Intex launched its new Aqua Lions 3G smartphone at a price tag of Rs 4,990. The key feature is its 3,500mAh of battery in the budget segment. Other than this, the smartphone features decent specifications. But is it a good buy? Let’s find out in our review.
Build and Design
The smartphone comes with a simple candybar design and refurbished plastic back body. The edges are made up of plastic, but looks good because of a silver finish. The size of the phone is good and can be used easily with a single hand, however the body is too bulky to hold.
The front has three capacitive buttons at the bottom of the screen, while the front camera is at the top. The 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port is at the top edge while the volume rocker keys and power keys are at the right edge of the smartphone. Surprisingly at the bottom edge, there is a small speaker.
The rear panel has Intex logo at the middle. The rear camera and the flash at the top left side of the panel. The rear panel can be opened to access a removable Li-on battery with one full-size SIM card slot and one micro-SIM card slot, along with a microSD card slot.Display
Display
The Intex Aqua features a 5-inch HD display with 1,280 x 720 pixels resolution. The display is not so impressive, and colour reproduction could have been better. The viewing angles of the smartphone are pretty good but sometimes, one find it difficult to see it under direct sunlight. Bezels around the display are of a good width, not too thick which makes the design a minimal and interesting look.
Hardware and Software
The Intex Aqua Lions 3G is equipped with 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM. There is 8GB of onboard storage and 32GB of expandable microSD card slot. Out of 8GB, users only get 3.1GB of free memory which is really very less. The specification is not the best but is acceptable at the given price tag.
The performance of the smartphone is terms of multitasking and touch response is not up to mark. I felt that it lags a lot of times while switching the apps, opening or closing them or even while running any app. The gaming performance of the smartphone is poor, simple games run decent but the heavy apps and games like Asphalt 8 lagged a lot. First of all, it takes a lot of time than any other smartphone to open and load, and then the framerate drops a lot of times. The heating issue is very minimal and only happens while charging or running a lot of apps.
The benchmark performance of the smartphone is very low, the AnTuTu and Quadrant Standard scores are 15664 and 5127 respectively which is not that good. Even for a budget smartphone, they could have been a bit better. The music and video playback of the smartphone is good, the sound quality is a bit loud than other devices.
Talking about the software, it is running on android 5.1 Lollipop with its customized UI or theme. The company has added a bit of customization for users however, the theme is not so fascinating. It looks old and lacks in design. The smartphone comes with a lot of bloatware like 360 Life Security, Follow, Free Charge, Gujrat Lions, Voonik , OLX, News Hunt, Intex Store and lot more. Probably, that’s why the user is only getting 3GB of free space.
Camera
The rear camera is of 5-megapixels and is accompanied by LED flash. The camera is just for the sake of it, as it camera doesn’t take good images. I shot some pics and found out that it lacks in focus, brightness and clarity even in daylight. The low-light performance of the smartphone is also not good.
The front camera is of 2-megapixel and shoots acceptable images. The given camera app should have been better, it has to more customized or user-friendly to shoot images.
Battery and Connectivity
The Intex Aqua Lions 3G comes with 3,500mAh of massive battery and it surely gives a good running time to the users. I used the smartphone and it gives a full day battery backup with a single charge and on moderate usage, users can use it for more than one day.
The smartphone supports 3G on the first SIM only, while the second one supports 2G networks. The cellular connectivity of the smartphone is good. However, I faced call drop on the second SIM sometimes. But overall it has good calling facility.
Gizmo Verdict
At a price tag of Rs 4990, only the battery is good for the Intex Aqua Lions. The smartphone is available online as well as offline. However, there are better options than this at this price point like the Lenovo A2010 and Micromax Canvas Spark 3.
Hi, I bought an intex aqua lions 3g champagne, but I couldn’t find Sim1 slot. Could only see sim2 slot. Need your advise
It must be having Hybrid slot, One SIM and another can be used as Expandable memory or another SIM card