In India local companies are launching more and more Quad-Core phones in entry level price, competition is increasing day-by-day, earlier Micromax has launched its Canvas HD, then Karbonn S1 Titanium hit market and now we had Zen Ultrafone 701HD.
Its also a quad-core processor phone from Zen which comes with 5 inch of display screen, build quality is good and display is very bright even in sun light you can easily use this phone.
Packing :-
Packing of this phone is very nice and unique, we totally liked it very much, when you open then box you will find your Zen Ultrafone 701HD.
One thing which you will notice when you pick up your phone is that it comes with Screen Guard right out of the box, seriously I hadn’t seen this on any other phone, its very good as you don’t have to go to shop and spend extra bucks.
We also liked when you look inside box your then you will find another back cover for your phone, a flip cover which is now in trend.
Other things in box are battery, in-ear headphone which looks quite good, a charger and USB cable for charging and data sync.
Packing Rating :- 5/5
Design :-
Zen has nicely design this phone, it follows the same design which can be seen in other large screen phone aka phablets follow.
It is rectangular in shape with round edges, at back it has some plastics body with mate finish which allows you to hold more firmly and nicely by making good grip.
It has 5 inch display screen with 3 touch sensitive Android buttons (Menu, Home and Back) below screen, it has 3.2 MP camera at front for video calling, just next to camera you will find sensors, then earpiece and LED notification light.
At right you will find Power/ Lock Key, at left you will find Volume Rockers, it has nothing at bottom and at top you will find a 3.5 MM Audio Jack and Micro USB port.
At back it has a rubberized mate finish which gives premium, it also has 8 MP camera with LED flash and there are speakers at the bottom of the phone.
There is Zen and Ultrafone branding also at back, its an dual SIM phone and you need to remove back cover to insert SIM and Memory card.
Design Rating :- 4.5/5
Camera :-
This phone comes with 8 MP autofocus camera at back with LED flash, we tested camera in day light and look some photos with it which you can find below ;-
In day light picture are very nice and good, but when there is low light then it does not produce good results despite of having LED flash. We also took some pictures in dark and below are results, pictures in dark are not so much good but yes they are above average.
This phone can shot HD videos at 30 FPS, it can also shot full HD videos of 1080p but frame per second will be lesser and quality also become lesser.
This camera uses EIS or Electronic Image Stabilization to minimize the distortion cause by your shaky hand while shooting video. Camera save videos in outdated 3GP format, it should save MP4 or so.
Phone comes with camera apps like panorama, capture photos in HDR, Multi angle view and more.
It also comes with settings like face Detection, Color effects, White Balance, ISO, Self Timer and much more. This phone also comes with Continuous Shot which can shot upto 99 pictures.
Front camera also takes very good photos and its very nice for video calling. Take a look at sample video of front and back camera below :-
Camera Rating :- 3.5/5
Software :-
On Software front it runs on latest flavor of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, Its interesting that local companies are offering Android 4.2 but some big companies like Samsung and HTC are still sticking with Android 4.1.
There are 5 customized lock screen on which you can pin your favorite apps shortcuts or widgets, It has clean and minimal notification tray, there is also a setting button on notification menu, along with expandable notification menu, you can also directly access Expandable Notification with 2 finger pull down gesture.
On expandable notification window you will find same option which you can see in any other Android phone like Airplane Mode, Battery status, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Data connection, Data usage, Audio Profiles, Brightness, screen backlight Timeout and Auto Rotation.
You can also wirelessly mirror the phone’s display with HDMI enabled device with a wireless display adapter.
We liked that phone’s button wont light up in dark until you press them, if you long press Home Button then you will find Task manager with which you can close background apps.
This phones comes pre-loaded with some nice apps like ColrNote, FileExplorer, Emoze, Flash Light, Saavn, Skype, ToDo app, TOI News app, MX Player , Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Zen’s own app store.
Software Rating 4/5
Battery :-
It comes with 2,000 mAh battery which can last you for a day only with average usage. We like too mention that while our test we configured 5 eMail accounts with push notification, made calls for 2-3 hours, used WhatsApp, watched videos and listen music too.
Battery Rating :- 3/5
Performance :-
This phone is powered by 1.2GHz Mediatek MT6589 quad-core processor along with 1 GB of RAM and PowerVR SGX 544MP chip for processing graphics.
While our usage all apps work smoothly, we played heavy games like Temple Run and it works very awesomely thanks to Quad-Core processor. We didn’t experience any lags while surfing web, switching between apps or on launching apps.
We played both HD and Full HD videos on it and it played very nicely, it do support Avi and Mov formats. Audio quality is also very decent.
Performance Rating :- 4.5/5
Final Verdict :- Zen Ultrafone 701HD is one of the best phone in this price range (Rs. 12,000), the biggest competitor of it is Micromax Canvas HD, but this phone has got some of specification little above then Canvas HD
If you are not a brand conscious and want a powerful phone in 10k-12K budget then we would recommend you to take a look over this phone.
Pros :-
- Comes with latest Android stock, Android 4.2
- Nice build quality
- Nice price tag
- Bright display
- Nice performance
Cons :-
- Battery could be more powerful
- Camera could be good
Overall Rating :- 4/5
Reviewed by Rahul Sharma on June 09 2013
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