InFocus Epic 1 Review

InFocus has been in India for quite some time and last time we reviewed an InFocus phone was earlier this year, the M680. Now, the company, which calls themselves as an American brand, has announced their new mid-range/budget offering the InFocus Epic 1. The specialty of the phone is that it comes with the Deca-core Mediatek Helio X20 processor and is coupled with 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, and 5.5 inches Full HD display.

The phone is priced Rs 12,999 and available on Amazon. So how does the device perform in this segment? Let’s find out in this detailed review.

Here is the video review of the device.

Design and Build:

We have seen a lot of budget devices in India which comes with good specs, but brands seldom focus on the design aspect of the device in the budget segment. InFocus Epic 1 is definitely an exception. It comes with a metallic unibody construction with slim edges and a curved rear panel. The device feels good in the hand and is also easy to operate. The rear panel has been given a brushed finishing and the overall build quality is also really good.

The phone comes with power and volume keys on the right side, while the SIM tray is on the left side. The bottom panel houses the USB C type port and the speaker unit, while the top has the IR blaster and audio port. On the rear panel, you can see the 16MP camera, dual tone LED flash, fingerprint scanner, and InFocus logo. The front panel has 5.5 inches Full HD display and you have the onscreen buttons. Even though it has onscreen button, the bezels are slightly on the higher side at the top and bottom.

Overall, we would say InFocus Epic 1 is definitely one of the best looking and well build a phone in this price segment.

Display:

The Epic 1 sports a 5.5 inch Full HD (1080p) LTPS display with Corning Gorilla glass protection on the top. The display is vibrant, sharp and has very good color quality. The touch response on the display is also very smooth and the viewing angles are also good.

The sunlight legibility is also good and overall the display is definitely one of the strong aspects of the phone.

Software:

The InFocus Epic 1 is powered by Android 6.0 Marshmallow and has a custom UI called InLife 2.0. The UI is similar to Chinese OEMs with multiple home screens devoid of an app drawer. The UI is pretty simple and does offer decent options. The notification center and quick toggles are also customized and you can rearrange the icons by editing.

The settings panel is also a custom one with few motion gestures supported including turn over to reject call, direct call and answer, shake to next song etc. You can also go to EX launcher which brings in larger icons similar to easy mode on many other smartphones.

The amount of features offered on this device is quite low when compared to Xiaomi MIUI or Honor’s EMUI and it does not feel polished and the icons do not impress. Overall, the software isn’t very impressive on the device but does the job pretty well.

Performance:

The InFocus Epic 1 is powered by MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797) Deca-Core processor with Mali 880MP4 GPU coupled with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. The Deca-Core Helio X20 is a capable processor and it does the job very well on InFocus Epic 1. The performance of the device in day to day task is very good and even with heavy multitasking, there aren’t any issues in performance. There is almost 1.2GB of free RAM available even when running multiple apps. During our testing, never we felt there was a lag on the device. We are quite impressed with the performance offered by Helio X20.

The gaming performance of the device is also good, but we did notice that the phone heated up with intensive gaming and it reached almost close to 45 degrees in our gaming test. The call quality and the speaker performance is quite good and we do not have any complaints here.

The  phone comes with 32GB of storage and out of which close to 23GB is available to the user in the first boot and you can expand the storage using the SD card. The phone comes with hybrid SIM card. There is also support for 4G LTE and VoLTE. The fingerprint scanner is located on the rear panel and works quite well without any issues. Overall, the performance of the device with the Deca-core processor is very good.

Camera:

InFocus Epic 1 comes with a 16MP rear camera with dual tone LED flash and a front-facing 8MP camera for selfies. Looking at the camera interface, you can clearly see that the interface is quite dated and the same interface you had seen on a phone from 2013 or 14 with a MediaTek chipset. It comes with some basic features and there is no manual mode implemented. While the camera interface doesn’t impress, the camera was very quick in capturing images without any lag or delay. The focusing of the camera is also really fast and does the job pretty well.

Now, looking at the camera samples, you could see that the camera performs quite well in outdoor conditions with daylight. The color quality is pretty good and so is the sharpness levels. But some photos did end up being blurred. The close up images were also quite good. But when it comes to low light you can clearly see that the phone struggles to keep the noise low. Even with adequate artificial lighting, the noise was considerable. So the phone is not the best performer in low light.

The front facing 8MP shooter was quite good in taking selfies. Here are some of the camera samples taken with the device.

Battery Life:

InFocus Epic 1 comes with a 3000mAh battery and there is also fast charging included on the phone. The battery performance of the device in moderate usage was quite good and you can get through a day of usage easily with the battery. We tested the battery with social apps, calls, gaming, using the camera and a bit of music. We were able to get a day of battery life. While the battery life is not as good as the Redmi Note 3, it is still a decent performance on the device.

The phone also comes with USB C Type port.

Verdict:

InFocus Epic 1 priced Rs 12,999 does offer good value for money with a beautiful design and good build quality, good display, great performance and also decent camera performance. But the Epic 1 has its own negative aspects as well including the dull UI, heating while gaming and camera performance in low light. The InFocus competes with Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 in this segment which is hugely popular device and the Epic 1 is overall a good device.