Buying a smartphone nowadays is an extremely difficult task. You do have several choices in every price range, but that also means you have to decide which model is best suited for your daily needs. Some come with impressive battery lives, while others have better cameras than the rest in the same price range. The most popular price range, at least for the Indian market, is definitely somewhere around the 10k range. Recently, CENTRiC has launched a new smartphone CENTRiC A1 in the Indian market. So let’s get into the review and find out how it stands out among the rest.
Display
The phone comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD LTPS LCD display. The screen is bright even under direct sunlight with a wide range of vivid colors, along with nice viewing angles. Overall, one can’t expect anything more from the display in this price range.
Also Read: Samsung Gear Sport Smartwatch – Review
Hardware
The phone is powered by octa-core Snapdragon 430 processor running at 1.4 GHz, 3 GB RAM, and Adreno 505 GPU. It also comes with a fingerprint sensor in the back. The hardware is more than capable of running even the heaviest games without any lag whatsoever.
Software
CENTRiC A1 is running Android 7.1 Nougat. Except for a few pre-installed apps, the entire experience is akin to stock Android. You can expect a few lags here and there, but it won’t affect your day to day experience.
Camera
This smartphone is equipped with a 13 MP back camera with LED flash, and a front facing 8 MP camera. There is a flash at the front as well, in case you are taking selfies in the dark. The inbuilt camera app is loaded with several features including HDR, various modes such as sunset, portrait, indoor and night modes. In case you want more fine-grained control, you can also change the ISO, white balance, exposure manually. The camera itself works great outdoors, but there is a tendency to oversaturate the photographs. Hopefully, this is just a bug with the camera software and will get fixed by an update in the future.
Coming to video, it’s definitely on par with most other smartphones in this range. It can record full HD videos with the back camera, and image stabilization is extremely useful in making the videos less shaky. The camera is able to change its focus extremely fast as well, an added benefit while recording videos.
Overall, the camera works fine, but a few improvements in the software part can definitely improve the quality of photographs.
Battery
The phone packs a 3,000 mAh battery and is able to provide 15 to 18 hours of backup even with the reduced battery capacity. So it will easily last an entire day even for heavy users. The phone also comes with Quick Charge 3.0 for fast charging. You can fully charge the smartphone in just 1.5 hours.
Comparison
|
Features |
CENTRiC A1 |
Lava Iris X5 4G |
OPPO A37f |
|
OS |
Android 7.1 Nougat |
Android Lollipop 5.1 |
Android Lollipop 5.1 |
|
Processor |
1.4 GHz Octa Core Snapdragon 430 |
1.3 GHz Quad-Core MediaTek processor |
1.2 GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon processor |
|
RAM |
3 GB |
2 GB |
2 GB |
|
Camera |
13 MP back camera, 8 MP on front with LED flash on both sides and wide-angle lens |
13 MP rear camera, with an 8 MP front camera, but no front flash |
8 MP rear camera, 16 MP front camera, no flash on front |
|
Battery |
3000 mAh |
2500 mAh |
2630 mAh |
|
Price |
9,290 INR |
10,199 INR |
10,000 INR |
It is evident from the above chart that the CENTRiC A1’s features are much better compared to other smartphones in the same price range. It’s 1.4 GHz Octa Core processor is the best available at this price range, along with 3 GB RAM which is more than enough even for heavy gamers.
Its 3000 mAh battery is standard at this price but coupled with excellent software optimizations and quick charging, it puts it at the top in this category. The camera hardware is more than capable enough to take excellent photographs, and hopefully, the software will catch up soon enough with one or two updates.
On top of that, you have Android Nougat 7.1 which will be updated to Android Oreo 8.0, the latest version of Android, pretty soon and considering that CENTRiC A1 is nothing short of the perfect smartphone in the 10k range.
Summary
Overall, CENTRiC A1 is one of the best smartphones currently available in the 10k price range. The specifications are on par with the top smartphones. Hopefully, a few software updates will improve the experience even more. So if you are looking to buy a smartphone in this range, CENTRiC A1 is highly recommended.
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