QMobile began 2017 through the release of one its lower-end smartphones in the form of the Noir i5.5. The smartphone struck the market shelves come January 17 with a launch price of 9,500 rupees. While it could’ve had a better name in all fairness, its specifications might suggest otherwise.

The customary design yet again makes an appearance

The smartphone features a design we’ve been seeing from the local smartphone manufacturer for quite some time now. While we’ll salute them for introducing a slight change from their earliest devices, the overall build quality and design is fairly redundant and brings nothing new to the table.

Display: quantity but not quality!

The Noir i5.5 is equipped with a giant 5.5 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with a pixel density close to the 290ppi mark. This translates into a 720p resolution that seems a tad stretched on the large front display. The screen size is wonderfully poised to lure the large-screen Romeos towards the i5.5 but if you’re a little more into displays than an average layman, the i5.5 isn’t exactly what you’ve ordered.

Light, camera, aw snap!

Contrary to popular belief, the smartphone does feature a nice set of cameras; while we’re perfectly happy with what we’ve seen at its primary end, its 2 megapixel selfie sensor is a cause for concern particularly as it has to present its efforts on a fairly large display panel. However, a front facing LED flash is there to provide it with some backing but it’s reasonably underpowered and nothing like its big 8 megapixel primary sibling.

Slow and steady wins the race, or does it?

The i5.5 is powered by a 1.3 GHz Quad-Core processor with 1GB of RAM. Definitely underpowered, the smartphone will require much more than just what it possesses to smoothly cater the built-in Android Marshmallow. 8 gigs of internal storage aided by an external memory card slot and a 2500 mAh battery rounds-off this value-for-money device from QMobile.