Micromax Bharat 5 First Impressions: Big battery is the highlight feature

Micromax Bharat 5 First Impressions: Big battery is the highlight feature

Domestic handset maker Micromax has expanded its Bharat series by launching Bharat 5 smartphone in the Indian market. The smartphone has been priced at Rs 5,555 and targets first time smartphone users. The company has also tied up with India's second largest telecom operator Vodafone under which users will get 1GB Data pack and an additional 10 GB data every month for a total of 5 months.

The sale of the Micromax Bharat 5 smartphone will start on December 5, 2017, and it will be available only via offline stores across the country.

The new smartphones come with a massive 5,000 mAh battery that as per company delivers more than 2 days of backup and has a standby time of up to 3 weeks / 21 days. Bharat 5 supports 22 regional languages as well comes with the 4G VoLTE connectivity. The handset also comes equipped with OTG support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

We were present at the launch event and tested the handset for a brief period of time to find out what Micromax is offering this time. Here's what we think of the new device.

Design and Display: Plastic Back with 5.2-inch HD display

Micromax Bharat 5 is very comfortable to hold, thanks to its rounded corners. The new smartphone comes with a plastic back along with a 5 MP rear camera, LED Flash on the top and Micromax logo at the centre.

At the right side of the smartphone, you will find the volume rockers and power button, while the hybrid SIM card slot is positioned on the left side. The 3.5mm headphone jack is placed at the top, while micro USB port is at the bottom.

Micromax Bharat 5 comes with a 5.2 inches full HD screen with 2.5D cover glass.

Overall the smartphone looks quite good and feels comfortable to hold, despite carrying a large battery.

Talking about the 5.2-inch HD display, it offers a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels.

The display seemed quite responsive, decent and viewing angles were also good. However, we will evaluate the screen's outdoor performance while reviewing the handset in the coming week.

Camera: 5 MP rear camera and 5MP selfie along with LED Flash

The new smartphone has 5- megapixel rear camera plus the 5-megapixel front camera for selfie lovers along with LED flashlight to help you capture images in low-light conditions.

The camera app also has Beauty mode, FaceCute Mode, Bokeh Mode and HDR Mode.

We tested both the cameras for a brief period and found that the shots showed decent detailing on the 5.2-inch screen, but we will evaluate this entry level handset's imaging abilities in the coming week during our detialed camera review of Bharat 5 on GIZBOT.

Processor and RAM: MediaTek processor and 1 GB RAM

The smartphone is powered by 1.6GHz quad-core MediaTek processor paired with 1GB of RAM, now this can be a dealbreaker as competitors such as Xiaomi's Redmi 5A offers 2GB RAM + 16GB storage and a Snapdragon CPU at the price of Rs 4,999 for the first five million units, post which it will be available for Rs 5,999.

In this way, Xiaomi offers much better specifications and a better camera than the Micromax Bharat 5 handset.

The smartphone comes with 16GB storage space which can be further expanded up to 64GB through a microSD card.

During my short span with the smartphone i did not face any delay while opening applicatios and navigating through the user interface, however, we will give our final verdict after reviewing the handset.

Battery and Software: Massive 5,000 mAh battery and Android (Nougat)

The most impressive thing about this smartphone is its massive 5,000 mAh battery unit that as per Micromax runs for more than 2 days and has a standby time of up to 3 weeks / 21 days.

We will evaluate such claims while reviewing the handset.

On the software front, Bharat 5 comes with the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. Interestingly, Nougat allows users to treat SD card memory also as system memory.

Verdict

Bharat 5 seems like a decent budget smartphone with big battery and design as its highlight features. We didn't face any major issue with the smartphone in our brief usage. However, there is tough competition with smartphones like Xiaomi Redmi 5A.

Stay tuned on GIZBOT for our comprehensive review of Micromax Bharat 5.