InFocus Bingo 21 review: Meant for the selfie addicts

Targeting the young users, the US-based tech company InFocus, launched the ‘Bingo’ series of smartphones. Recently, it announced the launch of this budget friendly smartphone in India as well. As compared to various other smartphones available, the InFocus Bingo 21 packs a good deal for its humble price tag.

We had a chance for a hand-on experience with the InFocus Bingo 21, and here is what we drew out of the smartphone’s experience.

The InFocus Bingo 21 sports a plastic textured chassis. In spite of the material of the built, the phone feels quite sturdy and tough. Along the edges, it sports a bright orange plastic, which adds a little vibrancy to the phone. The smartphone feels good to hold and touch, and has a good one hand usability. Its display is pretty glossy and it easily attracts fingerprints and smudges. The Bingo 21 is 10.82mm thick and weighs about 143 gm.

The smartphone sports a 4.5-inch Full Wide Video Graphics Array display, with a resolution of 854x480 pixels. The front panel features an earpiece, a notification LED, and a 5MP secondary camera with LED flash and self-timer, at the top, with the InFocus logo placed towards the bottom of the screen. The menu and function touch buttons are integrated within the smartphone’s screen.

On the left edge, the Bingo 21 features the volume rocker and the power button, while a 3.5mm audio jack and the charging port sit at the bottom edge. At the rear panel, the InFocus sports an 8MP primary camera, with auto focus and LED flash.

Although the smartphone doesn’t weigh very light, it has a good grip and is comfortable to use, and has scored decently on the ergonomics test.

Under the hood, the InFocus Bingo 21 is powered by a 1.5GHz quad-core Shark L (SC9830) processor, with 2GB of RAM and an internal storage of 8GB, which is expandable up to 32GB using a microSD card. The connectivity options include Bluetooth v4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, micro USB connector, dual SIM option, one of which enable 4G connectivity. The Bingo 21 is fuelled by a 2,300mAh battery, which easily lasts 24 hours, however, it’s runtime is affected by the kind of usage on the smartphone.

Running on Android Lollipop 5.1 operating system, the smartphone has a very smooth and fluid user interface, with responsive touch and transition. We could swap between apps and tabs without experience any lag.

The display of the smartphone has a great viewing angle too, and the display’s legibility in bright sunlight is pretty good—clear enough to read even in bright sunlight.

Moving to the camera, which is the USP of the smartphone, the Bingo 21 targets the younger audience with an impressive front facing camera. It sports a 5MP camera in the front, which is accompanied by an LED flash and a self-timer. At the rear end, it features an 8MP primary camera with f/2.2 aperture autofocus, and an LED flash placed right next to it. Along with that, it also sports functions like geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, HDR and panorama.

The pictures clicked by Bingo 21 are just about decent with a lack of sharpness and detail. The front camera caters to the selfie addicts, and the LED flash in the front adds to all the fun. Altogether the camera of the smartphone is quite modest.

Below are a few shots taken from the rear camera, for your reference, in order for you to judge the performance of the camera.

Gathering our final thoughts, we say that, with the asking price of Rs 5,499, the InFocus Bingo 21 is quite the deal. In terms of its camera and core performance, Bingo 21 would supersede most smartphones that are priced in the similar range. We recommend it especially for the younger crowd, as its colourful ergonomics and user interface would much more appeal to a younger user.