We continue our segment of very cheap phone and this time around we have iNew U5W. The phone costs just $65. Learn more in our full review.
iNew U5W Review: VIDEO
iNew U5W Review: UNBOXING
The phone ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a pair of earphones, a soft TPU case and a screen protector.
iNew U5W Review: SPECS, PERFORMANCE, BENCHMARKS
Let’s start by taking a look at what kind of specs-sheet you are getting for such a low price. The iNew U5W ships with a quad-core MTK6580 chip with the clock speeds of 1.3GHz, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage.
The gaming performance is actually not bad. Of course, the graphics don’t look spectacular but I didn’t have any lag or major hiccups when I played Asphalt 8 on the lowest graphics.
iNew U5W Review: DESIGN, DISPLAY, FEATURES, BATTERY LIFE
The phone has a decent build quality and it uses plastic in the construction. The phone is compact and sits conformably in the hand.
You can easily remove the backplate and underneath it you will find a removable 3000mAh battery, two SIM card slots and the microSD card slot.
Speaking of the battery, it performs very well. I could get over 5.5 hours of screen-on time, which is a great result for the phone this cheap.
We have a 5MP camera but you should not expect any stellar results from it as this is a $65 phone after all. You may get some okay looking images usable for social media but most of the shots will not look great.
The loudspeaker is actually pretty good and you simply cannot ask more at this price point.
The 5” display does not even sport an HD resolution. Still, it is pretty good panel for the price of the phone. However, it would have been nice to see at least HD resolution.
On the front we have a 2MP shooter, which is not really impressive but you may get an okay looking selfie in good lighting conditions.
A few shortcomings would be that the capacitive buttons are not backlit and there is no LED notification light.
iNew U5W Review: UI
iNew U5W ships with Android 5.1 with some added features and customization options.
To begin with, there is no app tray but we have some fancy looking widgets, ability to customize your phone with different themes, transition effects, wallpapers and so on.
Most importantly, the phone does not lag or stutter on a daily basis.
iNew U5W Review: CAMERA
We have a 5MP camera but you should not expect any stellar results from it as this is a $65 phone after all. You may get some okay looking images usable for social media but most of the shots will not look great.
On the front we have a 2MP shooter, which is not really impressive but you may get an okay looking selfie in good lighting conditions.
iNew U5W Review: CONNECTIVITY
We didn’t have any major connectivity issues. The GPS lock speeds are good but the accuracy could be slightly better.
iNew U5W Review: CONCLUSIONS
iNew U5W is yet another cheap phone from China and this device shows that it has become possible to buy a basic smartphone for basic daily tasks.
Sure, you will not get a good camera or even and HD display but the iNew U5W gets the basics right.
It has a decent design and build, the UI has quite a few customization options and it runs smoothly most of the times.
We don’t say that this is the only phone that you should look for if you are on a tight budget but it is an option worth checking out, if you don’t want to spend more than $65.
