Edison's Helio S2

After laying low for a while, Edison group finally is pacing things up with their premium line of smartphones- Helio. In quick succession, they brought out two phones: S20 & S2. We already reviewed the former one and now it's time to take the latter for a spin. So bear with us!

The Helio S2's design elements have strikingly resemblances with its premium predecessor. But in order to make the device wallet-friendly, it did cut some corners; we'll talk more about it as we go. The phone comes into a thin metal unibody construction with a curved metallic edge that engrosses the body.

Helio S2 comes with the almost same display as its flagship predecessor S20. It now sports a 5.5-inch IPS panel with a Full HD resolution resulting stunningly high pixel density. If compared with the S20, we might see a slight difference since the S20 comes with an AMOLED display. It doesn't mean S2 isn't any good. In fact we found the display rendered colours vibrantly along with a great viewing angle.

Under the hood, the Helio S2 comes with a MediaTek MT6753 Octa Core 64bit Cortex-A53 processor clocking at 1.3GHz. This processor is backed by a Mali-T720MP3 graphics processing unit and 3GB DDR3 RAM. To us, the performance of the phone seemed to be snappy for the most part. It did however struggled a bit loading intense multi-tasking time to time. But then again, it is proved to be quite capable at handling all our regular tasks i.e. messaging, social media surfing, light gaming, binge watching TV shows of 1080p etc.

The phone comes with a ROM of 32 GB which should be decent enough for most regular user. If you are an audiophile like me then make sure you plug in a microSD card. Fingerprint is the new black for smartphones and Helio S2 is no exception. It comes with a snappy fingerprint scanner placed right below the camera (and the flash). Just slide your finger on the scanner and voila! The screen is unlocked. The status bar of the phone slides up from bottom which some iPhone user might find offensive (!). Helio S2 comes loaded with the Android Marshmallow. But like always, Edison embedded a skin which made the phone a bit sluggish and tacky.

Helio S2 was my daily driver for the last couple weeks. It comes with a 3,150 mAh battery which contentedly allow for a full day of use, I mostly browsed, IMed and spent hours on YouTube when I wasn't busy playing Angry Bird Space. Yes, I love that game.

One of  the best features of the phone is the camera. Helio S2 comes armed with a 13 MP rear camera that sports f/2.0 aperture. The rear camera is powered by a SONY IMX258 sensor which is also the heart of many other great camera phones including the OnePlus X. The images that we took were punchy and effervescent. For the price that you are paying, very few phones offer images of this quality. The usual refinements are there so not going to bore our readers with those. There is also an 8 MP front-facing camera that takes extremely sharp selfies.

Verdict: 

We have a great phone here. The performance of Helio S2 is good enough to be your daily driver, the build quality is good enough to pass it as a high end smartphone yet it doesn't require you to have a deep pocket. The camera, which we loved in particular, is the highlight of the phone. In short this is the perfect phone to flaunt your flashy lifestyle. 

SPECS

Display: 5.5"FHD IPS 1920 X 1080

CPU: 1.3 GHz Octa Core (64bit)

GPU: Mali-T720MP3

OS: Android Marshmallow 6.0

ROM: 32 GB

RAM: 3 GB

Camera: 13MP Rear + 8MP Front

Battery: 3150 mAh

Sensors: Accelerometer, proximity, fingerprint

Price: Tk. 15,990/-