Swipe Elite 2 Plus – Review

The Swipe Elite 2 Plus is a successor for Elite 2. The Elite naming convention is getting confusing. We had the Elite, Elite 2, Elite Plus, Elite Note and also recently the Elite Max. The Elite 2 Plus sits somewhere roughly between the Elite 2 and the Elite Plus. The Elite Plus remains my favorite among all the Swipe Elite mobiles.  Now that the Elite 2 Plus is here, lets talk about it. But let us keep in mind that the mobile is priced at Rs 4444 and I am going to be comparing this mobile with similar priced mobiles in the market.

Design

The design of the Swipe Elite 2 Plus is very similar to the Lumia mobiles we have seen in the past. It has a rock solid build quality. It is slightly heavy to hold but has good balance. The back is removable and the battery is user replaceable. The top has 3.5mm socket, micro USB port at the bottom along with a mic, volume buttons on the left and the power button is on the right. The speaker grill is at the back. The camera with a single LED flash is at the back with a mic for recording audio. The display is 5 inch and below the display is the non-back lit navigation keys. It does not have notification LED. Overall the design is neat and there is nothing that can go wrong with such a typical design.

Display

The display is a 5-inch screen capable of 854 x 480 pixels FWVGA resolution. It is not protected by any hardened glass, which is not surprising in this price range. The screen has a screen guard applied to it out of the box.  The colors are washed out and the display has very poor viewing angles. The text is not crisp. both have blurry edges and for a moment, I thought something was wrong with my eyes. Then I removed the sub par quality screen guard and things were a bit more clearer. Swipe could have gone for a better display, considering the fact that their earlier model, the Elite Plus had a great display. In this price range, the Lenovo A1000, A2010 or even the Xolo Era 1x and Micromax Bolt have better displays.

Hardware

Swipe Elite 2 Plus runs on a 1.5 GHz quad-core Spectrum SC9830 64-bit processor with Mali-400 GPU,. It has 1GB DDR3 RAM, 8GB internal storage with expandable memory up to 32GB with a dedicated MicroSD card slot. There is nothing to rave about the performance of this mobile. It has got Android 5.1 with minimal skinning. So the UI is smooth and I don’t see any lags. Also I did play some basic games like subway surfer and temple run and I found that the mobile was able to handle the graphics fairly well. It heats up on continuous usage and the temperature reaches a maximum of 44 degree, which is totally acceptable. The mobile has 4G Volte. Network latching was perfect. The speakers were average, but audible and clear. It has FM radio. To sum it up, the performance on this mobile is satisfactory, given the price of this mobile.

Camera

The 5 MP camera on the front is a fixed focus arrangement and it is pre-historic. The colors are bright and vivid and the saturation levels are decent as well. The focus is really bad as the mobile does not focus on objects that are close. It is a below average camera. The front facing 2 MP camera is also of mediocre quality. The selfies are blurred and always out of focus with soft edges and lack of details. The image preview on the mobile is bad, due to the display quality. But on the computer, it looks decent.  Yes, it is a sub 5k mobile, but there are mobiles in this segment that have better camera performance. Ill just leave it at that. Check out the camera samples below.

Software

The mobile runs on Android 5.1 with no skin on top. But it has a few customizations. It supports multiple Indian languages. I used the mobile in Tamil from day one and the translation is perfect. I would totally buy this mobile just for this reason. But then it is Lollipop and I doubt that this mobile will ever be updated. It has very little customization options, but as this mobile has stayed away from all that circus, it is smooth. The UI shows no signs of lag and it is fast as well. I like what Swipe has done with this mobile on the software department.

Battery

The mobile runs on a 2500 mAh battery. On my normal usage, the mobile lasts for about a day. I get a screen on time of about 2:30 hours. The battery performance is just about average. Having said that, I must also mention that the any mobile in this segment is similar to the Swipe Elite 2 plus in terms of battery, if not worse.

Verdict

For Rs 4444, you get a no frill -no thrills design, a below average display, camera and battery, decent performance and a buttery smooth stock android experience. So if you need a mobile with fast UI and decent performance, I would suggest you go for the Swipe Elite 2 plus. Other options in this segment are Intex Cloud Smart 4G, Xolo Era 4G, Intex Cloud Breeze, Micromax Canvas Amaze and Intex Aqua Star 4G. The Swipe Elite 2 Plus is cheaper than all these mobiles. The Micromax Canvas Amaze has a better camera, but it is 1000 Rs costlier. If you are on a tight budget, I would suggest you to buy the Swipe Elite 2 plus. If you can extend your budget a bit, you can go for the Redmi 3S or the Coolpad Note 3 lite.

It is available exclusively on Flipkart. Check it out.