SwIpe elITe noTe
A 5.5 inch display phablet with high-end configuration available on a budget
Swipe, an Indian smartphone manufacturer, brings Elite Note to the already congested budget segment. Rich features: The Elite Note has a compact design with curves around the edges which gives it a better appearance. The Swipe Elite Note is made of magnesium alloy which gives the phone its metallic look. This newcomer comes with a vibrant 5.5-inch HD display with Vi-DI technology but it appears a little bit glossy. The glossiness of display makes it prone to fingerprint smudges and hampers the visibility under bright light. The display is equipped with ‘Mira Vision Tuning features ‘which is a set of engines to enhance the display picture quality. The phone comes with three pictures modes- User Mode, Standard Mode and Vivid Mode and user can adjust the basic color temperature as per requirement.
The front face of the phone is covered by a Dragon trail glass to protect it from scratches and exceptional bumps. The back side has the sandstone finish, a good addition that keeps the body smudge-free and reduces the risk of the phone slipping out of hand. Between front and back of the phone, a golden color strip is running around the phone to give it a premium look.
Freedom OS delivers good performance: Elite Note has a Freedom OS which is based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. The OS is not much customized and gives the feel of the plain Android version. One interesting feature you get is the shortcut feature that remains hidden until you make a swipe up gesture from the left side corner of the display. It shows your favorite apps, recent activities, and toolbox (settings shortcuts) on a multi-layered scroll.
For connectivity, it comes with Dual-SIM 4G LTE support, 4.0 Bluetooth,WiFi, and an inbuilt IR sensor. The IR sensor allows you to control different infrared capable electronic appliances like air-conditioners, televisions, set-top boxes, etc. We have tested the IR blaster by using the inbuilt app Z-Remote on Philips TV and it worked smoothly. Beside micro-SD card to extend storage, it also supports OTG which means it can be use to read some external storage devices.
The Elite Note is powered by 1.3 GHz quad-core MediaTek MTK6735 processor and is coupled with 3 GB RAM. The phone packs 16 GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 32 GB via a microSD card. We didn’t find any lags during day-today tasks such as reading, surfing, YouTube videos and social networking apps but while playing some high-end games such as Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat it shows noticeable lags, especially in Asphalt 8 which is strange of a phone having a 3 GB RAM. The device comes with Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Light Sensor, G-Sensor. We were able to use the device for 8-10 hours while on 3G with stable network conditions. There were no call drops observed when 3G Data was ON while the calls are active [which made 3G much more usable].
To capture special life moments, Elite Note comes with a 13 MP Sony sensor rear camera with f1/3.2 aperture. The 5 MP front camera comes with a wide 88 degrees 4P lens which allow for more light to enter the camera. The photos captured using the rear camera are decent, neither oversaturated nor too much dull. The pictures in the low light without flash are little bit grainy. The close-up shots look much better than expected with the good amount of detailing.
The Elite Note is equipped with a whopping 3000 mAh battery that can last more than 8 hours with moderate usage. In our video loop test, it lasted for 4 hours 20 minutes.
Bottomline: Swipe Elite sounds really great on specs at this price and offers decent performance. But if you want to play heavy games then look for other options available under 8k such as Redmi Prime 2.