GadgetByte Nepal

Colors has recently launched a new handset under the Pearl black flagship. This all new handset is known for its extremely long lasting battery backup. We are talking about all new Colors K20 Droid which is a budget smartphone and is launched at the price of just Rs. 17,494. The USP of this handset is its large battery backup and one can even use it as a power bank to charge other phones. Apart from that, it sports a 5-inch high-definition screen, Octa-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of inbuilt storage, 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. But the question is does it offer a good user experience in day to day use? We try to find out in our review…

Looks and Built quality:
The phone, like any other budget phones, is completely made out of hard plastic. The back might be glossy but it doesn’t attracts much fingerprints, well not in this white variant. The phone is by no means slippery, and thus you get a very firm hold of this phone. The back panel is removable giving you access to memory card slots and 2 SIMs. Unfortunately, the battery is not accessible.

There’s nothing much going on in the design aspect.  It feels very solid on hand, but since the phone boasts a huge battery it might feel heavy and thicker than other handsets.
The external navigation buttons are not backlit, so you might find it difficult to use. Volume Buttons and the power key are soft and responsive unlike other phones with hard buttons. The gold and white chrome finish gives the phone a premium look. Overall, the phone doesn’t look ugly.

Display:
It houses a 5 inch HD IPS display with a resolution of 1280*720 which means it’s a 720p display with a pixel density 294 ppi. The color that the panel produces are really sharp and bright. It’s a pretty decent display but if you look close enough you’re going to see the pixels. The outdoor visibility is fairly okay.

The phone supports 1080p video playback and the Videos look quite good and detailed.  The speaker on the back is pretty loud and clear to some extent, but there are some distortions when you play it at higher volume and it can be solved if you manage the inbuilt equalizer. The screen lacks Gorilla Glass protection and is prone to scratches. So, it is highly recommended that you insert a screen guard.

Software
Colors K20 Droid runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat and the user interface is very close to the stock version of the OS. Colors has not given a specific timeframe for the rollout of Lollipop and looking at the history from Colors, we might not get Lollipop update in this phone.

The UI is stock, albeit with all the funky icons. The notification bar is similar to stock version of Kitkat.  The phone has a minor bug while trying to drag the quick notification toggle with 2 fingers. Hopefully, an update will fix this issue in the future.

Performance:
Colors K20 Droid is powered by a 1.4 GHz MediaTek MT6592 Octa-core processor and 1GB RAM. We were satisfied with the performance of the phone while navigating across the menu, launching apps, browsing the web and clicking photos. The phone comes with 8GB internal storage out of which 6.12GB is available to the user. Storing multimedia content is not an issue since the phone supports microSD cards up to 32GB capacity.

The processor that is being used in this phone is a MediaTek MT6592 which has 8 cortex A7 cores, so the phone has decent multi-tasking experience thanks to its 8 cores. However, the Cortex A7 low-performing cores and Mali400MP4 GPU doesn’t perform well while playing graphics demanding games.

In synthetic benchmarks, the phone scored 11010 in Quadrant and 47.9 in Nenamark 2, 1929 (multi-core)/232 (single-core) in Geekbench 3, and 1321 in Vellamo tests.

Camera:
Colors K20 Droid sports a 8MP rear camera with LED flash and a 2MP front-facing camera. The camera is not one of the strong point of the phone. The camera is capable of taking decent phones in day light with good color reproduction. However, in low light, the picture quality is below-par.

Front camera does a decent job while taking occasional selfies and video calling, but it is by no means a selfie smartphone. The front camera lacks wide angle lens and better sensor and thus can only caputre mediocre photos. Check out the photo samples here.

Battery:

This phone is a powerhouse when it comes to the battery. It will last a complete two days with moderate usage. And if you’re a heavy user it will last 8-10 hours easily. The phone has a power saving mode under the battery options which keeps your CPU under-clocked for better battery life. If this is your primary device, you can use it as a power bank too.

Verdict
Overall, Colors K20 Droid is a good option in a sub -20K price segment. If you want to buy a smartphone with good battery life, then it’s an excellent choice. But, if you play high-end games and want a better camera phone, Colors K20 Droid might disappoint you.