Creo marK 1

A unique design combined with a nifty, customized Android OS make for an interesting choice for a smartphone — ashok Pandey

The Indian smartphone manufacturer, Creo, has launched Mark 1 smartphone that runs a customized skin of Android by the name of Fuel OS. However, it uses Android L which is now old as we already have Android M in the market. Fuel OS promises to deliver monthly software updates that will make the user feel he’s using a new phone every month.

Glass body from front to back: With the typical slate style body, Mark1 get glass protection at both ends. Gorilla Glass 3 is protecting the smartphone at the front and back. The sandwich is made between a metal frame and with Gorilla Glass 3. This makes it a glossy mobile which looks so cool but attracts lot of smudges, but thankfully no scratches.

A large 5.5-inch QHD screen: Though the phone has a large 5.5-inch (1440X2560p) display with a 534 PPI density, still you can comfortably hold the device in one hand. The QHD screen produces vibrant colors that are bright enough to be used in direct sunlight. However, we found lower brightness lux rating of 388 compare to Vivo V3 Max that has 513 lux of brightness. We watched several videos on it and played some games. The screen delivers quite crispy images with details. The phone has wide viewing angles that enable you to share the screen with your friends and family.

Decent camera: It hosts a 21 MP camera at the rear with an aperture of f/2.0 and 8 MP front shooter for selfies and groufies. The rear camera clicks good quality photos in both day and low light conditions thanks to its powerful LED flash. It captures images with details and colors are also natural but we expect a much better performance from this. The rear camera is also capable of capturing 4k videos @120Fps, but it disappointed us with its 4k capabilities.

The front shooter also captures good images in both day and night as you can use your phone screen as a flash. The camera UI is also not much intuitive, and sometimes you find lag in performance. Overall both cameras are decent to click quality images but don’t expect much.

What you get with Fuel OS: Creo has come with a lot of cool, smart and innovative features with Fuel OS.

Sense: This helps to search quickly and easily. Just double tap on your home screen and type whatever you are looking for, whether it is contacts, emails, calendar events, apps or anything else.

Echo: This will never let you miss a call as the feature allows you to receive your calls when you can’t answer them, whether you are in a meeting, driving your car or for any other reason. It’s a kind of an answering machine that will help you to manage your calls.

Retriever: This helps you locate your smartphone when it’s lost or stolen. You can easily track the phone even after the thief does a factory reset. When someone inserts a new SIM, it will immediately send you an alert email, even if it’s not connected to the Net.

Packed with an octa-core CPU: The phone comes packed with a 64-bit octa-core processor clocking at 1.9 GHz and comes with 3 GB RAM. The phone runs on Android Lollipop version 5.1.1, customized with Fuel OS on the top. It has 32 GB of inbuilt memory which can be expanded up to 128 GB using a microSD card. The PRICE: PERFORMANCE: FEATURES: phone runs smoothly and you won’t find any lag in performance. But while playing high graphics intensive games like Asphalt 8 and Fifa 16, we did notice a little lag. It took a bit longer to load and there were some glitches when playing the game.

Powerful battery: Mark 1 comes with a 3100 mAh battery which is non-removable. This gives enough juice to the phone to last for more than a day with moderate usage that includes playing games, watching videos, making calls, etc. In our battery video test, it consumed 100% battery while playing video for 4 hours 53 minutes over Wi-Fi with full brightness and volume.

Bottomline: The full glass body attracts a lot of smudges and the phone is extremely slippery. Overall, it runs smoothly, has good cameras at front and back, and combines some unique features.