Kogan, an Australia company partner with BenQ to bring one of the best budget 4G phones out in the market now. Will this phone be a deal-breaker for the Australian market? The Kogan Agora 4G+ pro is based on BenQ F5 LTE, and this phone is a hit to worldwide market because the pricing is very affordable and you are also able to retain LTE functionality. BenQ might be famous for PC monitors in the gaming and consumer market, but can their phone be able to perform as well as their monitor?
Design
The phone might look cheap, but it has an elegant white essence on the phone which looks quite similar with the white monitor BenQ have. Besides that, the phone has a 5-inch screen with 1280 x 720 resolution, which look slightly larger for a small phone size like this and it contain as 294 pixel-per-inch which has slightly lower compared to Apple iPhone 5s retina grade with only 326 pixels-per-inch.
At the rear has a camera contain 13MP camera with flash on it and a removable back cover, but no removable battery which is kind of sad. However, at least include a microSD slot for you to expand your storage from the existing 16GB storage capacity. It’s a weird place to put your speaker slightly bottom of the phone, because this actually doesn’t allow you to enjoy the full enjoyment of the speaker because of the limited sound output potential.
Software & User Experience
You will not receive a stock ROM like the original BenQ F5, but instead you will get a vanilla Android based on KitKat. You will also receive a 4G connectivity that basically can be used in most of the countries. There are a few modifications that have been made to the OS by BenQ to achieve a near-stock feel and in a nutshell, it means it’s been added by bits of chocolate for good measures.
With two fingers, you are able to pull down the quick settings that you can customize according to your taste. Surprisingly, they included gesture in ease usage – Double tap the screen to wake up and flip to silence to mute an incoming call. Since this is a BenQ phone and there will be features called – Low Blue Light, which can reduce the constraint on your eyes for long usage period. Overall, the software doesn’t really bother me much on negativity feedback on this phone, due to its vanilla operating system which doesn’t add bloatware to the system and kudos for BenQ making this happen.
In addition, there is a 13MP camera for capturing memories and other stuff during the usage of the phone. However, if you view photos in their native resolution and you’ll get a lot of noises when low-light occur.
Benchmark, Battery Life, and Network Quality
Despite it’s a budget-oriented phone, the Kogan Agora 4G+ is using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 chip and receive a certain level of performance with 2GB of RAM. Was shocked on the performance on this device, everything run smoothly despite the entry-level processor. Unlike on certain devices, Hearthstone: Heroes of the Warcraft didn’t suffer much lag or heat up like an Intel Atom processor. Thumbs up for the company to keep using Snapdragon 400 chip and shows a significant improvement in gaming and battery life too.
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I was completely surprised with the battery life that this smartphone have, it can last for a day even I played a game or even always on social media and remember this phone is running on 4G LTE too. The phone has a very nice screen with near perfect brightness despite the viewing angle and the feeling of holding this phone isn’t that bad either when you try to play games.
Verdict
The Agora 4G+ is the best budget smartphone that released by Kogan yet and you will get a more refined quality than its predecessors in spite of being loaded in plastic. Despite the low costing on the phone, it contains top-tier features, such as a large screen with 4G internet and cost below AUD 300, this will be a big winning point to have this phone. The camera on the phone didn’t disappoint me much for taking portraits and scenery pictures, you still able to take some nice picture with it but not with an extremely low light condition.
Nevertheless, this phone was superb for its performance per price and retain the beauty of a smartphone. Although, this isn’t the best phone that available out in the market and there isn’t any doubt this is the best budget phone you can get.
You are also able to purchase from Kogan official website over here.
