InFocus Vision 3 Pro review: Good battery life and a large display on budget

In about two years Xiaomi has outshined most of its competition with a string of bang-for-buck smartphones in the budget segment. And while they may not be alone, Huawei's sub-brand Honor is also creeping up in this space to make a strong presence in India. The dominance of Chinese brands has built a tough road ahead for other smartphone brands to grab a share of the budget segment pie.

American-based smartphone company InFocus made its debut on Indian shores some time back, but hasn't gained the foothold in the Indian market yet. The company had recently added one more smartphone to the fray with the Vision 3 Pro. It's an incremental update to the Vision 3, launched back in December 2017. The InFocus Vision 3 sported a good value for money with the demands of a larger 18:9 display, dual rear camera setup, and a 4000mAh battery for just Rs 6,999. However, the performance wasn't up to the mark as compared to rivals in the same price bracket.

The updated Vision 3 Pro faces a tough competition with the recently launched Redmi Note 5 and Honor 9 Lite that demands a tad more than this price. With the price starting at Rs 10,999, the Vision 3 Pro brings in minor changes as compared to its predecessor. It brings in a larger 18:9 display, a slightly better camera and a little more RAM and storage. However, do these factors make the InFocus Vision 3 Pro worth investing on? Let's find out.

Design, Build:

The InFocus Vision 3 Pro looks almost identical to its predecessor. The Pro gets a slightly classier design compared to its older sibling, which makes it look fairly modern. The tad changes in aesthetics are noticeable — the speaker moves from the rear to the bottom and a chrome band bordering the rear panel and the edge plastics. The smartphone features a unibody design as usual with a metal rear panel bordered by plastic edges on the top and bottom. The phone has a sturdy build and a decent grip - thanks to the rounded edges and corners. However, it does tend to get a little slippery at times.

InFocus has equipped an 18:9 display on this variant too, coming in at an HD+ (720x1440 pixels) resolution on a 5.7-inch panel. The screen has a decent level of brightness and produces good colours and viewing angles. The speaker, micro-USB port, and primary microphone take their places at the bottom, while the 3.5mm headphone jack resides on the top edge.

As mentioned earlier, the rear panel is pretty much similar to Vision 3. It features a dual camera setup, an LED flash and a fingerprint sensor that is symmetrically placed in the centre.

Specifications, Performance:

The Vision 3 Pro is built around a MediaTek MT6750 octa-core chipset sporting 8 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.5GHz. It is aided by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage with options for expansion. It's disappointing to see InFocus still using the old Android 7.0 Nougat while rivals are adopting Oreo out-of-the-box. A custom skin dubbed as Smile UX caters to the user interface. While trying to mimic a stock Android interface, the UI does not sport much customisation options apart from a few gestures and skins. The UI also comes along with a few bloatware that includes Amazon shopping and Prime apps, UC news and UC Browser apps, Freeshare and a few unwanted ones, which could have been left as optional. Overall, InFocus has merely upgraded the internals.

The smartphone works well for casual daily tasks. With 4GB of RAM, the phone manages to multitask pretty well. We found usage to be smooth enough and did not observe lag or stutter. However, some minor lags were witnessed and the signs of stress noticed when loading a few heavier apps such as games and alike.

Simply put, this phone is not meant for gaming, though casual games run smoothly and can be retained. Extended gaming sessions of heavy duty games can work, but expect a choppy performance.

Camera:

The Vision 3 Pro also boasts of a 13MP + 8MP dual camera setup on the rear and clubs along a single LED flash. The rear cameras on the Vision 3 Pro are not up to the mark and fails the expectation of a smooth delivery. Probably, an area where most budget smartphones usually stumble. However, the camera quality seems improved over the Vision 3. The sensor is able to capture photos with better details, but lacks proper sharpness when you zoom in to inspect the results. Colours are vibrant, but we did get some mixed results like washed out results in broad sunlight.

Images snapped in daylight turn out to be good. Move on to shaded areas and noise tends to intrude. The camera also seems a bit sluggish, especially in the autofocus area. It takes quite a while to lock the focus on a subject. Especially when your subject is very close, we ended up tapping multiple times to focus on the area we needed. Macro shots taken in good lighting condition come out well though, but we had to keep calm while trying to focus on the subject.

In low-lighting, the camera struggles to get sharper images. Grainy images are well noticeable at most times. Nighttime photos had relatively more noise and also lost out in terms of details.

The 13MP selfie camera delivers decent photos which can be used for social media — no much complaints here. All in all, the Vision 3 Pro is just a tad better than its predecessor. Check out some images snapped from the rear camera below.

Battery:

The InFocus Vision 3 Pro hosts a similar battery to that on the predecessor. The battery life, as one would expect from a 4000mAh power pack, is definitely good. The smartphone easily manages to deliver an entire day's worth of usage on a single charge. The Vision 3 Pro can also last an average of 1.5 days, depending on the usage. It's  a good phone for those seeking a longer battery life with casual usage for everyday apps.

Verdict:

The InFocus Vision 3 Pro doesn't come out as a competent all-rounder. The device offers better specifications over the Vision 3, but it probably fails to deliver in comparison to its Snapdragon rivals. A long running battery life and a large display is probably the only redeeming quality of this smartphone. The dual cameras are good enough for casual photography, but don't expect it to do much. At Rs 10,999, the smartphone does seem a bit pricey as competition phones with similar price tags are able to offer a better performance in comparison.

Also read: InFocus Vision 3 Review: Bezel-less and dual camera on a budget price

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.