Recently, a “Made in Bangladesh” smartphone, Walton Primo S8 mini has garnered a lot of attention on social media, but is it worth the hype?
First, this phone comes with a Snapdragon chipset inside at a lucrative price of Tk13,999.
Walton already branded the phone as “The Gaming Warrior,” a branding quite dangerous within this budget range. In today’s review, we will dive further into what the phone actually offers.Aesthetic
The phone is 163.65 mm in height and 77.65 mm in width. It’s 9.15 mm thin and 205 grams in weight.
The plastic-backed smartphone is available in three colours - Stone White, Ink Black and Forest Green. All of these look quite attractive, to be honest. The Stone White and Ink Black are standard choices while the Forest Green has a rainbow effect on the back.
Don’t get confused with the “mini” part of the phone’s name. The phone is quite big in size. So much so that it might be a bit difficult to use in one hand for many.
The placement of cameras on the back looks somehow similar to those of Realme phones, which is a good thing. The front-facing selfie camera is a punch-hole camera located on the top left side of the display, which will provide an uninterrupted multimedia consumption experience.
Display
The phone has a 6.53-inch display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. It has an FHD+ display with a resolution of 2340x1080 pixels. The phone also has Rainbow (CEC) glass protection on the front.
At a similar price, Xiaomi Redmi 10C has a 720p display. It might seem obvious that the Primo S8 mini’s display would look better than Redmi 10C’s display since it supports more pixels. In reality, it looks nicer. However, the low-end processor will have a hard time processing and displaying all these additional pixels and there will be a significant performance drop due to this.
If we think about it, Walton could have gone for a 720p display with a slightly better chipset like the newly released Snapdragon 680.
Processor
This is where all the hypes began. The phone rocks a Snapdragon 665 chipset. Now, 665 is not a very powerful processor if we look at it in general. However, for a phone that costs only Tk13,999, this should be enough.
According to Nanoreview, this Snapdragon 655 will be able to run PUBG Mobile at 29 FPS in low settings, Call of Duty Mobile at 28 FPS in Ultra settings and Fortnite at 27 FPS in low settings. It’s safe to say that it will run most of the games smoothly, but in low to medium settings.
Do keep in mind that while Walton tagged the phone as “Gaming Warrior,” 665 is not a gaming chipset in general. Yes, Snapdragon processors are usually more optimised towards gaming, and this might be considered as a gaming chipset only if you consider the price as well.
Paired with the processor are two RAM options, one is 4GB and another is 6GB. Walton didn’t keep an option for 8GB RAM, and that’s a good decision. If they did, that extra portion of RAM would have just stayed there doing literally nothing considering that the phone’s processor is only powerful enough to handle tasks that require 4 to 6 GB of RAM. This surely helped Walton keep the price tag at a reasonable space.
Do keep in mind that the previously mentioned Xiaomi Redmi 10C offers the latest 6nm Snapdragon 680 chipset in a similar price range. So that might be a downside for Walton in terms of performance since 680 outperforms 665 in all parameters.
Camera
This is where Walton truly shines. The phone has a quad-camera setup with a 16MP main shooter, an 8MP ultrawide camera, a 2MP depth camera and a 2MP macro camera. It was a 13MP selfie camera on the front.
No smartphone within this price range offers an ultrawide camera. Even smartphones that cost Tk2,000 to Tk3,000 extra than this often do not include this feature. But Walton kept it. However, the ultrawide camera can be used for capturing images only. It doesn’t support capturing videos.
All of the cameras of Primo S8 mini performed the way they should. The images were good. However, the video section is where it needs more optimisations.
You might be surprised to know that both the 13MP front and 16MP back camera of Walton Primo S8 mini can record videos at 4k resolution in 30fps. It also supports EIS. However, the video quality wasn’t up to the mark.
However, I still believe that Walton can work on fixing it as much as possible using software updates.
Battery
Walton Primo S8 mini has a 5000mAh battery inside. The charger that comes with the phone supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, which is a fancier way to say that it supports 18 Watts charging. All is good here.
Final verdict
Is Walton Primo S8 mini worth the hype? It definitely is. If you only want to spend 14k and are looking for a phone to do regular work, this phone is definitely recommended. You may also play a few games every now and then. Primo S8 mini has some features in every aspect.
However, if you play lots of games on your smartphone, you may consider increasing your budget and go for phones like Realme Narzo 50 with a much faster MediaTek Helio G96 chipset.