POCO C50 review: Good smartphone for users to experience Android on budget

Barring occasionally snags, the POCO C50 smartphone works smoothly and has a good on-battery time. It is a basic smartphone good for first time buyers to experience Android on budget

Chinese smartphone maker POCO kicked off 2023 with the launch of POCO C50 in India. The smartphone comes in 2GB and 3GB (review unit) RAM variants, both with 32GB on-board storage, priced at Rs 6,499 and Rs 7,299. Powered by MediaTek Helio A22 processor, the smartphone boots Android 12 Go edition. It seems to be a good smartphone on budget for users migrating from feature phones. Is it? Let us find out:

Design

The POCO C50 has a basic design with a power and volume button placed on the right side of the frame. The button placement is appropriate, making one-handed operation comfortable. Made of plastic, the smartphone has a leather-like textured design on the back for secure in-hand grip. The phone has a fingerprint scanner and dual-camera set-up on the back. On the bottom, it has a microUSB port for charging and data transfers, and a 3.5mm audio out port. The phone is splash proof and coated with dust resistance material for protection against everyday abuses.

Display and audio

The smartphone sports a 6.52-inch HD+ LCD screen of 60Hz refresh rate. The screen is bright, vivid and responsive. Considering the phone’s price, the screen quality and performance is acceptable. It does not offer any colour profile or scheme for personalised experience. However, it has a dark theme and colour inversion mode available. There are options to customise font colour and size, background colour, and more in the display settings. The adaptive brightness mode also works decently.

Coming to the audio, the phone has a speaker on the top side of the frame. The audio from the speaker is loud and clear. It delivers a modest experience while watching videos, listening to music, and playing games. Besides the speaker, the POCO C50 has a 3.5mm audio out port for wired connectivity.

Camera

The POCO C50 sports a dual-camera set-up on the back, featuring an 8-megapixel primary camera sensor and a depth sensor.  On the front, the phone has a 5MP sensor. From a price-performance ratio, the rear camera system is good. It works satisfactory in daylight conditions but struggles in indoor shots and low-light conditions. The zoomed shots show lack of details and there is visible noise across the frame. The phone is capable of recording videos of 1080p resolution at 30 frames-per-second. It comes with a range of photography and videography features like time lapse and short videos. The front camera is good for selfies and video calls, but it also struggles in low-light conditions.

Performance and battery

Powered by MediaTek Helio A22 processor, the POCO C50 is offered with up to 3GB LPDDR4X RAM and 32GB on-board storage. The phone has a microSD card slot for storage expansion (up to 512GB). It is based on Google Android 12 Go edition operating system. The OS is tuned for smooth performance despite limited hardware resources. However, the phone hangs occasionally and the user interface feedback is on a slower side. Besides, there are many bloatware apps preinstalled, including some that cannot be removed from the system such as Feedback, Music etc.

Powered by a 5,000mAh battery, the phone supports 10W fast charging. It takes nearly two hour to recharge a completely drained battery, which lasts up to two days on regular use.

Verdict

Priced at Rs 7,299, the POCO C50 is a good smartphone on budget with decent display, camera, performance, and on-battery time. It has a microUSB port, which could have been replaced with a USB-C port. Barring occasionally snags, the smartphone works smoothly and has a satisfactory on-battery time. That said, the POCO C50 can do all things to an extent and fit easily in your budget.