There’s no denying that the Indian smartphone market is crowded but the good part about it is
that there’s always room for new players. Centric launched its operation last year and while its
previous devices failed to attract the fickle Indian consumer’s attention, their new A1 might be
able to do so.
The Centric A1 may not win any accolades when it comes to design but it certainly is a decent
looking device. It comes in two colour choices – gray and gold where the glass front is
complemented with a metallic back. The phone has a good weight distribution that makes it
easy to use and hold. The fingerprint sensor is at the back and touch-sensitive buttons beneath
the display.
The phone has a 5.5-inch Full HD display that offers decent colours along with good contrast
and legibility in direct sunlight. There’s no option to tweak the colour temperature but supports
adaptive brightness and ambient display.
Centric A1 is powered by Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor and 3GB RAM and while the
phone works fine for everyday tasks, you see some signs of slowdown while multitasking. The
Android 7 Nougat phone comes with 32GB of built-in storage but can expand with a microSD
card to up to 256GB.
On the camera front, the phone is equipped with a 13-megapixel camera with LED flash
whereas the front sports an 8-megapixel sensor with a selfie flash. Both cameras do a decent
job in daylight but disappoint in low-light with images showing a lot of noise. The front-facing
flash helps a bit while taking low-light selfies but the images still turn out to be grainy.
In terms of battery life, our average use gave almost a day on the phone’s 3000mAh battery but
the good part is support for Quick Charge 3.0 that can charge the device really fast and even
bundles a fast charger along with the phone.
The phone also supports DTS Sound that also helps to improve the audio quality.
Centric A1 is priced at Rs. 10,999 where the competition is really stiff with a lot of options for
consumers. But few things that work in favour of A1 is the ample base storage, Quick Charge
3.0 support and DTS for audio lovers.
WE’RE IMPRESSED Quick Charge 3.0 support that you generally find in expensive flagship
phones
WE’D IMPROVE Camera can be optimised
THE LAST WORD Centric A1 is aggressively priced smartphone that comes with premium
features like Quick Charge 3.0, DTS
RATING 3.5/5