CENTRiC L3 Review: Good Competition For The Redmi Phones

Centric L3

Indian mobile maker Priyanka Telecom has been behind the CENTRiC brand of mobiles and they have been consistently delivering good phones with decent specs with aggressive prices. Their latest offering is the CENTRiC L3 which is targeted at the first time android user who needs a good experience at an affordable price. We spent considerable time with the device and here is our review of the phone.

In India, the budget segment is the most active segment and most buyers are going directly to this segment as the manufacturers are coming out with devices that are increasingly good on hardware and design. CENTRiC has been very active in this segment and with good reason, they have devices that look good and perform well. The CENTRiC L3 is continuation of that.

Centric L3

The design of the phone is simplistic and practical. It looks neat and very nice. There are no flashy corners or other jazzy things. The phone is sized perfectly to fit in one hand and weighs just right. The rear side is easy to grip and is not slippery. The phone weighs just 143 g and that means that it is very comfortable to carry around in your pocket.  There are two shades available – Quartz Grey and Raisin Black. We got the grey version to review.

The phone has a plastic body that has been given a matte laminated metal finish. On the right side you have the volume rocker and the power button. The rear side has two clearly visible antenna strips on the top and bottom. CENTRiC has gone for a removable back cover that opens up to reveal two SIM slots on either side with a micro SD card slot in the middle. This means that you have the convenience of using two SIMs and the expandable memory at the same time. This is very useful for the young people who have two numbers and want to carry all their songs and videos along too.

The battery is removable and housed in the bottom of the back. The top of the phone has the micro USB charging and data point in the center and a 3.5 inch headphone socket on the left side. The bottom has two speaker grills and there is nothing else there. The front bottom of the phone has the fingerprint scanner and we found that it was very fast and since it is front mounted, unlocking the device when it is lying on a table or some other surface was easy and convenient.

Centric L3

The phone has a 5” (12.7cm) IPS display that supports HD (1280*720) resolution and has Oncell 2.5D curved glass. The display is pretty vivid and has good viewing angles. Under direct sunlight and harsh lighting it was able to hold its own. The colors are rendered clearly and well on the screen. Videos were also clear and crisp. We tried gaming with the phone and the display was up to the challenge. The display is also tough and scratch resistant when subjected to the wear and tear of day to day use. Overall, the display does not disappoint and does fairly well under aggressive usage too. The young generation will certainly like this one.

The phone is powered by a MT 6737 1.3GHz Cortex A53 Quad Core 64Bit Processor and has a Mali T720MP to handle the responsibilities of a GPU. Together they do very well on the performance front. The phone comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. The micro SD slot allows expansion of upto 256GB. We tried multitasking, gaming and video loops very extensively and the phone was able to handle all that very efficiently. The phone also runs at normal temperature and there were not any noticeable heating issues. There were absolutely no issues on the performance and multitasking front at all. It is up to the mark in this department.

The rear camera is an 13MP Auto Focus sensor with LED Flash and the front camera is a 5 MP sensor. The pictures that were churned out by the rear camera were detailed, clear and crisp. There was no over saturation or pixelation. The images were relatively noise free and looked very good. The front camera also churned out very good selfies and the pictures looked fine. In the camera department the phone does very well and as an overall package, it meets our expectations without any hiccups. Here are some sample pictures we took with the phone.

The phone runs Android Nougat out of the box and it is a stock experience. It is very lean and runs very smooth. There is absolutely no bloatware on the phone.

Centric L3 Rear View

The phone has a 3050mAh non-removable Li-Polymer Battery. On a single charge, we were able to get more than a full day of heavy 4G and WiFi use with Video streaming. The battery does not heat up at all and that is good thing. The battery is okay for daily use and stands the phone in good stead.

On the connectivity and calling front, the phone supports 2G, 3G, 4G and VoLTE all other essential features like WiFi and Bluetooth. We tried using our Jio SIM with phone and the call quality was very good and there were absolutely no call drops or distortions. The speaker on the phone is also good and delivers quality sound without distortion.

Verdict:

At a price of INR 6749/- the CENTRiC L3 is a great choice for the young looking to buy a phone that gives a great experience at an affordable price.

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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