InFocus Vision 3 PRO review

A budget phone that can't justify itself

Early Verdict

What is the point of this phone? It's average at best with boring specifications and an even more dull user experience.

Pros

  • +

    Sturdy and durable

  • +

    Ergonomic

  • +

    Big battery

Cons

  • -

    Heavy

  • -

    Slow interface

  • -

    Camera clarity

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

InFocus has been trying to make inroads into the Indian market since 2015. The company's latest phone, the Vision 3 PRO is apparently aimed at "millennial's who value an immersive display experience, photography and have greater storage requirements."

This is InFocus' second phone, having launched the A2 in January this year. 

Price and availability

The Vision 3 PRO is a budget phone and at the price of Rs 10,999, it's pretty competitively priced. But, here’s the thing. Xiaomi’s Redmi 5 and Redmi Note 5 also fall into this price range and seem to have better specifications on paper.

Even the Honor 9 Lite, Honor 7X, and Moto G5S Plus are within the same budget. You could say that specifications do not matter, but the Android market has proved to be different in some ways. Sure, InFocus' phone doesn't have to be inferior because it differs in specs, but it becomes more difficult to convince buyers off that. Especially for phones sold online.

Vision 3 Pro display

Vision 3 Pro display

Design and display

The Vision 3 Pro feels heavy. Your first reaction is, “Wow. That feels solid,” followed by, “Okay, so now this is getting uncomfortable.” The front of the phone has a 2.5 D curved tempered glass and the back panel is made of plastic. 

The back has a horizontal dual camera setup equipped with a flash, while the fingerprint sensor is located below the camera and centrally aligned. The volume and power buttons are to the right and the SIM tray sits beside them. 

The top and bottom bezels are a little thick on the front, making the 5.7-inch IPS display less immersive than it should be. And despite the space along the bottom, InFocus chose on-screen navigation rather than separate navigation buttons.

On a first glance, the colours on the screen look balanced. It's neither too warm, nor too cool. But, the screen isn't very easy to view under direct sunlight, which is disappointing.

That said, the InFocus Vision 3 Pro does have some redeeming qualities. The Vision 3 Pro is narrow, despite the large screen size, which aids one-handed use. You can reach all corners of the phone with your thumb without compromising your grip. 

It also helps that the phone has rounded sides instead of sharp edges.

Overall, the Vision 3 Pro looks pretty sleek and feels durable, but the design needs refinement.

Performance and software

InFocus’ new smartphone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat with Smile UX on top. There are two problems here. With Android P about to launch, that makes the phone two generations old out of the box. That alone should be reason enough to not buy this phone. 

Second, Smile UX is clunky. You can feel the lag on Smile UX even when all you're doing is swiping through home screens. The camera app is a whole other story that we'll get to in a bit. 

The Vision Pro 3 operates on the MediaTek MT6750 T octa-core chipset, which has two quad-core ARM-A53 clusters inside, clocked at 1.5GHz and 1.0GHz. 

The phone has 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, which can be expanded to 128GB.

Battery port, speakers

Battery port, speakers

Battery

The 4000mAh battery is probably the highlight here. The InFocus Vision Pro 3 runs a comfortable day-and-a-half of heavier-than-usual usage before flashing the low battery notification. 

It doesn't have fast charging or a USB Type-C port, which isn’t expected from a budget phone in this segment but would obviously be preferred.

Vision 3 Pro camera

Vision 3 Pro camera

Camera

The horizontal dual-camera on the back has a 13MP primary sensor and an 8MP secondary sensor. The camera is slow to focus and takes a lot of blurry photos. 

In the camera settings, the app has a ‘Circle’ mode that is similar to choosing the aspect ratio of your image, except you get a round frame and a picture-in-picture mode, which is similar to Nokia’s ‘Bothie’ feature. It enables the user to click a photo using the rear and front cameras simultaneously. 

The settings also have a ‘Multi’ mode, which puts the user in a live collage mode with a 2x2 frame. It seems like pretty handy feature especially for when you’re out shortlisting which shoes to buy. You could have all options in the same frame without having to use a different app to arrange your photos. The ‘Artistic’, ‘Effects’ and ‘Watermark’ options are similar, giving you a bunch of filters and frames to choose from.

The rear and front cameras don’t handle exposure well when you're outdoors and in many other well lit conditions. The corners get over saturated and often all that’s visible is a white blob. Edges in images also aren’t are as sharp as they could be. The colour reproduction otherwise seems on point though, especially in naturally lit conditions where you aren’t shooting against the light. 

The 8MP selfie camera also isn’t too amazing. It’s inconsistent with clarity and details, making it difficult to take selfies. The ‘Beauty’ mode makes the image smooth but also blurs the edges, so it’s a compromise between which aspect of the image is the priority.

But here’s the thing. More often than not, the main function of the smartphone camera is to be a point-and-shoot device. That implies, that the camera should be fast and should manage a wide variety of situations well, which clearly isn’t the case here. 

Not to mention that the camera app is very slow to transition between different modes. It’s not an instantaneous swipe, and takes a good 3 seconds to move from mode to mode. It may sound nit-picky, but the Xiaomi Redmi 5, a phone that’s cheaper than the Vision 3 Pro, has a smoother camera interface.

Early verdict

The InFocus Vision 3 Pro is hardly impressive if you leave its battery out of the equation. Even then, other offerings in the same price segment come with better specifications and an at-par battery. 

The user interface isn't anything spectacular, but the camera app, while being bulky, is very feature rich and allows for a lot of options. 

Maybe a more in-depth review of the device will lead to newer revelations, but at this point, it's hard to find what this phone's USP is.

Prabhjote Gill is the Senior Journalist at Business Insider India. She covering everything space, tech and defence at Business Insider India. She is also in-charge of allocating stories to junior writers.