Zen Ultrafone 701HD Review

I named Zen Ultrafone 701HD the ultra-performer cause it really is. Like i said in the review this device really surprised me with its performance. Sometimes, it feels like you are using a really high end device but it’s only a 12,000 rupees device which is really hard to believe. I think the magic resides in it’s chip-set, Mediatek MT6589 which is i think is a very under rated piece of technology. But, that’s a good thing, why? because of that we get this much power at such low prices. Okay so now coming back to review.

Call quality & Messaging

Call quality of this phone is good, the voice from the microphone is clear not that loud but clear. Microphone quality is also good. You can send smileys or videos, music, pictures anything related to multimedia you’d like to send through messaging you can see more of this in the review video below.

Touch response

The touch response of this phone is really really good and you can even use its touchscreen with a glove or with wet hands.

Android version

Android version is 4.2 with project butter which makes this phone buttery smooth.

Display

720p IPS display of Zen Ultrafone is really very good and beautiful believe me when i say this. It’s even better than Sony Xperia SP. It’s sun light readability and viewing angles are phenomenal

Music & Video

For music player its got the default Google play music player. It can play almost any type of audio format and the music quality in headphones is very good, very clear. The default video player can play 1080p videos without any problem and also supports most of the formats. Although its speaker quality is not that good, it’s very clear in sound production but quite low in volume.

Camera

Camera of Zen Ultrafone 701HD is of 8 megapixel with LED flash, flash performance is good in low light conditions. Its camera quality specially in daylight is really very good don’t believe me see for yourself in the shots below. It has auto-focus and touch to focus both, it supports 1080p video recording but only in 3gp format and the quality is decent. You can also take photos while shooting videos and its also got “multi angle view image” which is nothing but Photosphere with a different name. Its also got a 3.2MP front facing camera. Anyways here are the pictures in various lighting conditions.

Web Browsing

Web browsing on its beautiful screen looks great and pinch to zoom doesn’t stutter ’cause of the 1GB RAM present in this phone which also keeps the web browsing buttery smooth.

Gaming

Well, i am not going to talk a lot about this much. One thing which i have said before and now saying it again is this phone is built for gaming. You can watch the performance for yourself in the gaming video below.

Battery

According to what i have observed this phone could easily give one day of battery life on normal use, but if you only use it to play video games or to browse web constantly on wifi or 3G it would last something in between 5 – 8 hours. It simply means on heavy use you have to charge it daily.

Sensors

It has all the usual sensors like magnetometer, accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, gps.

Build quality & miscellaneous info

Build quality of Zen ultrafone 701HD is decent. It’s got a rubberized back cover which gives a really good grip and feels really good in hand. Three capacitive touch buttons right below the screen are very responsive and glows in the dark. It’s quite slim and surprisingly because of its rounded design around the edges one hand use is possible. It’s got dual sim dual standby (normal sim) and micro sd card slot which is expandable upto 32GB.

Conclusion

I couldn’t recommend this smartphone more, for 12,000/- rupees Zen Ultrafone 701HD is really a great performer

Review video

Gaming video