Indian cell phone company Intex launched the Aqua 4.0 4G smartphone last month alongside the Aqua Crystal and Aqua Supreme+ (review). Last week, all these phones reached my desk waiting to be reviewed. Despite me realizing at one point that it may not be a pleasant experience to review the smaller Aqua 4.0 4G, I decided to give it a shot anyway.
Notably, it is also the first phone I have reviewed in my career with the screen size of 4 inches. Not to forget, I knew exactly what it has to offer, the time I unboxed it. BUT (*trying to make it sound dramatic* ) I didn’t want to bore my audience with that short-lived rhetoric called specifications just yet. I would rather want to shed light on what this phone is all about in a true sense.
The Intex Aqua 4.0 4G comes in three colour options — Black, Blue, and Champagne. I got a black colour unit for review. Interestingly, the phone flaunts a minimalistic design and plastic body, which is prone to fingerprints and smudges. At the front, there is an earpiece and a selfie camera. One can find the set of non-backlit capacitive touch buttons below the display for navigation.
The positioning of the volume rocker and the power button seems odd given that the phone is pretty small in size. All the buttons are placed at the centre, and more often than not, I ended up confusing the volume up button for the power button.
To give my two cents about the display, it comes with 640 x 360 pixels stretched across 4 inches of screen, resulting in the pixel density of 184 pixels per inch (PPI). Even though the quality of the display is commendable, it is a fingerprint magnet. You’ll have to keep wiping it all the time. The lack of an oleophobic coating could be the reason for it. However, keeping its price in mind, I wasn’t expecting it in the first place.
I have nothing much to talk about phone’s overall camera. The biggest letdown is the sluggish viewfinder, which resulted in a poor photography experience. The pictures turned out to be dull and shaky, lacking details. However, considering the entry-level price, there is hardly anything to expect out of this phone. The Intex Aqua 4.0 4G houses a 2MP primary camera at the rear that is combined with LED flash. Up front is a VGA camera for selfies, which is no different either. Keeping all these things in mind, the Intex Aqua 4.0 4G is certainly not a camera phone from any angle.
Not so surprisingly, setting up the Intex Aqua 4.0 4G took a bit longer than expected. The device got stuck on the first boot itself due to insufficient RAM and processing power. It has 512MB RAM(yikes) under the hood, which often fell short while multitasking and performing any regular operations for that matter.
Calculating benchmark scores was a pain. The reason being, it packs a 4GB internal memory, out of which around 2GB is user-available. As a result, I couldn’t perform Geekbench test due to the lack of memory. Thankfully, I could perform AnTuTu benchmark successfully, which managed the score of 19999.
When it comes to battery performance, the Intex Aqua 4.0 4G performed fairly well. It took me almost three hours to charge completely, which is noteworthy given that it packs a 3000mAh battery. The device could easily last a full day on a single charge.
The Intex Aqua 4.0 4G is priced at Rs 4,199. In the event that you have started considering this phone at this price, may the force be with you. Why? Because it is not the best option out there. If you are willing to spend your hard-earned cash on an entry-level phone, you should better go with the LYF Flame 8 (review). Priced at Rs 4,199, the LYF Flame 8 offers a slightly bigger display, better processor, double to amount of RAM and internal memory.
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