Fly Qik+ review: Fails to make an impression in the race of budget smartphones

In its second innings in the Indian technology market, the UK based smartphone manufacturer - Fly Mobiles has introduced three affordable smartphones- the Qik, Qik+, and Snap.

We got our hands on the Qik+, which is priced at Rs. 6,999, the highest among the three models. This pricing puts the Qik + in the direct fight with the three best smartphones in the sub 8k price bracket; the Redmi 2, Lenovo A6000 and the Moto E (2015). Let’s find out where Qik+ stands in this dog fight.

The sleek but glossy design

At 7.8 mm, Qik+ feels sleek in hands; however the glossy back makes it quite slippery. You have to handle it carefully as it can easily slip off from hands. Its competitors Redmi 2 and Moto E offer a better grip because of their matte and rubberized backs. Moreover, the 5 inch smartphone is comparatively bigger is size from other 5 inchers, because of its broad bezels on top and bottom of the display. This makes it a bit tough to handle with one hand, especially for consumers with small hands. The power button is placed on the right and volume rockers sit on the left edge.

The 5" HD display disappoints

Qik+ features a 5 inch display which comes with a resolution of 1280x720p; and a pixel density of ~294 ppi. Though we found the screen bright enough to display the content in outdoor conditions, it is the color reproduction and touch sensitivity which is not up to the mark. The colors appear washed out and we also experienced some sluggishness in the display’s response of registering the touch input. The competitors such as Redmi 2 and Lenovo A6000 offer better display quality at the same price point.

The Octa-Core chipset with 1 GB RAM serves the tasks well

Qik+ comes with Mediatek 1.7 GHz Octa Core processor, which makes it the cheapest 5 inch octa-core smartphone in the market. The 8 cores handle basic tasks without any issues. The applications load quickly without any lags in the basic functionality such as navigating through different home screens, switching between the applications, etc.

The synthetic benchmarks results also signify the smooth overall performance of the smartphone. It beats the competitors in Antutu by a huge margin and the 3D mark (ISU) score of 6328 is also higher than the rivals. The smartphone can be used to play games such as Subway surfer, Dead Trigger 2 with no issues. We did not encounter a single glitch while playing these games. However, don’t expect it to run high end graphical intensive games such as Real racing 3, Marvel Champions without any performance lags. It is a sub 8K smartphone and performs like one, even very well in the tasks where CPU is involved.

The cameras deliver average results

The smartphone features a 13MP primary camera with an LED flash which seems to be a good deal at this price point but the results are average. The day-light pictures are good and have decent details as the sensor is able to capture a good amount of light. But the moment you shift to a place with low-light conditions, the quality deteriorates as pictures become quite noisy.

The 5 MP front camera integrates ‘Face Beauty Mode’ which works well in capturing selfies and can be also be used for video calling.

The battery and speaker output is not up to the mark

Fly Qik+ is backed by a 2200 mAh battery unit which loses the game when compared to the Moto E (2015) and Redmi 2. It touched a mark of 5 hours 40 minutes in our video playback test. The phone survived for 13 hours with moderate usage that includes web browsing, casual gaming, calling, texting, etc. The other two smartphones crossed the 6 hours mark in our tests.

The speaker unit at the rear panel disappoints as the sound quality is not impressive. It is loud, vocals can be heard clearly but it lacks bass.