InFocus, the American smartphone brand has been trying to make inroads into the Indian smartphone market which is already crowded with Chinese players. InFocus has had some good success with budget smartphones including the M2 and also few mid range offerings. The company is looking to drive sales in the 10k price point which is already dominated with players like K3 Note, Zenfone 2 Laser, Coolpad Note 3 and more.
The InFocus M680 is the new offering from company which has got some stunning looks with an all metal body, slim design and good specs to compete in this segment. So does the M680 live up to the expectations? Let’s find out in this detailed review.
Related Reading: InFocus M680 Unboxing
Design and Build:
The design is one of the highlights of the phone and this is even projected by the company in the commercials. The InFocus M680 is an all metal device which comes with a premium finishing. At 7.6mm and 158gms, it is one of those devices, even though it has a 5.5 inch display it is easy to hold and use. The all-metal body feels premium in design and looks impressive for a phone in 10k price.
The device comes with rounded corners and a slightly curved rear panel. There are some areas in the device which reminds you of the iPhone 6S Plus. The power button and SIM tray is located on the right side while the volume keys are placed on the left. The top houses the audio jack and the secondary microphone. The bottom section has speaker grill and micro USB charging slot. The rear panel has 13MP camera, LED flash and InFocus logo. The front panel houses the 13MP camera, 5.5 inch Full HD display and three capacitive buttons. The bezels of the device are pretty slim and overall the device gives a good feel while using. It is definitely one of the better-designed devices in this price point.
Display:
InFocus M680 sports a 5.5 inch Full HD display (1920 X 1080p) with 401PPI. The display looks pretty vibrant and sharp. It also offers decent viewing angles and the colors are very good on the display. The sunlight readability was also acceptable. The touch response was again good, but the display attracts a lot of fingerprints. Sadly the three capacitive touch buttons are not backlit and there is also no haptic feedback on them. It does need some time to get used to the slightly inaccurate navigational buttons.
Software:
On the software side, the M680 is powered by InLife OS on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop. This is the custom UI from the company and it does have a different look and feel although there are lot of resemblance with stock experience. The company has announced that Android 6.0 update will be rolled out for the device.
The notification center is a custom one with quick toggles and they can also be rearranged. The home screen comes with app drawer and there are some added features included. The icons looks good and the UI also offers some transitional effects.
The settings panel also has a customized look. The home screen can also be customized with application and desktop page effects. It also comes with a handful of motion gestures which can be used to control calls, put the phone to silent and more.
There are some useful tools like recorder, calculator, Radio, App traffic control, backup tool and other apps. It also comes with a file manager app. Unlike the Chinese counterparts, the phone does not have a theme manager.
Performance:
The M680 is powered by 1.3Ghz Mediatek MT6753 Octa-core 64 bit processor with 2GB RAM. The Octa core chipset is one of the popular ones in mid range phone and the performance is decent on the device. If you are casual user, you wouldn’t have any issues with the performance of the device. But for a heavy user you will definitely see quite a lot of lags and hiccups. Even when you play heavy graphic rich games you would see this issue. Since the phone comes with a metal body, it does heat up in prolonged usage and also when gaming.
Multi-tasking was decent on the device and switching between apps was pretty smooth. The call quality on the phone is very good, but we did encounter some one sided calls which went away after the reboot. The speaker performance was also decent for a mid range phone.
The phone also supports 4G LTE in India.
The device comes with 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded to 64GB if needed using the hybrid SIM card slot. The storage available on the first boot was around 9.5GB. Overall, we feel that InFocus could have improved the performance with a 3GB RAM.
Camera:
InFocus M680 comes with 13MP cameras for front and rear. The rear camera also features an LED flash. Both the front and rear cameras have auto focus enabled. The camera app has nothing new to offer and it is a slightly tuned version of the default camera app on most Mediatek powered devices. The app offers all basic feature and comes with option to toggle filters.
The company has also included few modes like Face Beauty, Motion track, Live Photo and Panorama.
Talking about the camera quality, the InFocus M680 will not disappoint you if you are looking for a good camera in this price point. The 13MP camera performs pretty well in daylight shots and exhibits great clarity and colors in the photos. The sharpness levels are also impressive. The low light photos also came out decent and the noise levels were pretty low considering this is a budget smartphone. The macro or close up captures were impressive.
If you are a selfie lover, InFocus M680 is the phone for you with auto focus. The front camera works pretty well and is one of the best selfie camera in this price. The phone also supports 1080p video recording and the quality was decent. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
InFocus M680 comes with a 2600mAh battery and we feel the capacity should have been around the 3000mAh considering that the device has a 5.5 inch Full HD display. While the capacity is not high, the battery performance was decent. With Moderate usage, we could easily get a day of usage with around 3 hour 15 minutes on screen on time.
The phone also comes with a Power Detective app which can monitor any abnormal battery usage.
Verdict:
InFocus M680 competes in a segment which is packed with devices offering great features and value for money. So does it make sense to buy M680? We would say yes, if your primary focus is great design and camera. These are the two areas where M680 scores over the competition.
But having said that, if you are a heavy user, you might have to look for better performers like the Coolpad Note 3 which also comes with fingerprint scanner and also massive battery. InFocus has put a step in the right direction with M680, but they still need to do some tuning with the software and performance aspects to become the segment leader.
