The entry-level smartphone market is quite significant in India, as numbers of manufacturers frequently launch their products in this price segment. Right from domestic manufacturers to foreign smartphone makers, the price bracket under Rs.10000 is always appealing to these brands, as it is very profitable too. Nonetheless, recently an India based company has launched the entry-level smartphone; Kult Beyond in India. The phone is priced at Rs. 6,999 and is exclusively available on Amazon.in. So let’s go ahead with the review.
Unboxing and Specification
The smartphone comes in a traditional card-box type packaging with neatly arranged accessories. The box contains travel adapter, Data cable, and a Quick Start Guide. The Kult beyond comes with a 5.2 inches HD ON-CELL display with 2.5D curved glass.
It is powered by a 64-bit Quad core MTK 6737 SoC paired with Mali T720 MP1 GPU and 3GB RAM. It has a 32GB internal memory which is expandable up to 32GB using a microSD card. For selfies and pictures, it comes with a 13MP shooter with flash at the back and 13MP selfie camera.
The Kult beyond runs on the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system out of the box. It supports 4G VoLTE and comes with a 3000mAh battery non-removable Li-ion battery which claims to offers 25 hours of talk time.
Design
The Kult beyond comes with a unibody metal design with smooth edges around the corners. The headphone jack and the USB port sit on the top, while at the bottom there is a microphone. The front of the phone is packed with 5.2 inches HD ONCELL 2.5D display with a 13MP selfie lens, LED flash, and an earpiece on the top.
The right side of the device is featured with a power button and Volume rockers. At the back there is a 13MP camera situated at the top center and just below that there is a fingerprint sensor. The phone gives a premium feel in the hand as it is very unusual to see at this price point.
Display
The smartphone comes with an HD ONCELL panel with 720p resolution. The panel looks good with excellent viewing angle and offers excellent sunlight legibility with accurate color reproduction. The panel is also enriched by MiraVision feature which provides real-time enhancement of picture quality. It also provides basic and advances color tuning in picture and Video as well. Moreover, users can also tune the color temperature and brightness level from the setting according to their preferences.
Performance
The Kult beyond is powered by a 64-bit Quad-Core chipset which is paired with 3GB RAM. The phone performs reasonably well across all functional aspects. But the phone cannot handle multitasking properly. The browsing is relatively smooth, and it can play high-end games like Asphalt 8 at the medium setting.
The phone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat OS which offers seamless performance with minimalist users interface. The smartphone comes with some surprising features like Talk back and Select to Speak which allows visually impaired users to operate the phone with ease. The Talk Back feature provides a spoken feedback which generates via touching the display at any point in time. While the Select to Speak feature also provide spoken feedback but with selecting a particular area of the screen by tapping and dragging.
For example, if users want to read an article on the website, they simply have select Speak icon and tap the page with dragging a finger across that article. And then the smart assistance will read out the selected area.
The Kult beyond is fuelled by a 3000mAh battery which performs reasonably well and offers full day back up under normal usage. The charging of the battery is exceptional i:e it takes about 3h of time to power up the battery from zero to 100%.
Camera
The Kult beyond is equipped with a 13 MP rear camera which performs well in good lighting condition. The output images are true to life and have less grain at the corner. In the low light condition camera does lead down our expectations, the LED is not sufficient to capture optimum detail, and the output images are not crisp with uneven color saturation.
Coming on to the front camera, the smartphone is rocked with 13MP lens and LED flash. The selfie comes our to be crisp and a lot of detail. However one can notice the over-smoothing of the images most of the time. But still, the images have a respectable amount of detail and decent color saturation. The Camera app has a relatively simple interface, for the rear camera users can select from the feature like Pano, Video, Photo, Beauty by swapping horizontally. While from the selfie camera users can opt the features like Video, photo, and beauty by the same gesture as well.
Pros
- Excellent built quality.
- Good Cameras.
- The inclusion of Fingerprint sensor and 3GB RAM at this price point.
Cons
- Sub par SoC performance.
Verdict
Kult beyond is a fantastic smartphone at this price point. The inclusion of a 13MP optics on a front and the back is rarely seen in this price domain. Hence it is highly appreciable. Also, the 3GB RAM, Fingerprint sensor, and a metal built design are cheery on the cake. All in all this the best entry level contender in the current market scenario.
