Many people ask me for Indian Smartphone brands and here is Centric, a new Indian player who have joined the highly competitive Android space in India owned by Mumbai-based Priyanka Telecom. Centric L3 is a sub Rs 7,000 smartphone with a front fingerprint scanner and in this Centric L3 review let’s see if the desi brand can withstand the rough and tough market.
Box contents:
- Centric L3 Smartphone
- Earphone
- Soft back case
- micro USB cable
- 7.5 watts Power adapter
Design:
Being a budget Smartphone, the construction is plastic but it doesn’t look cheap either, though not a crowd puller. It has a decent look with a glossy back which might appeal to the targeted audience in the offline markets.
The rear side has the 13MP camera flanked by LED flash. The antenna lines are at the top and bottom of the back side with Centric branding prominent.
The rear panel can be removed unlike most other phones these days. It has a detachable 3050mAh battery. It’s a dual SIM phone with a support for 4G VoLTE and it also houses a dedicated microSD card slot for storage expansion.
The right side has the power button and the volume button.
The top houses the microUSB port and an audio jack.
Bottom has the speaker grille.
Display
At the front is a 5-inch display panel with the traditional 16:9 aspect ratio with a 720p resolution. Honestly, the display panel is not the best in this segment but a decent one.
The display setting has adaptive brightness and it works fairly well. The viewing angles are fine. The front has the earpiece, 5-megapixel selfie camera and notification light above the display, while the fingerprint sensor is positioned below it. The display has on-screen navigation buttons.
Software
Centric L3 runs on Android Nougat and the UI retains the stock look but Centric has added a few features. There is a system motion setting which offers some gesture actions like SMS direct call allowing to pick up the phone againast your face to directly dial the contact in the SMS interface and similar from the contact list, user can also wave the palm in the proximity sensor area for an hands-free call, and there are more such gesture actions. The phone also has a shake gesture which lets you change wallpapers just by shaking the phone, and you can double-tap the screen to wake the device.
There are also wakeup gesture feature to launch specific apps by gesture from the sleep mode by drawing associated alphabets.
Centric has preinstalled its own apps called Centric Care and Centric Store, as well as SwiftKey Keyboard. There’s also Top Doctors Online, which lets users chat with doctors. This is a paid service and costs Rs.29 per question or Rs. 49 for a live chat. The app also lets users book appointments with doctors and pathology labs.
Performance
Centric L3 is powered by MediaTek MT6737, an entry-level processor with a 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. The phone is strictly for basic day to day tasks and one cannot adventure into heavy gaming, which might put an overload on the processor and RAM. Apps take a bit of time to load. Though, simple games are playable with ease. With a 2GB of RAM under disposal, the background RAM management is bit aggressive at killing the idle apps from time to time. Call quality is good. The phone does not include gyroscope sensor and has no VR support.
Fingerprint sensor is accurate but there is a noticeable lag in unlocking the phone. The fingerprint sensor is restricted to unlocking the phone and there is no app lock.
Camera
One of the big let down in the phone is the camera optics. It has a 13-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel selfie camera. While the pixel counts look good on paper, the image quality is nothing great to write about. It struggles a bit to lock the focus and the color reproduction is not great either with colors boosted. The pictures lacks sharpness and clarity. The selfies again are just about average quality. The Centric L3 can take videos up to 720p for both the primary and the front camera.
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Battery
The Centric L3 has a 3050mAh removable battery, it can sail through a day with light usage. There is an intelligent power saving mode for better battery management when you are running out battery juice.
Verdict
Centric L3 is just another Smartphone in the offline market. It does not have one particular stand-out feature to write about but if you just need a basic Smartphone for normal use, this would be acceptable. And yes, if you are one of those who strictly want to use an Indian brand, Centric is one such brand.
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