notifications are easily visible, but the speaker quality could have been better. The headset that comes with the handset is not suitable for listening to songs.
The quad-core chipset played our test videos with ease. The phone never heated up to unreasonable levels even with constant use. The benchmark results of the Intex Aqua Trend were not spectacular, but that’s what usually happens with handsets with such specifications.
The 13-megapixel camera in it takes decent landscape and macro shots in good light. Autofocus works fast, although it slows down in low light. The camera app is very simple. Photos taken from the rear and front cameras are of very average level. You can shoot 1080 pixel videos from the rear camera and 480 pixel videos from the front camera.
We were hoping that the Intex Aqua Trend would be able to hide its other shortcomings with its performance in the battery department. But that did not happen. The 3000mAh battery lasted just 9 hours and 11 minutes in the video loop test, which is below average. In normal use, it will last for a day.
Our verdict
There is nothing spectacular about the Intex Aqua Trend. Despite being priced at Rs 9,700, it looks very expensive. You can get more beautiful and better featured handsets at the same price. Asus Zenfone 2 Laser and Lenovo K3 Note are better options for you.
The phone has many shortcomings including mediocre display, average camera and battery performance. The fact is that the handset is very heavy and thick. Talking about the features of the phone, both the SIM slots support 4G. Overall, our suggestion would be that even if you do not buy this phone, you will not miss out on anything special.