HOMTOM H1 Review

Chinese manufacturers are seeing India as their brand new ground to get into the top level market. Oppo, Xiaomi, and other brands have concurred the Indian market especially the one under 20,000 price tag. Now the main competition of these brands is within themselves as Samsung and other brands are just living there in order to maintain their entry-level classification. Another brand named HOMTOM have arrived in India with the launch of their three devices which are HOMTOM H1, HOMTOM H3, and HOMTOM H5.

Although there will be many more devices awaited in the market, today we are going to see about the HOMTOM H1 if it is going to attract the dominant market of price range under 10,000 INR. The device we are refereeing to is priced at 7,490 INR and will come in Black and gold color option, these smartphones are not an online-only device, but are going to be sold through the brick and mortar stores on your second street from your home. So let us look forward to the device in detail and see if it is going to make any revolutionary changes to the market with its income.

Design & Build

The device looks quite plain and simple in terms of design language, on the first look you will mistake the phone from one that’s coming from the last decade. The phone happens to have big bezels both at the sides and even on the top and bottom. The bottom bezel is used as capacitive touch buttons for multi-tasking, home, and back. The screen of the phone is an 18:9 ratio one which will surely make the phone look like a new one. On the back, we have the phone which comes with a dual camera setup which has a flash unit in between the camera.

Fingerprint scanner on the phone is placed in an awkward position which is towards the left of the camera unit, and this will do make the phone uncomfortable to hold and use in case of extended usage. Towards the bottom of the phone, we have got the speakerphone grill, which is a really unique thing to see in 2018. The speakerphone grill is placed just beside the HOMTOM logo which is positioned on the bottom of the phone. All the keys on the phone are positioned on the right side and hence you will have ease of use on the same.

Talking about the build quality of the phone, it is majorly built from plastic, hence you will surely going to feel the same in hand whenever you are using the device. Do note that you might even end up mistaking the phone for sure as one from late 2014s. Still the overall fit and finish of the phone is quite great and will make it a great seller when opposed to the other products.

Display

The panel of the phone is a 5.5 – inch unit which can be said as a really small one especially in 2018. When the standard is proceeding towards 6.0-inch display, HOMTOM with a smaller display have made it quite great for the users who don’t have a big hand. When it comes to the resolution it is just fixed to 640 x 1280px which is also quite good as it provides sufficient amount of pixel density that you can easily make it possible for the users to view the images crisp and without any issues.

Talking about the real world performance you will get to see a number of color washes at different angles, and at times the picture will even fade away. All this is due to the quality of the panel, although you can ignore the same, as in normal viewing angles it will not affect your daily performance. When it comes to night the display can go a bit of dark hence using the phone at night is quite easy and can be done without any issue. In the daytime viewing, the display will become quite difficult due to the brightness of the display as it is not quite up to the mark.

Performance

The HOMTOM H1 comes with a 1.3 GHz quad-core CPU which have its cores based on Cortex A53. Assisting the same is the 2GB of RAM along with 16GB of storage which can be expended to 64 GB which is another bummer for the phone. In the real world performance, the phone lacks quite a bit, and you can easily see the downside of the phone.

In the gaming performance, the phone can do quite well with not so resource hungry games, but it will do slow down as you quite the game, and it will need a sophisticated time to think that it is out of the game and now need to do its daily chores. Multitasking is not that great too, and you will surely have a bad time using more than 4 apps at a time, so for our preference, the phone is great only to using a single app at a time, and giving the phone time to stay connected to the ground.

Camera

HOMTOM loaded the phone with a 13MP rear camera while on the front we have an 8MP camera. Both on the front and the back we have a LED flash, and also comes with Continuous Shooting, High Dynamic Range, and other such modes. Also, there is an issue with the Digital Zoom, Auto Flash, Face Detection, and Touch to focus embedded in the camera software.

Images taken by the camera is quite good, and the 13MP rear camera will take some of the best pictures in the market, although there are issues with the dynamic range of the phone, as you will see the highlights getting flushed out, and the darks missing the information. The same is the case with the front camera and hence you will have to keep the same thing in mind while choosing the phone as your daily driver.

Battery

HOMTOM H1 comes with a 3000 mAh battery, and the battery will make sure that you are having a device in hand to call your friends, family, and office members daily. The battery will enable you to last the device from 7:00 in the morning to 10:00 in the night without much of the issues. You can use the phone for normal calls, messages, and social media. Although if you are a hungry fox who wants to actually get away with games and social media, and camera usage then you will have to make it possible for you to charge the phone once in the late evening for you to keep using the device.

Verdict

The phone is quite great and you are going to enjoy using the phone only if you need a phone, but if you are in demand of a true smartphone then you will need to invest a bit more and seek for the HOMTOM H3 which is also launched by the company and of which the review will be coming out quite soon, do not miss the review of the HOMTOM H3 & HOMTOM H5, and if your budget is strict then have a look at the Moto series of devices through our reviews. Do let us know what do you think about the devices in the comment section below.