The Billion Capture+ marks Flipkart’s venture into the smartphone domain in India
“With the Capture+, Flipkart is venturing into the smartphone domain in India”
Flipkart happens to be a brand that just rolls off the tongue every time someone mentions online shopping in India. Thanks to its presence of over a decade in the Indian market, Flipkart feels it has been able to study and accurately grasp the buying behaviour of Indian customers. Armed with this knowledge, the brand recently launched its in-house brand – Billion. While it was already into home appliances, the e-commerce player has now entered the smartphone domain with the Capture+. As per the company, the Capture+ has been designed keeping in mind the buying pattern of Indians and the recent trends in the industry. We recently got a retail unit of the smartphone and have unboxed it for you, along with giving it the first look treatment.
Right from the packaging, it’s evident that Flipkart knows what it is doing, as the box looks appealing with its vivid red hue and minimal branding. The contents of the retail package are nothing out of ordinary, containing some documentation, an adapter and USB Type-C cable placed below the device. Now, that we have got the box contents of the Billion Capture+ out of the way, let’s move on to the handset itself.
As soon as you pick up the Flipkart Billion Capture+, you cannot help but notice the solid build quality of the device. While the construction of the smartphone is not unibody, the back panel is non-removable. Billion has opted to go for a sturdy metal chassis sandwiched between a three-piece polycarbonate back panel and a 2.5D curved Dragontrail glass on the front.
Speaking of the front, the 5.5-inch display comes with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels and a pixel density of 401 ppi. The display looks as good in real life as it does on paper. The colours are punchy, the text is crisp and the screen is legible even under the direct sunlight. Moving to the sides of the phone, the right spine holds the volume and power button, whereas the SIM slot is on the left edge. The 3.5mm audio jack in on the top, while the bottom houses the USB Type-C port with loudspeakers on either side.
Flip over the device, and there is the dual camera module, dual LED flash, Billion logo and the proud slogan of “Made in India, Made for India”. The camera module comprises of a pair of 13-megapixel sensors – monochrome and RGB. While the camera performs as expected with additional modes like supernight for low light and normal mode, we experienced slight lag in the portrait and pro modes.
While the idea of a pro mode is useful, there’s no way to easily access controls except to tap on the cog icon and then adjust ISO, white balance and exposure from the slide-out menu. However, the initial shots taken using the Billion Capture+ are pretty decent. On to the front camera, the 8-megapixel unit did manage to impress as it captured sharp and detailed images. The beautify mode also works as intended.
The Flipkart Billion Capture+ comes with an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor and there are two variants – 3GB RAM / 32GB storage and 4GB RAM / 64GB storage. Our unit happened to be latter and offers a little over 58GB free on first boot. If that’s not enough, then Flipkart has tied up with tronX to offer unlimited cloud storage.
In our brief stint with the Capture+, the handset managed to jump from app to app pretty smoothly and also handled basic gaming without any lag. The fingerprint scanner on the rear panel is pretty quick and accurate. The phone runs Android 7.1.2 Nougat in its stock iteration, though the pre-installed bloatware takes a away a little from that. Since the handset comes from the e-commerce major, the device ships with its apps like Myntra, Flipkart and PhonePe, among others, and sadly, they can’t be uninstalled to free up storage.
In a nutshell, Flipkart is off to a good start with its debut smartphone as the Billion Capture+ offers a solid spec sheet. Add to it the fact that it’s priced at Rs 10,999 for the 3GB RAM variant, while the higher-end model costs Rs 12,999, the device becomes more attractive. That said, it does face competition from the likes of the Xiaomi Mi A1 ( review), which comes with Android One, dual cameras and similar hardware.
Photos by Raj Rout
