Hyve Pryme detailed review

When I got the Hyve Pryme for review I thought it was another Android phone competing in a saturated price segment. When I was right about the price segment, I underestimated the power of the phone. After putting the phone through our tests, I can confidently say, don’t judge by the cover of a book.

Design and build

Hyve Pryme is quite simple to look at. It has a 5.7-inch display, with a relatively prominent forehead and jaw. The company’s official claim (on its website) is a 2.5D arc glass curved display, but you will be hard pressed to find this curve. The glass covering the display extends to the edges, but the bezels are prominent on both sides. Above the display are front-facing cameras, earpieces and standard sensors with front-facing flash. Interestingly, the chin is empty, with no capacitive buttons, which makes the design questionable. Hyve could save space instead.

On the left are our SIM card and expandable storage tray (hybrid dual-SIM slot), and on the right are the power button and volume rocker. The bottom of the device has two grills, but the one on the right has speakers. The popular IR blaster along with the headphone jack is on the right. The back has a 13MP camera, with dual-tone LED flash, and a fingerprint sensor at the bottom.

The Hyve Pryme is quite large with a 5.7-inch display and if you prefer a larger phone you will feel at home. No complaints here. But if you’re used to a 4.7-inch, 5-inch or a 5.2-inch phone, it may have an irresistible presence at first.

Overall, the phone’s build and design is plain, generic and inspiring, and that’s not a bad thing. As I said, don’t judge by the cover of a book. It’s simple and something that can be appreciated.

Display and UI

The Hyve Pryme’s display has a decent viewing angle, but visibility sub-passes direct sunlight, a problem we’ve seen on many other smartphones. It is a 1080p display and if you plan to watch movies and play games using it, you will be satisfied with the color reproduction. It doesn’t have the vibrant colors of the OnePlus 3 or the warm tones found on Samsung’s Super AMOLED panel. It has quite neutral color tones and I like it. Spiderman costumes look naturally red and blue without any artificial effects in the homecoming trailer and I liked that. The display works reasonably well in most cases.

Protective skin (if you want a screen guard) tends to scratch quite easily, though, and that’s a big disappointment. You can create scratches when viewing a scene in a dark environment (such as at night or in low light conditions) and the scratches are quite clearly visible.

If I have a problem with the display, it is the slight interval between touching an action on your screen and the response of the smartphone. This will be noticeable when you type fast on the device. Touch delay is more than ideal. There is a slight delay between you pressing a button and the corresponding action on the screen. To be clear, this would only be clear when typing ninja. In our test, we (specifically Prasid) got it when we unlocked the phone by typing PIN. The code takes a fraction of a second to register than it is accustomed to experience on a smartphone around 20k.

Moving to the UI, the company has chosen a near-stock Android experience and it is a very good choice. There are no preloaded apps and the only real change you can see in the settings menu. You will find Turbo download and flip cover option. When the flip cover is on, the flip cover lets you lock the device, and Turbo Download works to quickly download large files using cellular and Wi-Fi. It works with files larger than 20MB.

The ability to use different networks and combine them to speed up downloads is not new, but many smartphones do. This is an interesting feature.

Overall the display is acceptable and the UI makes it run securely with stock Android.

Performance

Moving towards real world performance, it is one of the few phones in India powered by MediaTek Helio X20 SoC. For the uninitiated, it is a deca-core processor, i.e. 10-core. The smartphone runs all the apps we throw away and the loading time was fast. These are non-gaming apps that we use every day like Facebook, WhatsApp, Gmail, SMS, Call Log, Contacts, Instagram and many more. Multitasking is smooth and with more than 12 apps open, the device has no problems with day-to-day work.

The device comes with a fingerprint sensor, which is located at the bottom of the rear camera. It fits perfectly to unlock the device when removed from your pocket and it works quite well. Just don’t expect Nexus / Pixel Imprint level speed from Hyve Pryme.

If you are a basic user, there is nothing wrong with Hyve Pryme. In fact, even if you play games that are not resource intensive, this might be the phone for you. However, if you enjoy games like Injustice and Asphalt 8, you run into some problems.

Gaming

We played some graphical intensive games on the device and were not happy with the results. Games like Asphalt 8 have shown remarkable frame skipping and inconsistent frame rates. This does not mean that games are not playable, but the experience is not what we have seen in smartphones powered by Snapdragon 652 or Snapdragon 820. If you enjoy playing graphical heavy games then this is not for you

The camera

If there’s one thing I don’t like about Hyve Pryme’s camera, it’s the camera app. It’s been using a stock Android camera app for over two years now and you’d better replace it with third party apps available in the Play Store.

See the post on imgur.com

When it comes to image quality, if you want to share on social media websites or add filters to edit them, they are pretty good. The image has quite good color reproduction, but the details cost. There are no details of the images, especially when you put them on a computer and view them in full resolution, but color reproduction is good. Hyve Pryme’s camera performs well in low light. The phone is a good low light performer within the sub-20k price range. Here again, there is a loss of noise and detail, but the colors are good.

Moved to the front camera, it comes with an LED flash, and the 8MP shooter is great for those everyday pouting sessions.

Battery life

The device lasts 7 hours and 11 minutes in PC Mark battery test and it is quite impressive. For a heavy user, you will reach 20% at the end of the day. It includes some emails, 20 minutes of gaming, some standard arrays of social networking and phone calls, and some YouTube. For the average user, the phone should last for one day and some juice should be left for the next day before hitting the wall socket.

One thing I don’t like is that the smartphone takes more than 2 hours to charge from 0 to 100%. That’s a bummer. The official website says that the device has USB Type-C for fast charging, but it does not come with a fast charger in the box.

The last row

Overall, the Hyve Pryme is a good phone for those looking for a functional device with a large display and general appearance. Gaming performance isn’t great for graphically heavy games. If you want a device to use multimedia and get through a regular social networking, messaging and call, then yes, Hive Prime does the job. Although it has been overtaken by devices such as the Lenovo Z2 Plus, which offers more built-in storage with tried and tested Snapdragon 820, or LeEco Le Max 2, both are much faster.