The iVOOMi i1, priced at Rs 5,999, comes with an 18:9 display, fingerprint scanner and dual cameras. While the iVOOMi i1 impresses on paper, is the smartphone equally powerful and impressive in terms of performance? We will answer this question for you.
iVoomi i1 Design
As soon as you take the phone in your hand, your eyes will be drawn to the 5.45-inch display which is equipped with 18:9 ratio. The edges of the phone are thin and overall a lot of effort has been made to give a sleek design. Care has been taken to make the phone easy to hold. iVoomi has placed the power and volume buttons of this smartphone on the right side, but unnecessary distance between the two could have been avoided.
iVoomi i1 has 2 micro SIM slots and a separate microSD card slot, for which you have to remove the back cover. The cover is not so convenient that you can easily put it on and remove it. By removing the back cover, you will be able to see its 3000 mAh battery but there is no option to remove it. The phone has a 3.5 mm jack and a micro-USB port is also given on the top. The mic and speaker of the phone are at the bottom. Out of the two speakers visible at the bottom, only one works. The second speaker is just a show-off.
As we mentioned earlier, iVoomi i1 has a dual camera with LED flash and a fingerprint scanner is also placed below it. The camera is slightly protruding outwards, due to which it remains slightly raised when you keep the phone on a flat surface. The camera has a metal cover on the edge, which protects the lens in case of a sudden fall of the phone. Talking about the look of the phone, it feels like a plastic body, due to which we cannot say that we are getting a unique smartphone at a low price.
iVoomi i1 software and specifications
In the 5.45 inch screen, you get a resolution of 640×1280 pixels, which is quite low and the screen is not as crisp as we were expecting. Let us also tell you that other smartphones in this range are coming in better resolution than iVoomi i1. MediaTek processor has been used in it, which you will find in most low-cost smartphones. The maximum clock speed of the quad-core processor is 1.3 GHz. 2 GB RAM is available for juggling. The storage is 16 GB and if needed, you will be able to use a microSD card up to 128 GB.
There are two cameras on the back of iVoomi i1. One sensor is of 13 megapixels and the other is of 2 megapixels. For selfie lovers, there is an 8 megapixel camera on the front. Talking about connectivity, this smartphone supports 4G and VoLTE. Apart from this, you will also be able to use single-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio in this phone.
Without making many changes, the company has kept it on Android Nougat. iVoomi has added some colorful icons in the settings app, which gives the phone a different look. The phone has been connected with Dura Speed software to ensure that the processing does not slow down. With the help of the gesture control feature given in the phone, you will be able to change songs or radio channels inside the app by waving your hand.
Apart from this, when you take the phone to your ear when a call comes, the phone will wake up automatically, and the call will also be muted as you move it left and right. Also, with the 2-finger gesture feature, you will be able to change the wallpaper, although according to us these features are not that useful for the user, here it is a matter of your choice and priority.
You have been given an option of quick touch in the smartphone, which you can use as a shortcut to the app or settings. You can also change the location of the icons appearing on the screen. To keep you busy in your free time, iVoomi has provided games like Temple Paradise Dash and Cupcake Dreamland. Apart from this, you will find apps like UC Browser, Gender, Flipkart, Google Duo and iVoomi Care Center pre-installed in the smartphone.
iVoomi i1 performance, camera and battery
Even though the iVoomi i1 has decent hardware, the phone’s performance is not that good. We found that the phone’s performance falters even during normal use, although it is not too much of a problem. Running heavy apps and games causes the phone to slow down. Not only this, this phone is not at all suitable for fast-paced games like Shadow Fight 3. The loudspeaker gets hidden when the phone is used in landscape mode, which could have been remedied.
The viewing angles of the display are average. We found that most games and apps on the phone ran in fullscreen mode by default. Apps that have been updated to support 18:9 aspect ratio did not cause any problems. But black bars were clearly visible on the edges of some apps. The fingerprint scanner is fairly accurate but it takes a little time to recognize the fingerprint and unlock the phone.
Talking about the battery, the phone’s battery lasts the whole day with light usage. In our HD video loop test, the battery died in 8 hours and 12 minutes. The 5 watt charger that comes with the phone is also not very powerful. It took us about 3 hours to fully charge the phone’s battery.
Coming back to the camera, iVoomi has not done anything special. Modes like panorama, video, photo and bokeh are provided. The speed of switching from one mode to another within the camera app is very slow. Auto scene detection is also present in this smartphone but it is very slow to use. The pictures taken from the primary camera of iVoomi i1 are below average. The camera takes time to focus. The quality of landscape pictures is also not so good that it can be used anywhere. Macro shots are of better quality than the landscape mode.
In low light, the camera fails and the pictures become blurry. The bokeh mode of the camera is also not very good, it does not seem to be fully capable of blurring the background. Apart from this, the HDR mode is also slow and the picture gets spoiled even with a slight movement of the hand. If you are taking selfies in good light, then the quality of the camera is better. While the primary camera of the phone supports videos up to 720 pixels, the front camera is capable of supporting footage only up to 480 pixels. Although the camera also has an image stabilizer, it is not so effective that it can maintain the quality of the video.
Decision
This new 18:9 screen smartphone from iVoomi cannot be called a great smartphone in its range. Battery life is decent. The display gives the phone a distinct identity. But the performance is not that good. Weak camera and slow fingerprint sensor are its two major drawbacks. If you do not want an 18:9 aspect ratio, then Xiaomi Redmi 5A (Review) or Tenor D (Review) can be good options for you, in which you will get better hardware than iVoomi i1. If you want a phone equipped with a thin edge display in the same budget, then we advise you to wait.