SUMMARY
The Intex Aqua 5.5 VR mobile features a 5.5 Inch display and runs on Android v6.0 (Marshmallow) operating system. The device is powered by a Quad core, 1.2 GHz, Cortex A53 processor paired with 1 GB of RAM. As far as the battery is concerned it has 2800 mAh. Over that, as far as the rear camera is concerned this mobile has a 5 MP, Auto focus sensor and the front snapper is powered by a 5 MP sensor.
MARKET STATUS:AVAILABLEMRP:₹ 5,099
CRITIC REVIEW
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR review: VoLTE and VR on the cheap
Rajat Sharma | Gadgets Now | Nov 5, 2016, 08.30 AM IST
Virtual Reality is certainly the buzzword these days. And with options ranging from Google Cardboard to Oculus Rift, it's available across all price points. So it's hardly surprising that just about every smartphone manufacturer wants to have a slice of this burgeoning market.
Case in point is the home-grown brand Intex. The company recently launched its Aqua 5.5 VR smartphone. Carrying a modest price tag of Rs 5,099, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is clearly targeted at first time smartphone buyers who also want to give virtual reality a shot. It's also VoLTE capable and thus, compatible with the newly launched Reliance Jio.
But even though the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR looks great on paper, is it really any good? Let's find out.
Design and display
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is a decidedly budget smartphone, and it looks the part. The front panel consists of the 5.5-inch display, below which lie three capacitive (but non-backlit) navigation buttons. Above the display, there's a 5MP front-facing camera, an LED flash, proximity sensor and of course, the earpiece. While the sizeable bezels do make the smartphone a bit big, they also make it easier to grip with both hands in landscape orientation.
Made of plastic, the back panel can be pried off to reveal two SIM (micro) card slots, a microSD card slot and a removable battery. The rear has a 5MP primary camera accompanied by dual-LED flash, with the Intex logo beneath them. At the bottom section of the rear panel, there's a horizontal speaker grille.
Coming to the sides, the right side of the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is where the volume rocker and power button are located. The top has the microUSB charging/data transfer and 3.5mm audio ports, while the bottom sides is completely bare. On the left, there's a slider button that can be used to quickly switch between General and Silent profiles.
Due to its relatively larger footprint, the Aqua 5.5 VR is quite unwieldy. The fact that it's almost a 1cm in thickness doesn't help things either. In a nutshell, the design and build quality is nothing more than average.
The Intex Aqua 5.5 VR has a 5.5-inch HD display. Due to the lowly 720x1280 pixel resolution stretching over the large panel, pixel density comes to around 268ppi. As a result, there's a visible amount of pixelation in everything from web pages to graphics.
However, viewing angles and colour reproduction are decent. When the brightness is cranked all the way to the maximum, the display is quite legible under direct sunlight as well.
Performance and camera
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is powered by an unspecified 1.2GHz quad-core processor. This is coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, further expandable via microSD cards of up to 32GB in size.
These hardware specifications appear sufficient (at least on paper) for day-to-day tasks. During our testing, everything from light web browsing to casual games (e.g. Temple Run 2) worked just fine. But the disadvantages of inadequate amount of RAM became apparent as soon as we tried intensive tasks such as multi-tabbed browsing and graphics-heavy titles such as Asphalt 8: Airborne, which lagged every now and then. At times, the phone struggled even with basic things such as switching between tasks and opening up the app drawer.
Talking about the call quality, we found it to be appreciably good. Output is quite audible and network reception is largely fine. 4G VoLTE connectivity, too, works as it should.
Audio output from the rear speaker is loud, although it gets distorted at higher volume levels. FullHD video playback (both streaming and local) works pretty well, but 4K videos are out of the question.
Summing things up, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is perfectly fine for lightweight usage. But for those who routinely like to play games like 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' and browse the web with ten tabs open at the same time, this is definitely not the smartphone.
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR has a 5MP rear camera with dual LED flash. And it's as unremarkable as you might imagine. While the camera does manage to click decent-looking images in well-lit conditions, low-light shots are forgettable. The images have a fair amount of compression artefacts and digital noise in them, but colours are largely alright. As for the 5MP front-facing shooter, it's ordinary too. The accompanied LED flash does help in making those selfies a little brighter though. The camera can record HD videos of 1280x720 pixel resolution, which are just about alright.
The camera app is largely bare-bones, but does come with a couple of colour modes (e.g. Sepia, Aqua) and a 'face beauty mode. It has a gesture mode which can automatically take an image on detecting the subject flashing a victory sign, but failed badly during our testing.
The cameras on the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR are fine for taking an occasional photo or two. But that's about it.
As for the battery life, it's quite good. Our testing involved a mix of light gaming and about an hour each of calls, audio & video playback, all with Wi-Fi on. And with this, the 2,800mAh battery of the Intex Aqua 5.5VR managed to last a last a full day. Not bad, considering the price.
Software and VR
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the-box. The UI is largely stock Android, with a few customizations sprinkled here and there. Most notable of these is LFTY, which is Intex's own take on Google Now. Accessible via a right swipe on the homescreen, LFTY lets you access everything from breaking news to trending videos to newest games & wallpapers from a single location. It works pretty fine, and can be turned off if you don't want.
The Aqua 5.5VR comes pre-loaded with a bunch of third-party apps and game demos such as Fun Club, Double Driver and Cool Gallery. Most of these serve no purpose at all and reduce the available space available from the already measly 8GB internal storage even further. Worse, some of these bloatware apps can't be uninstalled.
Intex has pitched the Aqua 5.5 VR as a smartphone for those interested in viewing virtual reality content (hence the VR in the name). Interestingly, the box that the smartphone comes in can be made into a Google Cardboard viewer. As one may expect, the VR experience is quite basic. You can download the Cardboard app and other VR apps/games from the Google Play Store for this. It works well for the most part.
6 smartphones with big battery
Verdict
As a budget smartphone, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is largely a decent device. The display is good, battery backup is great and of course, there's VR support thrown into the mix as well. But it's not without its disadvantages, including lacklustre handling of basic tasks and considerable amount of preloaded bloat.
If you're looking for an affordable VoLTE smartphone that can also help you try out VR stuff, go for the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR. Want something else in the same price bracket? The Karbonn Titanium MachFive and Zen Cinemax 3 are worth considering.
Case in point is the home-grown brand Intex. The company recently launched its Aqua 5.5 VR smartphone. Carrying a modest price tag of Rs 5,099, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is clearly targeted at first time smartphone buyers who also want to give virtual reality a shot. It's also VoLTE capable and thus, compatible with the newly launched Reliance Jio.
But even though the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR looks great on paper, is it really any good? Let's find out.
Design and display
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is a decidedly budget smartphone, and it looks the part. The front panel consists of the 5.5-inch display, below which lie three capacitive (but non-backlit) navigation buttons. Above the display, there's a 5MP front-facing camera, an LED flash, proximity sensor and of course, the earpiece. While the sizeable bezels do make the smartphone a bit big, they also make it easier to grip with both hands in landscape orientation.
Made of plastic, the back panel can be pried off to reveal two SIM (micro) card slots, a microSD card slot and a removable battery. The rear has a 5MP primary camera accompanied by dual-LED flash, with the Intex logo beneath them. At the bottom section of the rear panel, there's a horizontal speaker grille.
Coming to the sides, the right side of the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is where the volume rocker and power button are located. The top has the microUSB charging/data transfer and 3.5mm audio ports, while the bottom sides is completely bare. On the left, there's a slider button that can be used to quickly switch between General and Silent profiles.
Due to its relatively larger footprint, the Aqua 5.5 VR is quite unwieldy. The fact that it's almost a 1cm in thickness doesn't help things either. In a nutshell, the design and build quality is nothing more than average.
The Intex Aqua 5.5 VR has a 5.5-inch HD display. Due to the lowly 720x1280 pixel resolution stretching over the large panel, pixel density comes to around 268ppi. As a result, there's a visible amount of pixelation in everything from web pages to graphics.
However, viewing angles and colour reproduction are decent. When the brightness is cranked all the way to the maximum, the display is quite legible under direct sunlight as well.
READ ALSO:Intex Aqua 5.5 VR and Aqua Craze II smartphones with 4G VoLTE launched, price starts at Rs 5,099
Performance and camera
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is powered by an unspecified 1.2GHz quad-core processor. This is coupled with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage, further expandable via microSD cards of up to 32GB in size.
These hardware specifications appear sufficient (at least on paper) for day-to-day tasks. During our testing, everything from light web browsing to casual games (e.g. Temple Run 2) worked just fine. But the disadvantages of inadequate amount of RAM became apparent as soon as we tried intensive tasks such as multi-tabbed browsing and graphics-heavy titles such as Asphalt 8: Airborne, which lagged every now and then. At times, the phone struggled even with basic things such as switching between tasks and opening up the app drawer.
Talking about the call quality, we found it to be appreciably good. Output is quite audible and network reception is largely fine. 4G VoLTE connectivity, too, works as it should.
Audio output from the rear speaker is loud, although it gets distorted at higher volume levels. FullHD video playback (both streaming and local) works pretty well, but 4K videos are out of the question.
Summing things up, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is perfectly fine for lightweight usage. But for those who routinely like to play games like 'Injustice: Gods Among Us' and browse the web with ten tabs open at the same time, this is definitely not the smartphone.
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR has a 5MP rear camera with dual LED flash. And it's as unremarkable as you might imagine. While the camera does manage to click decent-looking images in well-lit conditions, low-light shots are forgettable. The images have a fair amount of compression artefacts and digital noise in them, but colours are largely alright. As for the 5MP front-facing shooter, it's ordinary too. The accompanied LED flash does help in making those selfies a little brighter though. The camera can record HD videos of 1280x720 pixel resolution, which are just about alright.
The camera app is largely bare-bones, but does come with a couple of colour modes (e.g. Sepia, Aqua) and a 'face beauty mode. It has a gesture mode which can automatically take an image on detecting the subject flashing a victory sign, but failed badly during our testing.
The cameras on the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR are fine for taking an occasional photo or two. But that's about it.
As for the battery life, it's quite good. Our testing involved a mix of light gaming and about an hour each of calls, audio & video playback, all with Wi-Fi on. And with this, the 2,800mAh battery of the Intex Aqua 5.5VR managed to last a last a full day. Not bad, considering the price.
Software and VR
Intex Aqua 5.5 VR comes with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out-of-the-box. The UI is largely stock Android, with a few customizations sprinkled here and there. Most notable of these is LFTY, which is Intex's own take on Google Now. Accessible via a right swipe on the homescreen, LFTY lets you access everything from breaking news to trending videos to newest games & wallpapers from a single location. It works pretty fine, and can be turned off if you don't want.
The Aqua 5.5VR comes pre-loaded with a bunch of third-party apps and game demos such as Fun Club, Double Driver and Cool Gallery. Most of these serve no purpose at all and reduce the available space available from the already measly 8GB internal storage even further. Worse, some of these bloatware apps can't be uninstalled.
Intex has pitched the Aqua 5.5 VR as a smartphone for those interested in viewing virtual reality content (hence the VR in the name). Interestingly, the box that the smartphone comes in can be made into a Google Cardboard viewer. As one may expect, the VR experience is quite basic. You can download the Cardboard app and other VR apps/games from the Google Play Store for this. It works well for the most part.
6 smartphones with big battery
Verdict
As a budget smartphone, the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR is largely a decent device. The display is good, battery backup is great and of course, there's VR support thrown into the mix as well. But it's not without its disadvantages, including lacklustre handling of basic tasks and considerable amount of preloaded bloat.
If you're looking for an affordable VoLTE smartphone that can also help you try out VR stuff, go for the Intex Aqua 5.5 VR. Want something else in the same price bracket? The Karbonn Titanium MachFive and Zen Cinemax 3 are worth considering.
INTEX AQUA 5.5 VR SPECIFICATIONS
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