3 Reasons why the Virtue is Good News for Swipe

Screen

Swipe is an indian phone maker who has been trying to make useful, feature rich and at the same time, affordable mobiles. Their latest device, the Virtue is a step forward in that direction. Some folks might dismiss the handset as a 3G handset in the age of 4g phones. There are those who are upset that the 2 GB / 16 GB memory and internal storage combinations are outdated. We think that the handset augurs well for Swipe as a company. There are three good reasons for that.

Virtue

Design Upgrade

The design team at Swipe has worked hard on making the Virtue look and feel very different from their previous handsets. And this definitely shows. You get the feel of a good phone when you hold it in your hand. This is the very first phone from wipe that has a metal rim around it. Reminiscent of the early handsets that Xiaomi and a few other companies churned out when they were new in the market and wanted to make a splash. The white device with the metal rim and the white back have a very nearly premium feel. When one carries the device in hand, people look at it and when they hear the price, they are surprised. So we would say that this is by far the best designed phone from Swipe that we have seen.

Screen

Screen

Very nearly bezel-less design. This packs in more screen real-estate on the front of the phone. Given the 5 inch display, you get the feeling that there is more area for the display and do not have to strain or scroll when consuming text of media from the screen. It is a HD display and the colors rendered very well. There wasn’t any color that looked washed out or over saturated. Pictures on the screen were also pretty vivid. Consumption of video was smooth, the only issue if any was the fact that full sunlight conditions made you squint or strain, given the price range that they are in, they are competing with the CoolPad Note3 lite and they need to do better. But overall, we would say that the screen is more a hit than a miss. Again a big departure from the previous handsets that Swipe has released.

Media

 

 

Camera and Speakers

When you see that it has an 8 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front camera, you may not feel like something is new of great about it. We spent some time with it and noticed that the camera has zero shutter lag and the rear shooter is not bad when taking point and shoot kind of shots. The front camera is pretty decent for selfies and video chats. The have managed zero shutter lag in this bracket and that is something to write home about. The speakers are pretty decent and quite frankly surprised us. There wasn’t any noticeable distortion of any kind. They were able to handle music, videos and calls very well.

Side View

Just to recap, here are the main specs of the Virtue –  it has  a 5-inch HD display and runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop OS. Powered by a 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB ROM. It has a 2,500 mAh battery and 8MP rear camera with flash.

So overall, we believe that Swipe have their hearts in the right place and are going the right way, they just need to get there faster. The others have moved to a minimum of 3 GB RAM and 32 GB as internal storage, also the fact that the Virtue does not support 4G is a big issue.

But like the title says, the three standout features tell us that iteratively, Swipe is getting better with every release and like we keep saying, we are waiting for them to make that one Flagship that will capture our imaginations and take the fight to the other players. We wish them all the very best for that.

 

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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