At Gadgets 360, we constantly receive requests to review new budget smartphones, but we can’t review every phone. Today we have Reach Mobiles, a subsidiary of Rashmi Group. Achieve Charm smart phone. Priced at around Rs 5,000, this budget smartphone was launched as an iconic smartphone.
Appearance and Design
In keeping with its price, Allure uses a plastic body instead of a metal one. At first glance, it looks like an iPhone, and we think it’s specifically designed like an iPhone. This phone is available in four iPhone color options (including rose gold). However, the quality of the plastics and the fit and finish are also not great. There is also a small gap in the plastic around the curved edge of the display. There’s a physical home button at the bottom for navigation, and at the top there’s a 5-megapixel camera. The ring around the Home button looks like Apple’s TouchID fingerprint sensor. But this is not a sensor. The phone does not have a notification LED.
The 5.5-inch QHD (540×960 pixels) IPS display of this phone is quite good, except for its low resolution. The brightness level is also decent, but the screen dims in the sun. There is also a small gap between the outer glass and the display itself, which can be seen if you press on the screen. For this reason, the touch response of the phone is quite poor and sometimes the phone recognizes the touch gesture as a swipe. To compensate for the lack of a protective glass, the Allure display already comes with a screen protector.
The Reach Allure smartphone has a micro-USB port and a headphone jack at the top and a single speaker at the bottom. The volume and power buttons are not very well placed and are difficult to move. The back cover isn’t easy to remove, but once you remove it, you’ll see two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot, as well as a removable battery. The Allure smartphone features a 10-megapixel rear camera with a single LED flash.
When you purchase the Reach Allure, you get a power adapter, data cable, and a flip cover in the box. The cable quality is decent, but the flip case is of very poor quality. If the case lasts at least a month, consider yourself lucky. Overall, the Allure is made from very low quality materials. The fit and finish of the plastics could be better. In our opinion, any user will probably buy this smartphone online just because it looks like an iPhone.
Specifications and software
The Reach Allure phone is powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT6580 processor clocked at 1.3GHz. This phone has 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage which is expandable via microSD card (up to 32GB). This Reach phone has features like Wi-Fi B/G/N, Bluetooth 4.0, FM Radio and GPS. The phone does not support 4G, only 3G will work on both SIM cards.
Talking about the software, this phone runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop with a custom launcher. You get an app drawer on the phone and the ability to choose transition effects. The multi-purpose Home button performs different functions depending on how you press it. A single tap takes you back one step in the app, a long press opens more settings, and a double tap takes you back to the home screen. However, if you’re on the Home screen, double-tapping will take you to recent apps, and long-pressing will open a menu where you can customize the wallpaper, theme, and other options. The home button works very poorly and requires a lot of effort to use.
Along with this, Reach has also included several gesture-based shortcuts that let you launch apps when the screen is off. WeChat, WhatsApp and some other Google apps come pre-installed on the phone.
performance
The Reach Allure is not very comfortable to use due to its size, but the good thing is that it is quite lightweight. Despite the presence of 1 GB of RAM, the interface does not cause any particular problems. Sometimes the smartphone suddenly stops and you may have to wait for some time to use it again. We got good results from the phone in performance testing. We did not encounter any issues while playing 3D games on this Reach phone nor did we encounter any heating issues.
To play video on this smartphone, there is a standard video player. Full HD videos can be played on the phone, but we encountered an issue when playing some high bitrate files. The music player is from an older version of Android, so it’s not very attractive, but it gets the job done. Of the 8 GB of internal memory, only 4.7 GB is available to the user.
The phone is said to feature a 10-megapixel rear camera with autofocus and the same specs are mentioned throughout the listing as well. But a note on the back of the box says that “the camera can be upgraded using software.” In our comparison test, we found that the phone has an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Additionally, we captured some RAW files from the phone’s camera using the EngineeringMode app from the Play Store and found that it has an 8-megapixel camera. The 8-megapixel camera is not bad for an entry-level smartphone, and in our opinion, this is done to make the phone look better on the online store page.
Photos taken with the phone’s camera in both resolutions are of below average quality. The biggest problem is the phone’s slow focusing, which makes it difficult to take sharp photos. The image is blurry even with slight movement. The camera does not capture the correct colors and the pictures come out very dull. The phone has a burst shooting function (up to 10 frames), but the shooting speed is quite slow.
Maximum video recording of 1080 pixels is possible from both cameras of the phone. The quality here is also below average. Selfies taken with the front camera are also disappointing.
battery life
The Reach Allure is equipped with a 2600 mAh battery, which lasted 5 hours and 27 minutes in our video test. This is very little compared to other smartphones. With normal use, we were able to use this phone in less than 24 hours.
our decision
Reach Allure is priced at Rs 5,444 and is currently available exclusively on ShopClues online store. It’s very difficult to pinpoint any feature on this phone and it performs below average in every way. infofocus bingo 10 ,review), the Allure has a larger and brighter display, which may appeal to some buyers.
We can see that this phone might appeal to people who want a cheap iPhone clone, but other than that there’s no other reason to buy it. The build quality of the phone is very poor. The battery life and camera are decent, and the performance is quite good. The lack of 4G is also painful.
