iBerry Auxus Nuclea N2 Review : iBerry goes big but battery suffers

If you are high-end user who wants to do a lot of gaming and watch HD videos, then the Auxus Nuclea N2 is an excellent buy. The only sacrifice that you will have to make is its extra-large size (which although is a plus for watching movies) and the battery backup which can hopefully be fixed soon with a new software update from iBerry (by releasing a KitKat update) for the device. Overall, the Nuclea N2 is not a bad buy at all if you don't mind charging your phone twice a day.

Specifications:
Dimensions: 145.6x79x8.5mm
Weight: 189g
Processor: 1.7GHz octa-core MediaTek MT6592
GPU: Mali 450-MP4
RAM: 2GB
Internal Storage: 16GB
Display: 5.7-inches (Full HD resolution)
Operating System: Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
Camera: 13MP (Rear), 8MP (Front)
SIM capacity: Dual-SIM (Regular and Micro)
Battery: 3500mAh
Contents: Charger, USB cable, in-ear headphone, user manual and warranty information.

Design and display
When it comes to the design of Nuclea N2, just think about Samsung Note 3. Until you don’t notice the name on the back, you will keep thinking that it’s a Samsung phone. The form-factor, color and the faux-leather designed back, all are trademark Samsung smartphone features. The UI makes (which is stock Android) it look like a rooted Note 3.

The back (which is easily removable) once removed reveals the 3500mAh battery and the two SIM card slots. You can use a regular-sized SIM card in this phone while the other slot requires a Micro-SIM card. The camera sensor on the top is bulged out with the LED flash right below it. The speaker grill located on the bottom left is covered by a steel plate. The MicroSD card slot is located right above the regular sized SIM card slot right beside the Micro-SIM slot. The back also holds the 3.7v Lithium-polymer battery which is also removable.

There is an aluminum rim on the sides which revolves around the phone. The rim also sports the power and the volume rocker buttons. The power button is located on the right while the volume buttons are on the left. The bottom of the rim has the micro-USB/charging connector while the top sports the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The front has the 5.7-inch OGS (One Glass Solution) display with Gorilla Glass protection. The glass flows all over the front even covering two capacitive Android buttons (except the Home/Menu button). The Home/ Menu button is a physical button just like the ones found on Samsung smartphones. The capacitive buttons light up once touched. The 8MP front camera is located on the top right of the front panel. The proximity and the ambient light sensors are located next to each other right beside the speaker. The notification LED is located on the left of the speaker grill.

Sporting a 5.7-inch display, the Nuclea N2 is a phablet rather than a smartphone. It is almost impossible to use the N2 comfortably with one hand. If you travel a lot, don’t buy this phone if you want to carry the phone in your pockets as it rarely fits in. Also, there is small black space between the display and the edges where the display meets the bezel which makes it look like a black border around the display when it is lit up. The inconsistency of this black space is evident as it is more visible towards the bottom of the display than it is on the sides and the top.

The OGS display is smooth to touch and being huge in size, it easily catches smudges which are hard to take off with a usual cloth. To fix this, iBerry gives a factory-installed matte screen protector. If you don’t like matte protectors, you can install a clear screen protector or just keep it without any protector as iBerry has provided Gorilla Glass protection for the display to ward off day-to-day scratches. The output quality of the display was great. It outputs rich color in photos and videos and at 386ppi, it is extremely sharp. Watching high definition videos is a real delight on Nuclea N2. If there is something that will impress you most about this phone, then it will be the display. The touch performance is also great and it rarely missed any touches. Actually, the OGS display is extremely sensitive to touches. The viewing angles are great too. The blacks may not as deep as an AMOLED but the overall tone of the output is natural unlike the former.

Camera
The Nuclea N2 features a 13MP rear camera with BSI sensor and an 8MP front-facing camera. The rear camera is capable of shooting 1080p videos but there is a comprehensive lag while moving the camera while shooting a video. The image stabilizing capabilities could have been better as the output quality is quite bland in terms of colors and light sensitivity when it comes to capturing videos. Surprisingly, 720p videos lagged even more. The camera features an auto-smile detection which makes the camera take a photo once the subject in the photograph gives a smile. You can also control the exposure of photos. Overall the camera takes nice photos but only when you adjust some settings. The quality of photos suffers a lot in low-lit conditions with blurry and badly-detailed images. Despite featuring some interesting camera features, don’t expect good photography from this device. There is a lot of noise in photos and the colors looks desaturated than normal. The BSI sensor in N2’s camera isn’t able to handle light properly in neither dark or daylight conditions. Photos do come out better in HDR mode but regular users would rarely use a mode for which you need to keep your handy steady for a considerable amount of time when it comes to taking photos.

Check out the samples below for a better idea:

UI and Software
Nuclea N2 features a stock Android OS with Trebuchet launcher installed on top. The launcher is minimal in features and design thus being light on features. Except the icons, all the features resemble stock Android. The phone runs Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2. The app drawer touch button on the display is a custom designed Auxus logo featuring on the home screen. People interested in tweaking the smartphone would be disappointed as it offers minimal developer settings. The built-in launcher is nothing special and we would suggest installing the Nova launcher for better customization and performance.

Gaming and multimedia performance
The phone features NFC as well and iBerry sells a standalone wireless charger which can be bought for around Rs 2000.

With usual amount of apps installed on the phone, 1.3GB of RAM is usually available for usage which makes the phone less-laggy even though the phone doesn’t give an exceptional performance when it comes to high-end gaming. While playing Asphalt and Nova 3, we rarely faced any lags but the downfall of the phone is most probably the over-heating. It gets exceptionally hot while playing graphics-intensive games. When it comes to regular usage, the phone is snappy in performance due to its octa-core processor and Mali-450 GPU. The MediaTek octa-core processor of the phone features eight ARM Cortex-A7 cores which can be turned ON simultaneously with to the Heterogenous Multi-Processing (HMP) technology of the processor.

The smartphone provides ample storage space and options for users who like to flood their phones with videos and games. The internal storage is a hefty 16GB with the option of expanding it to 64GB with the expandable memory slot.

The movie playback was impressive with the bright OGS display. There was no lag with 1080p videos and the quality of the playback was pretty much on par with high-end devices. If you are a movie-buff who likes to keep a smartphone handy for watching movies on-the-go, you will be quite impressed with the quality and the huge 5.7-inch display.

In benchmarks tests, the Nuclea N2 registered very impressive scores.

The Nuclea N2 registered impressive scores in Antutu and Quadrant benchmark tests.

Here is a table of all the test results of the N2 with comparisons against similarly-priced smartphones: 

Battery
The N2 features a CPU power-saving mode which limits the maximum CPU performance to conserve battery life and also keeps the phone cooler. But despite being ON by default, the phone heats up a lot during gaming. Once turned OFF, the N2 heats up to such an extent (during high-end gaming) that it gets uncomfortable to hold in hand.  In our regular test of playing a 1080p video for an hour, the phone battery dropped from 100% to a staggering 62% during the test the phone was connected to a Wi-Fi network with one SIM card.

The Nuclea N2 did not impress us with its battery backup despite featuring a huge battery pack. We had expected a higher battery backup from a device that comes with a 3500mAh battery. Hopefully, iBerry will release an update that should fix the battery issues.

Conclusion
iBerry is selling the Auxus Nuclea N2 for Rs 19,990 in the Indian marker which is a reasonable price considering the hardware that it packs in. The overall optimization of the performance in the phone could have been much better but still, it is able to deliver high-end performance at the cost of lower battery backup. If you want to deceive people by making them think that you have a high-end Samsung device, then this is a perfect copy of a design that the South Korean giant implements in its smartphones. iBerry is yet to make a mark in the smartphone market and is trying to cash in against the Indian smartphone manufacturers which provide decent hardware in the mid-range budget category. Despite the good effort of iBerry with the Nuclea N2, the company falls short when it comes to overtaking brands like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn etc. which provide similar phones in a similar price category.

If you are high-end user who wants to do a lot of gaming and watch HD videos, then the Auxus Nuclea N2 is an excellent buy. The only sacrifice that you will have to make is its extra-large size (which although is a plus for watching movies) and the battery backup due to its heating issues. Hopefully the battery issue would be fixed with a new software update from iBerry (by releasing a KitKat update) for the device. Also the Samsung-style build quality is only a minus and the logic of having the same build and design is something that we really don’t understand. It would have made more sense for iBerry to come up with an original design. Overall, the phone is decent buy if you are looking for a phablet with high performance under the Rs 20,000 budget. The closest competitor to Nuclea N2 is Micromax’s Canvas Knight which doesn’t overpower the N2 in any department except sporting a better camera.

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