At Gadgets 360, we keep getting requests to review new budget smartphones but it is not possible for us to test every phone. Today, we have the Reach Allure smartphone from Reach Mobiles, a subsidiary of Rashmi Group. Priced at around Rs 5,000, this budget smartphone has been introduced as an iconic smartphone.
Look and design
True to its price, the Allure uses a plastic body instead of a metal body. At first glance, it looks similar to an iPhone and we think it has been deliberately designed to mimic the iPhone. The phone is available in four iPhone colour variants (including Rose Gold). However, the quality of the plastic as well as the fit and finish are not great. There are some gaps in the plastic around the curved edges of the display. There is a physical home button at the bottom for navigation and a 5-megapixel camera at the top. The ring around the home button is designed to look like Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor. But it is not a sensor. There is no notification LED on the phone.
The 5.5-inch QHD (540×960 pixels) resolution IPS display on this phone isn’t too bad except for its low resolution. The brightness levels are decent too but the screen washes out in sunlight. There’s also a slight gap between the outer glass and the actual display which can be seen when you press the screen. Due to this, the touch response is quite poor and at times the phone misidentifies a tap gesture as a swipe. To make up for the lack of protective glass, the Allure’s display comes with a pre-installed screen guard.
The Reach Allure smartphone has micro-USB and headphone socket on the top while there is a single speaker at the bottom. The volume and power buttons are not very well placed and do not operate easily. The rear cover is not easy to remove but once you do, you can see two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot along with a removable battery. The Allure smartphone has a 10-megapixel rear camera with single LED flash.
When you buy the Reach Allure, you will get a power adapter, data cable and a flip cover in the box. The quality of the cable is decent but the flip case is of very poor quality. You will be lucky if the case lasts even a month. Overall, the Allure is made of very poor quality material. The fit and finish of the plastic could have been better. In our opinion, any user would probably buy this smartphone online just because it looks like an iPhone.
Specifications and software
The Reach Allure phone has a 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6580 processor. This phone has 1 GB RAM and 8 GB storage, storage can be expanded via microSD card (up to 32 GB). This Reach phone has features like Wi-Fi b / g / n, Bluetooth 4.0, FM radio and GPS. The phone does not support 4G and only 3G will work on both SIMs.
On the software front, the phone runs Android 5.1 Lollipop with a custom launcher. You get an app drawer and the option to choose transition effects. The multi-purpose home button serves different functions depending on how you press it. While a single press takes you back a step in an app, a long press opens additional settings and a double press takes you to the home screen. However, if you’re on the home screen, a double press will take you to recent apps while a long press will open a menu where you can customize the wallpaper, theme and other settings. The home button performs poorly and requires a lot of effort to use.
Apart from this, Reach has also included some gesture-based shortcuts so that you can run apps when the screen is off. WeChat, WhatsApp and some other Google apps come pre-installed in the phone.
Performance
Reach Allure is not very convenient to use due to its size but the good thing is that it is very light. Despite having 1 GB RAM, the interface is not very problematic. Sometimes the smartphone freezes suddenly and you may have to wait a while to use it again. In benchmark testing, we got good figures from the phone. We did not face any problem in playing 3D games on this Reach phone and neither did we face any heating problem.
The smartphone comes with a stock video player for playing videos. The phone can play full-HD videos but we had trouble playing some high-bitrate files. The music player is based on an older version of Android so it’s not very appealing but can do the job. Out of the 8GB of inbuilt storage, only 4.7GB is useful for the user.
The phone is said to have a 10-megapixel autofocus rear camera and that is the specification mentioned everywhere and in every listing. But the footnote on the back of the box says that the camera can be ‘enhanced via software’. In our benchmarking tests, we found that the phone has an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. Apart from this, we also captured some RAW files from the phone’s camera using the EngineeringMod app from the Play Store and we found that it has an 8-megapixel camera. An 8-megapixel camera is not bad for an entry-level smartphone and in our opinion, this has been done to make the phone look better on the online retailer’s page.
The quality of the pictures taken with the phone’s camera at both resolutions is below average. The biggest problem is the slow focus in the phone, which makes it difficult to take sharp pictures. Even slight motion gives a bad picture. The camera does not produce the right colors and the pictures are very dull. The phone has a burst shooting feature (up to 10 shots) but the capture speed is quite slow.
Both the cameras of the phone can record a maximum video resolution of 1080 pixels. Here too the quality is below average. Selfies taken with the front camera are also disappointing.
battery life
The Reach Allure comes with a 2600mAh battery which lasted for 5 hours and 27 minutes in our video loop test. This is very less compared to other smartphones. With normal usage, we were able to use this phone for less than a day.
Our decision
The Reach Allure is priced at Rs 5,444 and is currently available exclusively on online retailer Shopclues. It’s hard to spot any special features on this phone and the phone performs below average in every aspect. Compared to the InFocus Bingo 10 (Review), the Allure has a bigger and brighter display which may put off some customers.
We can see that this phone might appeal to those who want a cheap iPhone clone but apart from that there is not much reason to buy it. The build quality of the phone is very poor. Battery life and camera are average and performance is not good either. The lack of 4G is also a bummer.