Wammy One review: An average Android smartphone

Wickedleak is a brand name that might not ring a bell immediately. However, they have been manufacturing smartphones in the Indian market for more than two years now. With competitively priced smartphones and equally good hardware within, Wickedleak caters to the budget market. This time, they have introduced another smartphone, the Wammy One, which has a premium look and a powerful hardware under the hood. The Wammy One was with us for a while and here is what we have to say about it.

The Wickedleak Wammy One is a sturdily built smartphone. The One has a premium look, and sports a dual-tone exterior. Sadly, there is no branding on the front panel, which is a bit of a put off. The rear panel, though, has a Wickedleak logo post-printed on it. The front panel is made of a Dragontrail glass, protecting the OGS display panel below. The display glass is pre-installed with a screen protector, but it is easily tarnished with visible fingerprints. The front panel features the capacitive buttons for Home, Menu and Back on the bottom, along with the earpiece and front camera on the top. The volume rocker and power button are placed on the left side of the handset, while the microUSB and headphone jack are available on the top. The Wammy One bundles along a flipcase in the box, and when used, it gets a bit difficult to access the power and volume buttons since the spine of the flipcase covers the area. The flipcase does not feature a magnetic lock/unlock function, which could have benefited the user. Also the flipcase sports the Wickedleak logo, which was wiped away within just two days of usage. Hopefully, Wickedleak pays attention to the branding in a more permanent way. The smartphone also bundles along a plastic back case for additional protection to the rear panel.

Moving on to the rear panel, which is made of ABS plastic, sports a large speaker grill on the bottom and the rear camera and flash are placed towards the top-left. Below the rear panel is the battery housing with the microSD card slot and the two SIM card slots. The Wammy One measures 7.7mm in thickness. The premium look and build of the Wammy One is definitely a welcoming feature from Wickedleak, but the packaging and the branding logos around the place are definitely some areas that the company needs to concentrate on.

The Wammy One features a 5-inch IPS OGS display with a resolution of just 540x960 pixels. It is strange that Wickedleak is moving back to a non-HD display while the rest of the industry is heading towards 2K displays and beyond. The OGS display is protected by a Dragontrail glass and comes preinstalled with a screen protector. Under the hood is a powerful Mediatek MT6592 chipset, which features an 8-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz each and supplied with 1GB of RAM. The internal storage provided is 8GB, of which, the user available capacity is 5.68GB.

The Wammy One provides a simple 8MP camera with an LED flash on the rear and also a 5MP front-facing camera. Connectivity options are as similar to other smartphones in the market—Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G and sensors. The smartphone is powered using a 2800 mAh battery can the manufacturer states that the One can give you an average talk time of 9 hours and around 11 hours of standby time. The Wammy One is loaded with Android KitKat, and the manufacturer states that it is upgradable to Android Lollipop in due course of time. Wickedleak’s Wammy One is available in two colours (white and black) and priced at Rs 8,490.

The Wammy One has a stock Android user interface. However, there are some tweaks that have been added to make usability a little more pleasurable. Enable the gestures from the settings and you can simply unlock the phone by double tapping on the screen or operate certain functions and applications with gestures, even before unlocking the smartphone. Though these features are great, there could be a certain amount of battery drain when enabling the features, since the processor is constantly listening to the display for gesture inputs. Moving ahead, the user interface, being stock, gives you ample amount of space for installing additional applications, unlike other smartphone manufacturers, which load bloatware that cannot be uninstalled. We did find the Wammy One to give out an eerie woman speaking the brand name, out loud, when the smartphone is booted. You cannot turn off the boot audio unless you reduce the volume to the lowest before switching off the handset.

On the performance front, the Wammy One is no different from any regular 8-core Mediatek-powered smartphone. There was no visible lag or sluggishness in the user interface. The stock Android UI adds to the sombre feel and you can use your own choice of an Android home launcher to suit your preference.

Multimedia and videos play great, with vibrant colours and a good level of brightness and contrast —thanks to the OGS and IPS display panel. However, an HD display panel would have added value to the product. The onboard mono speaker is loud, but a bit shrilly and lacks the perfect audio quality you would want to hear—you would need to lower the volume or switch to earphones to enjoy casual videos and music. The bundled earphones are in-ear type and the quality of the headset is inferior. The audio quality of the earphones is also below average and you would definitely need a decent pair of earphones to enjoy good music on the go.

The 8MP rear camera is average, but it can take quick shots altogether. The performance of the camera is not as expected, but since it is just an 8MP camera, one cannot expect too much from it. Pictures shot in broad daylight are good enough, but once you zoom in a bit, you can see the grainy images immediately. Images in broad daylight also tend to overexpose brightly lit areas. Using HDR could solve the picture issues, but moving subjects are not recommended with HDR mode. The camera performs well in terms of colour reproduction. However, if you are considering the smartphone for clicking good pictures, you should only expect it to be used for casual photography. The front camera has a 5MP sensor, but its performance is not up to the mark. Pictures taken from the front camera are good enough, but not as one would expect from a 5MP camera made for selfie pictures.

Above: Picture shot in HDR mode.

The Wickedleak Wammy One is a decent smartphone for a first time Android user. Priced at Rs 8,490, the Wammy One is slightly overpriced when compared to other smartphone brands in the market, especially compared to what Xiaomi has in the offering. The Wammy One definitely sports a premium look, which would help boost its sales a bit, but the average performance could be a let down for some. Wickedleak could reconsider the pricing of the Wammy One, especially when rival brands have a bit more to offer in the similar price bracket. Overall, the Wammy One is a decent smartphone if your budget is around Rs 8,500, but you could also consider other brands before finalising your decision on this one.