Videocon Ultra50 Review

Videocon recently launched its smartphone called Ultra50. Videocon had introduced its first smartphone in 2009 and its product portfolio is not only limited to manufacturing smartphones, but also in the consumer market with the company making products such as TVs, refrigerators and also direct to home cable services via Videocon d2h.

One of the latest releases, the Ultra50 looks fit to fight and when we saw the device, our first impression was that the smartphone was glossy. Full shiny vibes!

Design and Build Quality

One of the first things we noticed about the Ultra50 was the body which looked well built and strong. The device is black with a gold bezel running across the sides of the smartphone. The right side housed the lock screen button and the volume rockers. The buttons were slightly flimsy, but did the job nevertheless. Situated on the top is the 3.5-mm headphone jack, and speakers and a charging port at the bottom (no type-C, why Videocon?).

The front face housed a single button which is also a fingerprint sensor underneath with two feather touch buttons on either side. The front facing camera is a 5-megapixel one with flash while the rear camera is a 13-megapixel AF shooter which comes with PDAF and a dual LED flash.

The Specifications

The specs department is where we were interested the most. The Ultra50 comes with 3GB of RAM mated to a 1.3GHz Quad-core processor. The storage capacity is capped at 32GB internally, while the expandable storage is capped at 64GB.

We threw a lot of RAM hungry apps at the Ultra50 and surprisingly it did well enough. Basic tasks were a breeze with decent app response time, all of which the smartphone performed without a hiccup.

The Software

The Ultra50 was running Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box. There is also a procedure to side-swipe which is similar to the Edge display for Samsung, only much less feature-ish. We put in contacts, or apps and that acted as a quick launch button for apps.

One issue we found with the software was the presence of a large amount of bloatware on the device. There were games, theme apps, banking apps, Opera mini, however, one can easily uninstall the apps which are not required.

Users can also run two WhatsApp accounts simultaneously because of dual-SIM nature of the device. The Ultra50 also has Gesture Control which includes drawing ‘M’ on the screen to play Music, ‘C’ for Camera, and ‘O’ for the flashlight.

Performance

The Ultra50 looked decent enough during heavy gaming, even though the processor is a 1.3GHz, the SoC is a quad-core 64-bit chip which means we could do some heavy gaming and daily usage easily at the same time.

The display is clear and sharp while the colours lean more on the warmer side. Videos ran smoothly and clearly. The speaker sound is clear and loud, and the headphones just gives an added experience.

The fingerprint sensor is a super sensitive capacitive sensor making it more accurate and responsive, and the smartphone comes pre-installed with SOS-Be Safe emergency response app.

The battery on the Ultra50 is a 3000mAh which was enough for us to get through a day and a half with normal to heavy usage which meant calls, internet, browsing, gaming, and the camera.

The Price

The Ultra50 is priced at Rs 9,990 which is the price lesser than a mid-range phone. For the specs that the Ultra50 offers, the price is more than justified. Videocon is also offering users 18-month warranty on phone, along with a 15 day replacement warranty.