Infocus Epic 1 Review
Design and looks of InFocus Epic 1
The InFocus Epic 1 sports a front-facing screen with a 5.5-inch display. Corning Gorilla Glass has been provided for display protection in the phone. This phone has a round earpiece which gives this phone a glimpse of Nextbit Robin smartphone. Apart from this, the phone has all the standard sensors including front camera. The smartphone uses on-screen navigation buttons, which means there is a lot of space left below the display.
The phone has power and volume buttons on the right side while there is a hybrid SIM tray on the left side. The phone has a USB Type-C port at the bottom. There is a speaker grill nearby. Epic 1 has an IR blaster at the top so that it can work as a remote. Apart from this, there is also a 3.5 mm audio jack on the top.
The brushed metal rear given in this smartphone gives a premium look to the Epic 1 phone. And due to its curved shape, the grip of the handset remains good. There is a round fingerprint sensor below the camera lens. There is the InFocus logo at the bottom. Weighing in at 160 grams, the Epic 1 neither feels too light nor too heavy. It is convenient to use the phone even with one hand. At 8.4mm thick, the Epic 1 feels much thinner than other smartphones in this price range.
Our review unit did not come in a retail box. But upon purchasing this phone, the customer will get a charger along with user manual, earphones and USB Type-C cable in the box. Overall, the design and look of the Epic 1 is much better than other smartphones offered by Infocus.
InFocus Epic 1 specifications and software
The dual SIM InFocus Epic 1 has a deca-core MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797M) processor. This phone has 3 GB RAM. Inbuilt storage is 32 GB which can be expanded via microSD card up to 128 GB.
This phone has a 5.5 inch Full HD (1080×1920 pixels) LTPS display which is equipped with Corning Gorilla Glass. This smartphone has a 16-megapixel camera with aperture F/1.8, dual-tone LED flash, PDAF and auto image stabilization. While the front camera is an 8 megapixel camera with 82 degree wide angle lens and aperture F/1.8.
This phone has a 3000 mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging. Apart from 4G VoLTE, other connectivity features in Epic 1 include Bluetooth 4.1, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac and GPS/A-GPS.
The phone runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow on which the company’s InLife UI skin has been given. InFocus touts itself as different from other Chinese smartphone brands but with the unpolished interface, that seems true. Epic 1 lacks many of the visual features of Marshmallow, which we mentioned in our Bingo 50 review. The icons especially look quite dated.
InFocus has made some changes in its InLife UI. Also removed app dryer which means all app icons now appear on the homescreen. A special new feature has been added that keeps the most and recently used apps in the Apps folder. This saves time searching for an app while using it. The Quick Settings panel also looks dated with old animations but users can rearrange it by toggling here.
This smartphone comes with default Launcher+ and EZ Launcher. Even before this, we have seen these features in Infocus smartphones. And it provides a simple interface for first-time smartphone users.
infocus epic 1 performance
InFocus Epic 1 is the best performing device in this price range. During our review, we did not find any problem or shortcoming in this phone. We observed that even while using the phone, 1.2 GB memory was free due to which the overall response of the phone is good.
Even heavy games can be played easily in Epic 1 and multitasking also happens without any problem. 4G worked better and call quality was also good. Apart from this, the audio from stereo speakers is also very good. During our review, we did not notice overheating on the phone even while playing games and recording videos at 1080 pixels.
When it comes to benchmarks, the InFocus Epic 1 easily leaves its rivals behind. We got great figures from the phone in benchmarking tests.
Talking about fingerprint sensor, Epic 1 is slightly inferior to other smartphones of this price. And after trying at least twice it is able to recognize the fingerprint and sometimes it looks strange.
The 16 megapixel rear camera given in Epic 1 works fast. And the camera app also launches without any delay. The camera interface is easy to use and cleaner than other smartphones in this price range. InFocus has implemented PIP mode in the Epic One, which allows simultaneous shooting from the front and rear cameras.
The rear camera is quite quick to lock focus even when the frame is not steady and we liked that. There is no need to tap the screen for this. However, we did occasionally notice shutter issues while clicking photos. Some pictures are also ugly but this is not always the case.
In some pictures taken with the camera, we saw excessive highlights which is disappointing. This problem is not often seen in smartphones of this price. There was a little noise in objects in landscape shots in daylight, although colors were mostly accurate. Photos taken in artificial or low light also do not look very good. A lot of noise was seen in most of these shots. Great selfies come from the front camera of the phone.
The 3000 mAh non-removable battery lasted 10 hours and 40 minutes in our video loop test. Which is not bad but phones of the same segment and battery capacity performed better in our review. Under normal and heavy usage, the Epic 1 lasts for a day on a single full charge. Fast charging support is a nice feature. It takes 30 minutes to charge the phone from 0 to 50 percent and the phone gets fully charged within 2 hours.
our decision
The InFocus Epic 1 definitely impressed us with its performance. And the credit for this goes to the deca-core Helio X20 processor. This smartphone can easily perform everyday tasks and is more powerful than all the existing smartphones of the same price. But, the Epic 1 is not an overall package due to its average battery life and camera performance and interface.
If you are thinking of buying a powerful smartphone then InFocus Epic 1 is a right choice. Apart from this, you can also buy Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Review) and Moto G4 Plus (Review). Recently, these smartphones received excellent ratings in our review.
