Flipkart launched the Billion Capture+ smartphone under its new Billion brand this month, in an aim to take on Xiaomi, Tenor and others. Flipkart also said that the smartphone is ‘Made in India’ and it is ‘Made for India’. It has a solid on-paper specifications that includes 5.5-inch 1080p 2.5D curved glass screen, Snapdragon 625, dual 13-megapixel rear cameras and support for fast charging at a competitive price tag of Rs. 10,999. Is it worth the price? Let us find out in the review.
Unboxing
We recently unboxed the Billion Capture+, check out the video below.
Box contents
- Flipkart Billion Capture+ smartphone in Mystic Black color
- 2-pin fast charger (5V-3A / 9V-2A / 12V-1.5A)
- Micro USB Cable
- Quick start guide and warranty information
Display, Hardware and Design
It has a 5.5-inch 2.5D curved glass screen with a resolution of 1080 by 1920 and a pixel density of about 401 ppi (pixels per inch). It also has Dragontrail glass protection. The display is bright, colors are vibrant and the sunlight legibility is good, but the display is a bit glossy so the screen is reflective outdoors when you view it at a certain angle. Since there are bezels, above and below the screen the screen-to-body ratio of the phone is about 71%.
There is an earpiece above the display. It has an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture. There is also a tiny notification LED on the far right that is hardly visible when it’s off. In addition to the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors, the phone also has gyroscope, but it misses magnetic sensor otherwise known as magnetometer.
The volume rockers and the power button are present on the right side, hybrid dual SIM slot is present on the left, 3.5mm audio jack is present on the top and the primary microphone, USB Type-C port and the loudspeaker grill are on the bottom. Even though there are two grills, only the right side houses a loudspeaker and the other one is just a microphone.
Like most other mid-range smartphone, this has a hybrid dual SIM slot that can accept two nano SIMs or a nano SIM and microSD. Even though the phone has up to 64GB storage, some people would still want to use more storage while using dual SIMs.
On the back there are dual 13-megapixel rear (RGB + Monochrome) cameras with dual-tone LED flash. There is a secondary microphone next to the camera and the fingerprint sensor is present below the camera module.
Even though most of the back is metal, the top and bottom parts of the back have plastic finish, where the important antennas are present. The metal back is not slippery even though it has smooth finish. It measures 153×76.5×8.5mm, similar to most smartphone with a 5.5-inch screen, but it weighs 176 grams since it has a huge 3500mAh battery. The phone also has support for fast charging and comes bundled with a quick charger.
You can see the Billion Capture+ branding, ‘Made in India’, ‘Made for India’ and Powered by tronX branding on the bottom part of the back. Overall the build quality of the phone is good.
Camera
Coming to the camera, it has dual 13-megapixel rear (RGB + Monochrome) cameras with f/2.0 aperture, 1.12μm pixel size, phase detection auto focus (PDAF) and dual-tone LED flash. There is an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture and 1.12micron pixel size.
The camera UI is simple with toggles for front or rear camera, HDR, Flash and option to choose different color effects (Mono, Sepia, Negative, Solarize, Posterize, Aqua, Emboss, Sketch and Neon), Panorama, Portrait, Auto, Supernight and Pro mode (to adjust ISO, Exposure and White Balance). Apart from Shutter button there is also a Video button.
Coming to the image quality the daylight shots were bright with good details, but the images look too bright and has boosted contrast and saturation like HDR. Some might not like seeing artificial colors in images. It also doesn’t capture details well. HDR shots again boost up the contrast and saturation. Macro shots were decent and it focuses quickly.
Portrait mode offers Depth-enabled shots were pretty good both with people and objects. It perfectly blurs out the part you need and lets you adjust the depth effect based on your preference. The depth mode takes a few seconds to save the image since it captures two shots for each cameras and combines them to create the depth effect. Even though the phone has a monochrome sensor, you can’t capture monochrome shots.
Low-light shots has noise, but there is Supernight mode that requires you to keep the phone steady. Still you don’t get much details and it has noise. Images with flash were good and the flash is not overpowering even in closeup shots. Thanks to dual-tone LED flash, skin tone is maintained in shots. The front-facing camera is decent for selfies and video chats and it has screen flash.
Check out some camera samples (Click the image to view the full resolution sample.)
It can record videos at maximum 4K UHD resolution at 30fps. Thanks to the secondary microphone on the back, audio is crisp. Check out the 4K Video Sample. Video quality is good, thanks to secondary microphone.
Software, UI and Apps
The phone runs on Android 7.1.2 (Nougat) which is stock with some additional apps. The company has promised Android Oreo update in future, but it did not confirm any time frame for it. It has Android Security patch for August 1, 2017. There is nothing to mention about the software in specific since it offers stock Android experience.
We have the 4GB RAM with 64GB storage variant. Out of 4GB of RAM you get about 3.6GB of usable RAM, out of which 2.4GB of RAM is free on boot with just the default apps running in the background. Out of 64GB of internal storage you get about 52.4GB of usable storage since OS and Apps take up about 5.8GB of storage. Since this runs on Nougat, you can use the microSD as the internal storage.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps and Google apps, the phone comes with Flipkart, Get Kotak 811, Myntra, OlaCabs, PhonePe, SonyLIV, tronX and Microsoft Apps – OneNote, PowerPoint, Skype and Word. You can uninstall these apps.
The phone is powered by Smartron’s tronX app that offers intelligent and personalized experiences right from deep partner integrations for travel (flights, cabs), entertainment (movies, music, events), e-commerce (shopping, budgeting, health), payment (utilities), financial (insurance, stock, retirement), news, and smart home experiences. It also comes with unlimited cloud storage through t.cloud from the Gallery. You get notification for tronX which is annoying.
Fingerprint Sensor
The fingerprint sensor is present on the back that is easy to access. It unlocks the phone even when the screen is off, so you don’t need to unlock the phone for the fingerprint recognition to work. It takes a second to unlock the phone. You can add up to 5 fingerprints and you can also use your fingerprint to authorize Google Play purchases.
Music Player and FM Radio
Google Play Music is the default music player for playback. It also has equalizer, powered by Snapdragon Audio+ and comes with FM Radio with recording. The FM Radio UI is a bit different and it doesn’t have option to jump to a station quickly. The speaker is present on the bottom part of the phone so audio doesn’t get muffled when the phone is placed on a flat surface. Speaker output is just average not loud enough in noise environment and audio quality through headset is decent.
Connectivity
It has Dual SIM option in the settings that lets you customize each SIM cards. It has 4G connectivity with support for 4G VoLTE for Reliance Jio. Both the SIM slots have 4G support, but you can use 4G on only one SIM at a time, while the other goes to 3G. Other connectivity features include, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 and GPS. It also has USB OTG (on-the-go) support.
Calling and Messaging
Since this is a dual SIM phone you get option to call or send SMS from either SIMs. It comes with Gboard as the default keyboard. We did not face any call drops or any other issues.
Performance and Benchmarks
It is powered by an Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 64-bit Mobile Platform that has eight ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at 2GHz per core. The performance is good. We tested several games, which were smooth and graphics is also good, thanks to the Adreno 506 GPU. 4GB of RAM is more than enough for multitasking by running several apps in the background. Similar to most phones, it gets a bit hot when using 4G or playing games for long, but it doesn’t get too hot to handle. Check out some synthetic benchmark scores below, in which it tops all the benchmarks.
Battery life
The phone packs a 3500mAh built-in battery. It lasted for more than a day on a single charge with average use and should last the whole day even with heavy use. You can enable battery saver to extend the battery life when the battery is low.
It achieved a One Charge Rating of 16 hours and 45 minutes which is good for a phone with a 3500mAh battery. Since the phone has support for fast charging it took 1 and 48 minutes to charge the phone from 0 to 100%, but it took about 39 minutes to charge it from 0 to 50%. Check out the complete set of battery life test results here.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 10,999, the Billion Capture+ smartphone from Flipkart is a decent smartphone. Even though the dual cameras offer good portrait with bokeh effect, single camera performance is just average, especially in low-light and daylight shots look artificial.
Those things aside, the phone offers good performance, brilliant battery life and also comes with support for fast charging that most smartphones in the price range lack. At the launch Flipkart said that it has 130 service centers in 125 cities and towns across India. Hope it will increase the number in future.
The Billion Capture+ is sold exclusively on Flipkart, but it goes out of stock often. To summarize, here are the pros and cons of the smartphone.
Pros
- Dual Camera setup is good for Portrait
- Good performance
- Brilliant battery life
- Fast charging
Cons
- Average camera performance, especially in low-light
- Loudspeaker output is low
- Hybrid dual SIM might not be preferred by everyone