There’s a new guy in the market. Built specifically to meet the need of the people who want a good smartphone in a budgeted price, Phicomm P660 is one hell of a device.
Phicomm’s P660 offers a good set of specifications at an aggressive price, making it a value for money proposition, and for the duration that I have used it… it sure is a worthy machine to posess at such a price.
Priced at Rs.10,999 in India, it will take on other devices such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei among others, which offers you good options to choose from.
Design
The Passion 660 is essentially a flat rectangular slab of plastic and some metal. The unibody design with distinct sharp edges sans any curves would remind you of the Blackberry Z3, or the Xiaomi Mi 3 for that matter, but has got a better feel and grip to them and I don’t have even a cent of doubt about that- reason being I have used BlackBerry Z3 for a long time.
The best part- it’s not all plastic!
Both the right and left edges have pieces of metal attached to them, though these metal strips don’t extend to the upper and lower ends, but that looks just fine and attractive enough to pull it out of the shopping window/page.
The right edge houses the power button that is metallic, but coated with a bronze paint for the obvious distinction. It is also home to two SIM card slots (Micro+Nano with SD card slot).
The volume rocker is placed on the left edge and is metallic, without a bronze coating. The color scheme will remind users of Honor 4X where the power button is colored differently, for reasons unknown.
The P660 is one of the lightest 5-inch handsets that you have in the market right now. And if you thought the Mi 4i was the lightest they got at this price point, wait till you hold the P660. Its slim frame (139.0×69.0×7.3mm) and light weight (110 grams) beats the Mi 4i convincingly in this department.
Display
The P660 comes with a 5-inch full-HD IPS display with a 1920×1080 pixels resolution that roughly translates to 441ppi. The P660 (although a 5-incher) manages to pack in a full-HD display in a smaller frame, meaning more pixels per inch and obviously better results.
While this may be the case for the greater part, we found the display output on the P660 lacking in overall brightness, however that is not a constraint for opting for it. The color reproduction on the device is decent and viewing angles are good.
Software
The P660 comes with a Snapdragon 615 (that supports 64-bit architecture) ships with Android 4.4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box,which would need updates to meet the challenges that lies ahead in the market. The company has promised a Lollipop update in future, but there’s no timeline for the same.
The P660 runs its own custom Expect UI on top of Android, and unlike most Chinese UIs gives you an app drawer.
The company hasn’t loaded the P660 with unnecessary bloatware, which is nice. It comes pre-loaded with a pedometer for counting the number of steps and a barometer to calculate atmospheric pressure, which is handy for the people who keep a track on their fitness regularly.
Hardware
The P660 sports a 13-megapixel rear camera with Sony IMX 214 sensor, auto-focus and LED flash. It has a 5-megapixel camera with BSI sensor and 84-degree wide angle view on the front. The app used for camera is the standard KitKat app with slight modifications here and there. It’s still nifty and gives you enough controls to tinker about.
