How a budget phone is made? The general recipe is, make it great in some areas, and then make some sacrifice in some other areas to keep the price in budget. But Symphony seems to be breaking this unwritten rule with their latest releases, where the recipe is pack up everything that can be expected in the budget, then add some more!
Previously released Symphony Z60 has been an amazing deal in the budget, and now Symphony has unveiled the upgraded model, Symphony Z60 Plus. And is this even better!
The 6/128 variant of Symphony Z60 Plus is priced at BDT 11,999, which is BDT 1500 more than the 4/64 variant of Symphony Z60. And for the extra price, it offers higher memory and storage, a better chipset and an upgraded camera experience.
Being equipped with a 90 Hz refresh rate display, glass back part, 18 W fast charging and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, Symphony Z60 has stand out in this budget segment. Symphony Z60 Plus has that all, then made the performance, storage and camera even better!
Now, let’s get into the details. But before that please note that this article is not based on hands on experience, rather on available specs and also on Symphony Z60 user feedbacks. As I do not have any personal experience, so it may not reflect real life experience completely.
I appreciate the design of Symphony Z60, specially the camera module looks nice to me. It looks minimal yet premium. The build material got some premiumness as well. The back part is built with 2.5D glass, and the frame has a metal coated finishing. The glass back part requires to be careful though, as it is unlikely to survive a drop, specially if used without a back cover.
Moving to the front, there is a 6.6″ 1600*720 HD+ display with 90 Hz refresh rate and a punch-hole camera cutout. The display uses incell IPS technology. Brightness is decent for most situations, but some struggle in direct daylight is expected in this budget. Overall it can offer a great display experience for this budget.
Now let’s get deeper, to the hardware section. Z60 Plus is equipped with Unisoc Tiger T616, and . It has a octacore CPU with 2x Cortex A75@2.0 GHz and 6x Cortex A55@1.8 GHz. The GPU is Mali G57 1core@750 MHz.
T616 can be considered a better version of T606. Both has same CPU and GPU cores setup, but T616 is higher clocked. Then it also has better display handling and camera processing capability compared to T606. The CPU performance is great. But as the GPU is single core, it is not ideal for graphics intensive tasks. Overall, T616 competes well with G70, G80 and similar chipsets.
Then there’s something interesting going on in the memory and storage section, as Symphony Z60 Plus adopts advanced uMCP5 technology. uMCP (UFS based multichip package) packages DRAM and NAND, meaning RAM and storage in a single chip.
With high-speed uMCP5 6 GB DRAM and 128 GB NAND along with a decently powerful chipset, Symphony Z60 Plus should perform well in day to day usage to moderate level intensive tasks.
As I have noticed from the user feedbacks, the standard Z60 could not satisfy many of its customer with its camera, although it was improved with a software update later on. Symphony Z60 Plus has acquired an upgraded primary camera, which is a f/1.8 50 MP shooter. There’s a 2 MP depth sensor with that, and the selfie shooter is f/2.0 8 MP.
I’m not sure whether it’s actual 50 MP with hardware based pixel-binning, or a lower-res camera with software based super pixel. But anyway, with a better processing capable chipset, and a new sensor, I’d expect it to perform at least better than Z60 Plus. Real life performance will speak.
Z60 Plus has a 5000 mAh Li-Poly battery and comes with a type C fast charging. With it’s 12 nm chipset, and uMCP5 technology for memory and storage, it should do a decent job in backup.
You know, what makes me a bit disappointed about a great budget package otherwise? Moving to the sensor section, Z60 Plus misses out compass sensor and gyroscope- like many other phones in this budget. It’s an area, where Z60 Plus doesn’t stand out.
The software section is a bit upsetting as well, as it comes with Android 12. And obviously you can’t expect an Android version update here in this budget. But anyway, Android 13 didn’t bring that many major changes to the table, so I guess, it won’t be a deal breaker.
