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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  InFocus M350 review: Simple but clever design
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InFocus M350 review: Simple but clever design

The dual-camera phone has a dependable battery and gives lag-free performance

The M350 comes with an 8-megapxiel (MP) camera, both front and back.Premium
The M350 comes with an 8-megapxiel (MP) camera, both front and back.

InFocus is a relatively new name in the Indian smartphone market, but the American company already has three phones in the line-up—the M2, the M330 and the newest addition, the M350, priced at an affordable 7,999. But the phone will face tough competition from rivals like Lenovo A6000 Plus ( 7,499) and Motorola Moto E 4G ( 7,499).

Simple but handy to use

What is impressive about the InFocus M350 is the way it has been designed. Thinner edges mask the phone’s thickness well and the curved back fits naturally into the palm. The metal frame with matte plastic finish on the sides looks good. The phone weighs 146g and is 10.6mm thick, but it doesn’t look chunky or feel heavy when you use it. The M350 makes up for its simple looks with subtle design changes that enhance user comfort.

Crisp and colourful display

The M350 has a 5-inch IPS (in-plane switching) display, which packs a screen resolution of 1,280x720 pixels. It reproduces colours well and minimizes reflections. Irrespective of whether you are reading something or watching a video, these two elements make a lot of positive difference. There is also a setting that allows the user to adjust the colour temperature on the screen—natural, warm and cool, depending on whether you prefer richer or more toned-down colours. This feature is only available in the Huawei Honor 4C ( 8,999) and the Microsoft Lumia 540 ( 9,999 on Flipkart).

Impressive pair of cameras

The M350 comes with an 8-megapxiel (MP) camera with autofocus and LED flash. It clicks good photographs when the ambient lighting is adequate, such as outdoors during the day or in a brightly lit room. However, a few times it did take several taps on the screen for the camera to focus properly. The phone has an 8-MP camera on the front as well, which is good for selfies and video calls.

Smooth performance, ample storage

InFocus has packed in a MediaTek MT6752 quad-core 64-bit processor, and is paired with 2 GB RAM. This combination proved powerful enough for a lag-free performance most of the time, which involved playing back HD movies and games. The phone doesn’t heat up during gaming, using the camera or Web browsing.

InFocus has included 4G capabilities in the M350, which should serve well as an element of future-proofing. There is 16 GB internal storage too with a microSD slot, while most rivals end up with 8 GB storage.

Gives a day’s backup with ease

The M350 is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery, which lasted a full day easily with reading, Web browsing, playing games for 30 minutes and watching movies.

What did not work

The phone runs on the older Android 4.4 (KitKat), with a customized user interface (UI) over it. It is designed on similar lines as Xiaomi’s MIUI or Huawei’s Emotion UI—there is no separate app drawer and all the apps show on the various home screens itself. However, it does not feel as smooth and sophisticated as the MIUI or the Emotion UI. We did notice sluggishness with some of this interface’s transition elements at times.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhijit Ahaskar
Abhijit writes on tech policy, gaming, security, AI, robotics, electronics and startups. He has been in the media industry for over 12 years.
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Published: 02 Jul 2015, 03:32 PM IST
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