The new Cinemax 3 is quite similar to the previous smartphone. But it has specification upgrades as well as increased storage. But is the Zen Cinemax 3 priced at Rs 5,499 a smartphone worth buying? Know more about this
Design and build
At first glance, the Cinemax 3 looks a bit clunky because of the excessively raised edges on the rear cover. Obi Worldphone SF1 (Review) gives a glimpse of the phone. The texture of the phone is good, although it is difficult to feel it by looking at the phone because its rear is equipped with sandstone texture. Due to the texture, the grip of the phone is good and fingerprints are not left.
The protruding frame of the phone is good for beauty but it creates problems when the device is put on charging. The USB port is also installed in such a way that the connection gets lost even with a little movement. The USB cable that comes with the phone is a bit long but it does not work well. And we had to face disconnection many times while copying files from the device. Apart from this, if the cable that comes with it is lost, then you will not have any option to charge the phone. Because removing the rear cover of the phone and charging it with another cable is a very difficult task.
The phone has non-backlit capacitive buttons on the front and a speaker grille on the rear. The display is also not better than before. The phone has a 5.5-inch display panel with a resolution of 480×854 pixels. The screen density is 162 ppi. Viewing angles and color reproduction are also quite poor. The phone has neither an ambient light sensor nor a notification LED.
The battery provided in the phone is removable and on removing the rear cover, two SIM slots and a separate microSD card slot (32 GB) can be seen. In the box you will find a charger, data cable, headset, screen protector and a case for the phone. Considering the price, the quality of the accessories that come with the phone can be said to be decent.
Specifications and Features
The Zen Cinemax 3 is powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core Spreadtrum SC7731 processor. This phone has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The performance of this phone is quite similar to that of the Micromax Unite 4 Pro, which is not very good. The benchmark figures of the phone were also not good.
This phone does not come with 4G support which can be a problem for many people. Apart from this, the phone has connectivity features like Wi-Fi b / g / n, Bluetooth, GPS and FM radio. This phone does not support USB OTG. Cinemax 3 has an accelerometer and a proximity sensor.
On the software front, the Cinemax 3 runs a near-stock version of Android 5.1 Lollipop. Zen has given some customisations to the phone like a lock screen magazine (Page Two) that lets you view news snippets and play puzzle games. The apps that are available are Ultra Zone Store for buying video clips, NexGTV for news streaming, TV shows and movies, Zen Care for locating service centres and Zen Store for wallpapers, music etc.
Most of Zen’s apps have very few links to the website. Apart from this, many spam apps and trial games also come pre-loaded in the phone. The good thing is that you can uninstall all these apps including Google Play Music, Play Movie etc. by going to the Settings app and choosing ‘Delete Application’. Apart from this, the phone also has an SOS feature through which you can send emergency messages to selected contacts by pressing the power button five times continuously.
Performance
The design of the Zen Cinemax 3 is not good. It is quite big and does not fit easily in the pocket due to its very prominent edges. The phone operated smoothly most of the time and we did not face any heating issues during our review. The call quality is good but not great. The phone does not have 4G support so you will have to make do with 3G. The touch response of the screen is not very good.
Android works fine when you are browsing through the homescreen but there is a problem while multitasking and loading apps. Websites load slowly in Chrome and are difficult to scroll through. You can play simple games on the phone but if you want to play games like Asphalt or Altos Adventure then it is not possible on this phone.
Full HD videos play on the phone but they are not fun to watch and this is due to the poor quality of the display. The sound from the speaker is quite loud for incoming notifications.
Cinemax 3 has a 5 megapixel rear camera which gives good closeup shots. Landscape photos taken from the phone are very bad. The focus in the phone is very slow. In fact, due to the poor display, it becomes very difficult to say whether the photo you are taking is good or bad. Talking about selfies, the front camera is also not good.
The camera app provided in the phone is the stock Google Camera app in which you will get Panorama, HDR and some other options. Apart from this, there is nothing special.
The phone has a 2900mAh battery which lasted 9 hours and 46 minutes in our video loop test. This can be called good. During normal use, we were able to use the phone for a day on a single full charge.
Our decision
Looking at the current market trend, we feel that the company could have made Cinemax 3 better. Instead, the company launched this phone with some upgrades in last year’s phone which is not enough. 4G LTE is the most sought after feature in the market so now it is useless to buy a new smartphone without 4G support. This is reason enough to not buy this smartphone.
Apart from this, if we talk about other shortcomings of Cinemax 3, then the display is not good, performance is weak and the camera is also ordinary. The design of the phone cannot be called very good either because of the USB port.
There are other smartphones available in the market with better specifications and features at this price point like the Carbon Quattro L50 HD. Despite the price cut, we would recommend not to buy the Zen Cinemax 3 smartphone.