Symphony is one of the more prominent local smartphone brands in Bangladesh. The company started its journey back in 2008 when it used to sell rebranded Chinese feature phones in the local market. Over the years, the company moved to assemble and produce parts for their smartphones in Bangladesh as well. The Z series from Symphony are their prominent entry-level devices. The series gained popularity because of the performance it offered for the price. The latest from the series, the Symphony Z42 also promises similar capabilities. But does it deliver? Let’s find out.

Key Features of Symphony Z42 

Before getting into the details of the device, users should keep in mind that the Z series, including the Z42, offer affordable devices. They undercut their competitors by quite a margin in terms of price alone. As a result, there are a lot of cut corners in almost every aspect of the device. The specs and the details should be considered in ratio to the price, not what is expected by the 2022 standard.

Design and Build Quality

Now moving on to the design, the first thing that strikes is the similarity Z42 shares with the iPhone 13 series. It is almost as if a budget iPhone met with cheap components and an android platform.

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The same boxy design along with the triangular triple camera is present here. The entire device is made of plastic with the front being a glass panel. The build quality isn’t really a strong forte of the Z42. The device does look more premium than it is thanks to the design but the build quality is definitely a letdown.

The usual port selection is all here. The volume rocker and the power button are on the right here. The left features the sim port along with a dedicated microSD slot. The fingerprint scanner is situated on the back at the fingertip resting position. Physical fingerprints are slowly disappearing as most devices these days come with either the in-display scanner or the power button integrated. But because of the pricing constraints, the choice is understandable.

The 3.5 mm headphone jack is present as usual. The single firing bottom speaker is average at best. The sound distorts with a lot of grains in high volume. The Type-C port is a welcome addition here.

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Overall, the design and build quality is representative of the budget category. So users will be getting what they are paying for, nothing more, nothing less.

Display

The phone does well in the display department. And by well, we mean it's a relatively good panel for the price. The 6.52-inch IPS LCD capacitive display has an HD resolution. That brings the total pixel count to 229 ppi. The panel also supports up to 16.7 million colors.

The colors look sharp and vivid on the panel and the display also gets adequately bright for outdoor legibility. But the low pixel count means that the pixels are visible, only if you are looking hard for them.

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The viewing angles are good as there aren't any visible color shifts or blue tints usually seen on capacitive panels. The display won’t rival the likes of AMOLED panels and in reality, it isn’t even trying to. It makes a space for itself given the performance against the budget.

Camera

The iPhone 13-looking camera module has three different sensors here. The main sensor is a 13 MP one with AI and UHD features. This is a usual 13 MP sensor we’ve seen for a few years now on lower-end devices.

The main sensor is the showrunner on the Z42 as the other two included lenses are basically useless. Symphony included two 0.8 MP macro and depth shooters on the Z42. It is often heard that megapixel count doesn’t matter when it comes to quality but 0.8 MP is way too small by 2022 standard. Needless to say, the performance of the lenses isn’t anything mentionable.

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The main sensor however does a decent job of capturing the details in bright sunlight. There isn’t much dynamic range even outdoors but that was sort of expected given the capabilities. Night photography has a lot of grain and the flash helps to ease out the noises to some extent. The front camera is a standard 8 MP one and it gets the job done by and large.

The videography of the main sensor is limited to 1080P at 30 fps. However, the quality isn’t on par with the standard videography of the competitors as there isn’t any stabilization included here.

Processor and Performance

The Symphony Z42 is powered by a UNISOC quad-core processor. The processor itself is built on the 12 Nm architecture with a max output of 1.8 GHz. The processor is coupled with IMG GE8300 GPU.

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Any seasoned tech person would understand that this is a very low-powered entry-level chipset. Will this processor be able to handle graphics-intensive games? Theoretically, yes. But given its computational power, there will be a lot of lags and frame drops, not to mention the heating of the device.

This processor is best suited for casual users. People who just browse social media or YouTube with light to moderate usage. The processor falls much short in performance but the only argument here is the price it comes at.

Battery and Charge Time

The Symphony Z42 has a 5000 mAh battery capacity. Given the processor and the display capacity, the battery should be good enough for 9 to 10 hours of continued usage. There isn’t any fast charging with the Z42 so expect long charging hours.

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Symphony Z42 Official Price in Bangladesh

The official price of Symphony Z42 is 9,599 BDT. The phone is available in all official Symphony retail stores across Bangladesh.

Verdict

The Symphony Z42 follows the precedence of functional low-cost phones from the company. While the price is very affordable, the cost-cutting is apparent in the build quality and the camera. But the display and the battery life are more than enough to make up for the overall shortcomings. To sum things up, the Symphony’s latest Z series phone Z42 can be a great pick for people looking for a budget phone or a secondary device.

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