Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsThe Perfect midrange phone, comes with a lot of bugs
Reviewed in India on 17 March 2024
Brought this for 11.7k after exchanging Realme 9 SE+Bank offer.
First impression after using for 1 day. I'll start with the problems as that's all you care about if you're thinking of buying this.
Problems :
1) The phone has a lot of bugs.
Screen freezes randomly
Notifications bar, sometimes doesn't come down when you try to pull it down. Its Fixed after restarting. But in the last 6 hours , it happened 3 times.
The Keyboard doesn't open sometimes .W
hen you click to type something, the keyboard doesn't open.Its fixed if you lock and unlock the phone. But it's a problem regardless.
Tried switching between Gboard and other keyboards. Still doesn't fix the issue.
The phone comes with a pre setting , where long pressing the power button opens Google assistant instead of powering off. Its not an issue. You can change it in the settings.
In my case , i had this problem along with the " notification bar not working" issue. Means I can't shut the phone down. The power off button is in the notifications bar.
Initially I thought I had to wait till the power goes off, 😞.
My phone froze and i couldn't even force it to shut down.
Found online that i had to press the volume down and power button to force restart it.
So change the Powerbutton to power off immediately.
2) Overheating.
Phone has mild Overheating issue.
I am not a gamer.
After setting up the phone, initially Overheating is expected for sometime.
But even after 6 hours of just watching YouTube videos , the phone was a bit too warm to touch. Not too much. But I am sure gamers will complain about the heating.
Maybe it will get optimised over night. I will update accordingly
3) Icons are too big. Even in the smallest settings I feel it's too big.
Its probably a personal problem, as I switched from Realme which gives complete customisation of icons.
4) Bloatware
I can understand the usual blaotwares like hot apps and hot games which come preloaded. But i didn't expect the Jovi home app (shortcut app for home screen) to be a permanent thing in the phone.
The icon for that is permanently fixed on the notification bar. Its placement is where usually settings icon should be and it's annoying.
Can't remove it , nor disable the app internally.
Most of these problems might get fixed in the first update. Let's see.
Pros
1)The UI is extremely smooth.
The animations are perfect. Smooth as butter.
If you want the phone to feel even more snappy, turn off all animations and it feels as fast as lightning.
The fingerprint senser and unlocking is extremely smooth and snappy.
2) Screen is great. The colors and brightness makes a great viewing experience.
3)The battery lasts a day, Just as advertised.
Almost 6 hours of YouTube, an hour of Browsing, 3 hours of Social media, and some 3 hours of Streaming and the battery was 17 percent left down from a 100.(Power saving mode was on (after 30 percent). refresh rate set to 60).
12 hours of moderate use. Enough to last a day. Didn't try gaming yet tho.
0 to 100 , Charging takes around 45 minutes.
#Overheating during charging is there. But that's common in all fast charging phones
Overall, great choice if you can wait for the software updates to fix the issues.
I don't think there is a better choice for budget gamers other than this (below 20000).