Symphony Xplorer H300

DESIGN & BUILD

Symphony's H300 does not at all look like any of the H series phone we have encountered before. It has a lean metal wrapped around the edge. The phone comes with matte finish back with a leatherette design. Weighing around 150 gm and measuring 8.7 mm in thickness, the phone looks like the love-child of a Moto G and iPhone 4S (minus the metal and glass). The power buttons and the volume rockers both are placed at the top right. The 3.5mm port sits on the top and micro-USB port rests in the bottom right. The back sports the camera, LED flash, speaker groove and the obvious Symphony branding.

DISPLAY

H300 features a 5-inch IPS display with HD (720x1280p) resolution. We found the display is good with wide viewing angles Works good on direct sunlight with full brightness. The colour rendition was up to the mark. We thought there would be some pixalisation since it was not a full-HD panel but to our utter surprise there wasn't any. The glass is a fingerprint magnet though; so be assured there will be smudges if you are not careful.

CAMERA

H300 has a 13MP auto focus camera with a dual LED flash on the back. The camera, despite being grainy and missing some details, certainly is among the high points of the phone. Images captured by the camera turned out pretty great in bright sunlight. What impressed us most was the 5 MP front facing camera. It's able to take photos in normal mode and wide angle mode – a feature essential if you and your crew need to immortalise every group hangout. 

SOFTWARE

H300 runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop and the user interface is a custom one but bears some resemblance with the stock version of the OS including gesture control and smart awake. With the Gesture control you interact with the phone by drawing some gestures in the air. In addition to that you can draw 'C' to open camera or 'M' to open music player or even double tap to lock/unlock the screen. This feature is called Smart Awake. 

PERFORMANCE

The heart of the H300 is a 1.4GHz Octa Core processor coupled with a 2 GB RAM. The decent processing power of this Octa Core processor is good enough to be your daily driver. Games and apps, as long as those are not graphics intensive, will run smoothly. We did experience a bit lag now and then though, but those were short lived. 

BATTERY

The phone comes with a 2500mAh battery which is not adequate since it's sort of a norm to have 3000+ mAh batteries on screens bigger than 5 inch. The battery life of H300 can be optimised a bit though by using the built in phone assist. 

SPECS

Display: 5" IPS HD Display

CPU: 1.4GHz Octa Core

GPU: Mali 450 MP4 

OS: Android OS 5.1

ROM: 16 GB

RAM: 2 GB

Camera: Rear- 13 MP; Front- 5 MP

Battery: 2500 mAh

Features: Smart Awake, Smart Gesture,  Super Power Saving Mode etc. 

Price: Tk. 9,490/-

 

VERDICT

H300 is priced at Tk. 9,490/-, which is reasonable for the features and performance that you get. However, Symphony just launched H400, a new smartphone with added features and bigger battery for Tk. 500/- more.  We didn't review the H400 yet so we can't say which one would be better. However, what we can say after reviewing H300 is: if you are in need of an entry level smartphone with more than decent performance then buying a H300 would certainly be bang for the buck. 

 

Photos: Rahin Sadman