OTTO CR03 Review: Good Pick for First-time Users!

So, at under Rs. 7,000. What kind of phone would you prefer? A bar phone or a smartphone with entry-level specifications. Well, if you’re looking for a smartphone, then OTTO CR03 could be the one for you. It costs Rs. 6,896 and is being marketed as a selfie phone. So, what do we get for Rs. 6,896? Let’s find out in this review of OTTO CR03.

Build

This phone will give you a good first impression while you look at it. It’s not anything special, but for the price, it does have a good looking back panel. The material used is plastic here, the back, the sides. It has this brushed finish on the back which looks like brushed metal but its plastic.

Well, I like this phone from the back but not so much from the front. I mean look at this device from the front, huge chunky bezels, especially that chin. That’s a huge chin.

Well, this phone might not look beautiful but it does have a robust build quality. The back is also removable but it feels solid all the way through. The buttons are also clicky and they are in the right positions.

So, the back of this phone has two cameras. On the front, you get a selfie camera and a flash as well. And as we go down, we get capacitive buttons which are not existent in this day and age. On top, there’s a headphone jack and a UBS Type A port for charging and then a single speaker at the bottom.

And at last, you will need to open the back pane to access the SD Card and two sim card slots. So its pretty standard here.

Display

Now, let’s move on to the display. This phone has a 5 inches display with a resolution of 480 x 584. The display is straight up poor. The viewing angles are poor if you are not looking at it straight. But the display is okay for the price I think since there aren’t many smartphones at this price. It’s hard to really compare it against other phones. But you cannot really expect a good display at this price.

Hardware and Performance

In terms of hardware, this thing has MT6580M Soc with 4 core CPU clocked at 604MHZ and has mali 400MP GPU. So performance wise. The only apps I did not have problems with are facebook lite and Gmail. They open at okayish speed and you can easily send emails or scroll through the Facebook timeline on facebook lite.

But I was not satisfied with performance when it came to apps like google maps, Instagram and messenger. You would not want to use such apps on this phone. But I think, people using this phone would not use any apps as such. Even if they do, they could be limited to Facebook lite only and just need the basics. Like phone calls and messaging. Which it can certainly do.

Camera

Aight, so talking about camera this phone rocks a dual camera on the back and 5 mp main sensor and I quite don’t know the details about the second sensor because it’s not given on the box and it was not showing up on the hardware id as well. So, It will be foolish to really judge its camera.

It’s of course not that good and I guess you would want to capture pictures just so that you can relish the moments or for some kind of proof. And they certainly did add this 2nd sensor for cosmetics because it doesn’t even have a bokeh mode.

The front camera is also a 5MP main sensor and we can say the same about the front camera as well. It’s good for the price. Again, emphasis on the price!

Software

So its running old software. Android 6.0 and its pretty barebone. You just get stock google apps and the phone is quite okay if you’re just navigating from home screen to app drawer and or scrolling through settings. But I was surprised when I saw a shortcut for the app named face unlock.

So yeah this thing has face unlock. But beware you have to be at a completely bright environment to set up the face unlock. Face unlock surprisingly did work inside the room where the light was low and worked well outdoors as well. But sometimes it did not work under low light and kept on telling that light was too low.

Well, the face unlock is there on this phone. And for the price it’s alright. But, they should have just given us a fingerprint sensor. It’s much easier to use.

Battery

So this phone has a 2200mah battery. And this phone won’t last long. You will have to charge it before the end of the day. And talking about charge time, it took 163 minutes to charge it from 0 to 100. That is 2.7 hours. So yeah 2.7 hours charge time for 2200 mAh battery is like very bad.

Overall

So, this phone is for people that want a very basic phone. Phone Calls, Messaging and that’s it. It’s for people who just need the basics. And on the other side, you can chill on YouTube and scroll through facebook lite when bored. You could not do more on this phone. I mean what can I expect at 6,896?. Just basics