Everywhere you turn today, there’s an Android phone. They make up the larger share of the smartphone market globally. BlackBerry phones used to be that common, but the game has changed. Tecno has flooded the Nigerian market with very cheap low cost Android phones. Today, another phone brand is in the Nigerian market. The name of the Brand is Innjoo. They have two new smartphones in the Nigerian market, the Innjoo i1s and the Innjoo i2. I have the Innjoo i1s with me.
The Innjoo i1s Android phone is being sold exclusively in Nigeria by Jumia Nigeria. The phone is costing just N14,000 N13, 230. That’s ⅙ the amount of money that it’ll cost to get the Samsung GALAXY S5. How could an Android phone that looks so good with such high spec sell that cheap? What are some of the great features of this phone?
Design
The Innjoo phone has hardware function buttons. Though the Android 4.4 Kitkat that’s on it looks very pure–like the ones that Google ships, onscreen function keys are missing. The volume rocker and power button are on the right of the phone. The keypads are well spaced such that someone with a set of fat fingers can easily reach all the virtual keys and type accurately and fast.
Full Specifications
- SIM type: Mini-SIM/Dual SIM
- Released: July, 2014
- Dimension: 142.0 x 72.7 x 9.3 mm Weight: 156g
- Display: 5.0 inches, 854 x 480 pixels
- Memory: 8GB, plus micro SD card slot
- Camera: 5MP back with LED flash, 0.3MP front-facing
- Operating System: Android 4.4 Kitkat
- Chipset: Mediatex MT6592 CPU: Quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex A7 GPU: Mali-400-MP2
- RAM: 1GB
- Radio: Yes
- Battery: 1,900 mAh
Price: N14,000, 13,230 –
The box is pretty–nicely packaged. I opened the box open and revealed a pretty Android phone.
I powered the phone and inserted my SIM. It uses a regular SIM card– the type that works with the old Nokia 3310. I’m not a fan of multiple SIMs, so I popped in the only SIM card that I have. I must confess that one of the biggest selling points of the phone is the cost.
Applications and Software
It is possible that Innjoo is able to load the Android 4.4 Kitkat to this low cost phone due to the fact that Google made the Kitkat light enough to be able to run on phones with low specs–up to phones running 512 mb RAM. This Innjoo i1s is running 1 GB of RAM by the way. This makes the Innjoo i1s a lot better than many of the other low cost Android phones in the market that cost about N14,000.
You can install all popular apps to the device and run them. Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and Gmail all worked well on the device. One note of caution though; the internal storage is 1 GB and that is the only space in the phone where apps and data can be stored. But the phone also came shipped with 8 GB phone storage (That’s what the spec sheet said) Here’s where it gets tricky, the phone is made in such a way that I can not move apps from the internal storage to the phone storage (I am not even talking of external micro SD card storage here.)
If you are application crazy like I am, be warned, there’s limit to the amount of apps you’ll be able to load. Keep the apps that you install to the bearest minimum and you’ll be good.
Battery
The battery appears not to be properly calibrated. On some days, I get a full day’s use from the phone. On other days, the battery runs out before I run out of the day. On the average, the 1900 mAh baterry won’t take you through the whole day. You might want to order for a power bank to charge the phone if the battery is running out while you are out and about. (considering that it costs just N14,000 to get the phone)
Camera
The 5 MP camera has flash support. But you really don’t have to use a flash for most smartphones. I explained why that may be so in an article I wrote here. If you are shooting pictures during broad day light and outdoors with proper lighting, you’ll be fine. Here’s a photo I shot with the Innjoo i1s at about 7 p.m. at night in Lagos: Instagram The phone also has a front facing camera that you can use for selfies. It is really rare to see a low cost Android phone with camera flash. The Innjoo i1s has it.
Sacrifices
Since there are no micro SD card installed and no earphones, you will have to fork out money to buy these.
The screen is not clear when you’re viewing under the sun or in bright daylight. Most times, I have to wait at a corner and shield the phone with my hands to be able to dial out a number. I have the bad habit of stopping on the road and texting; I couldn’t text outdoors with the phone. Even when I turned the phone up to 100% brightness, I was still having this issue, an issue that is common with low cost Android phones by the way.
There’s also the limited storage capacity of the phone that I have already mentioned above.
Two things made me so proud of the phone
- I started at 100% at 7:30 a.m. in the morning and by 4 p.m. I was still on 43%. That’s 8 hrs 30 mins on 3G, emailing, social media and Instant messaging (I later found that on some other days, the phone is not as efficient with power management).
- Another thing of pride I found with the Innjoo i1s is that its 3G reception is superb. I use Etisalat Nigeria on my phone as my primary line. While I was using the iPhone 5s, Samsung GALAXY S5 and the Samsung GALAXY K Zoom, I hardly ever get 3G reception to my line in my house. When I do get it, I won’t be able to do anything with it. I was almost perpetually on EDGE. On the Innjoo, it is joy all the way as my 3G signal at home on the same Etisalat is superb (I did not even peg my mobile data to 3G.)
Many of the things one would one to complain about the Innjoo i1s can be forgiven once you remember how cheap the phone came. If you spend that little for a phone and get all the above, it is still a fair bargain. You can hurry up to Jumia Nigeria to pick up one for yourself. A few people who saw this unit with me have gotten the phone and they never really complained. Most of them are using it as a second phone or even their first smartphone.
This post first appeared on 360nobs.com.
